The fall of 2014 was significant for a couple reasons. The first, I started my sophomore year of college. The second, I began drinking coffee. My roommate Collin worked at Babcock Dairy beginning at 5:00AM and he’d leave about two cups in the Mr. Coffee for when I’d need it around 9:00AM. I was, and still am, an opponent of hot drinks, therefore this usually discarded volume was a treasure. As the year went on, I learned how to use the Mr. Coffee, timing it such it was lukewarm when I left for class at 9:30AM. The next significant development came two years later when I discovered cold brew. From there, the journey began.
Cold Brew: The Early Years
My affinity established in Madison followed me to San Francisco. At this point, mostly due to Philz Coffee, I began to distinguish between high quality coffee and the bottom-shelf product I’d grown accustomed to in the Midwest. Not to say high quality coffee doesn’t exist in the Midwest, it most certainly does. In the Bay Area is where I also discovered espresso, which permanently changed my view of how all coffee should taste. I don’t recall my first shot, though I suspect it happened while building a coffee bar for Google, but I do recall my outlook changing before I left San Francisco from most coffee being sufficient to being perennially dissatisfied with most.
I decided when I moved to Salt Lake City in November 2020 to make a legitimate effort to find the city’s best cold brew. Despite a return to the cold, hot coffee, née espresso, was now as palatable as yellow snow. I scoured the city for months, finding many great places in doing so. The process of ranking instigated a further evolution. When distinguishing, precise language is paramount; I alluded to this concept in the last piece. For instance, there are significant differences between cold brews that are “watery”, “light bodied”, and “crisp”. On the other end of the spectrum, there are significant differences between those that are “bitter”, “robust”, and “charred”.
Cold Brew: Early Days of Making My Own
Nine months into my quest, I’d learned a few transcendent lessons. First, exterior appearance has no baring on product quality – I encountered shacks of unparalleled quality and contemporary masterpieces of the opposite. Second, a surprising number of shops didn’t understand the difference between cold brew and iced coffee. The former is made with cold water, the latter is a chilled variant of the one made with hot water. Needless to say, said uninformed shops weren’t returned to. Finally, a byproduct of my quest was connoisseurship, and the only way to satisfy it was producing my own. The seed was planted.
According to my Amazon order history, I ordered my first cold brew maker in September 2021. The rig is simplistic: a 32 oz. pitcher with a suspended filter medium to hold the grounds and through which the cold water is poured. After allowing the cold brew to steep for 24 hours, it’s ready to drink. These early attempts, despite the aforementioned logic, were infrequent and not well documented. It wasn’t until I moved to Savannah more than a year later I began annotating these productions. The product got better and, given Savannah’s relative low number of coffee shops, became increasingly important to having a consistent supply.
Cold Brew: Current Ventures
Fast forward another year to Summer 2024, another development came in my cold brew making journey. I’d discovered the rig I’d been using for three years had its limitations. There was a finite volume of grounds, the primary dictator of quality and strength, that could be housed in the filter medium. Furthermore, the process of pouring the cold water through it was cumbersome, often taking several hours. It was then I decided pivot to making cold brew concentrate – cold brew espresso, in effective.
Cold Brew Concentrate
Its production was even more simplistic: pour grounds into a pitcher, pour in cold water, mix, then allow to steep for 24-48 hours. The process takes five minutes, if that. It also fixed an important issue with the rig. Typically, one pitcher would yield three 12 oz. glasses. The first would be weak, the second well balanced, and the third would be venomous, like having a coffee IV. The reasoning was simple; as cold brew was removed from the pitcher, the potent liquid stored within the filter medium would trickle into an increasingly smaller volume of cold brew, thus rendering it unbearably strong. Cold brew concentrate would yield 3-4 glasses of a substance between glasses two and three, my goldilocks zone.
From that point forward, I’ve continued iterating the concentrate via optimizing the ratio of grounds to water, ground flavor profile, water temperature, and the storage vessel. All the while, taking diligent notes, usually on gold sticky notes, of the aforementioned variables. The result is a great product, and the next step is sharing it with those outside my apartment.
Cold Brew: Lessons & Future Ventures
I believe everyone either is or needs to become a connoisseur of something, so long as it’s not harmful to yourself or others. Those who’ve been following Becoming Polymathic likely see that as a corollary to our core message – allow your genuine interests to guide development. Previously, we’ve discussed the benefits of sharpening of one’s language. Other lessons that can be drawn from this venture include the importance of due diligence, also known as not being fooled by appearances, and the irreplaceable value of time and practice. Applied universally, those lessons hold. This is another pillar of Becoming Polymathic – ubiquity.
As for the future of my cold brew, I would be lying if I said I’d never contemplated producing it at scale. I’d also be lying if I said I don’t have sketches in my menagerie of notebooks detailing the industrial processes required to achieve this growth. Believe it or not, these sketches are the first real-world application of my agricultural engineering degree. Perhaps that’s a sign, of exactly what I’m not sure. Regardless, this will not be the last time we discuss cold brew, nor the lessons garnered from the venture, on Becoming Polymathic. Stay tuned…
Be more.
Become Polymathic.
Quote of the Week: “The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes its secrets.” – Salvador Dali