In search for the best cold brew coffee method

As a V60 pour-over kind of person, this was what I wanted to answer. From the feedback of the customers in August during our first pop-up event at Katong Square (check out the vintage flea market by The Retro Factory), it seemed that people (undoubtedly) want a cup of ice cold coffee in the relentless Singapore weather. We have to give customers what they want, hence I embarked on a journey to figure out a cold brew recipe I would drink.

The common method of making cold brew is to grind coffee beans, immerse these grounds with water (about 1 gram of coffee to 16 grams of water) in a bottle with a filter, place this in the fridge and leave it for about 24 hours. This produces coffee that is smooth and delicious, with no bitterness. This is good, but not great to me, because the process also removes acidity in coffee and origin characteristics that you pay for good coffee. Cold brewing does not do justice to these bits.

The challenging thing about cold brew is extracting these pleasant components from the coffee with cold water, which can be extracted if you used hot water and a method such as the V60. Since then I’ve tried several things – brewing in room temperature (SG room temp, which is around 28 – 30 celsius), adding a hot bloom step where I add hot water to the grounds before topping up with room temperature water. I will be documenting my learnings in a series of posts.

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