I roast coffee at home and have been experimenting a lot with ratios and techniques for brewing. I've come to realize that my favorite technique is cold brewing. For home coffee brewing, I think it's underrated. I make a batch on the weekend, and for the rest of the week I have coffee ready to drink whenever I want it. The concentrate can last a long time without any big changes in the flavor profile, and I can make coffee of varying strengths (by adjusting the water dilution). I highly recommend cold brewing at home if you like coffee and have yet to try it.
I always wanted to try that. Care to share your technique, or link to a recommended one? I read that it uses a lot of raw coffee. I don't roast at home; these days I'm ashamed to say that I don't even grind fresh.
I grind fresh for my Aeropress, but use pre-ground (or grind-at-the-store) for cold brew and try to make it that day. You can do it in a large mason jar with several paper filters, but I use a Toddy system I got as a gift.
Basically it's 12 OZ ground coffee + 7 cups of water in the bucket. I let that sit on the counter for 12-24 hours, then run it through a very fine filter (~1 cm thick piece of felt). This produces a concentrate that I store in the fridge. Dilute 1:1 or 1:2 with milk and/or water before drinking. It's good heated or over ice.
After reading about it in "Modernist Cuisine at Home", I picked up the Toddy[1] cold brew device.
My wife and I both love the results. It comes with 2 filters, which last for about 10 batches each. Each batch takes 12-24 hours in produce in the fridge. We consume it in about a week.
The downside to the Toddy is that it is basically a carafe with a big plastic bucket. When done brewing, you put the carafe in the fridge and store the brewing "bucket". A friend of mine has the Hario[2] -- it is a much more attractive unit, and as an all-in-one you can keep the entire device in the fridge. When it is time to order replacement filters for the Toddy, I think I'm going to pick up the Hario instead and give that a try.
Either way -- the quality of the coffee has been fantastic. Super easy to brew, and really nice having it already ready to go in the morning when we are rushing out the door.
> A friend of mine has the Hario[2] -- it is a much more attractive unit, and as an all-in-one you can keep the entire device in the fridge. When it is time to order replacement filters for the Toddy, I think I'm going to pick up the Hario instead and give that a try.
I have the Hario (bought it last week, in fact) and like it a lot. 80g of ground beans (same coarseness as my Aeropress), fill it up and once it's full, in the fridge for 10-12 hours. The filter is very easy to clean and the whole thing is made from thick glass, so I'm not too worried about cracking it from an accidental bump.
And cold brew with a dash of milk is very, very good. Much (much) healthier than the sugar-loaded (65g per 500mL!) stuff from the supermarket too, which I recommend everyone avoid regardless.
Grind ~2x what you usually use for X amount of coffee. Toss in cold water (I use old (glass) milk bottles). Let it sit for 24 hours. Filter. I personally just pour it through one of these because I like keeping the oils in my coffee: http://www.amazon.com/Finium-Brewing-Basket-medium/dp/B0037S...
Details beyond that can be figured out. The basics are that easy, and basically no matter what you do it'll be better than any store-bought cold brew.
I started cold brewing for everyone at work. It's very simple, takes about 3 minutes a day.
You just need a jar, a burr grinder, and freshly roasted coffee. Grind the coffee rather roughly, put it in the jar with cold water, screw the jar shut, shake it up, and leave it overnight. Then run the solution through a standard paper filter into a second jar and serve over ice. If you're really intense about it you can also pour the same solution into your ice cube tray to make cold brew ice cubes, to avoid diluting your precious concoction.
I save all the old beans from when I get a new batch before finishing the old bag and every few months I do a big cold brew batch. It does use way more coffee than hot brewing.
I do 1/3 cup coffee grounds per cup of water, put it all in a mixing bowl in the fridge overnight, and the next day strain it with a very fine mesh. Lasts for a week or two in the fridge
I grabbed myself a http://bruer.co. They're not perfect devices, but for the price, they're an easy way to get into it. The nicer variants are all $200US+ (and then, for me, international shipping :().
IMHO this is a fantastic way to make sweet, very flavorful iced coffee without it being too weak or containing an acidic aftertaste. On especially hot days it's nice to freeze some into large square or spherical ice cubes to put in glasses of iced coffee later. Serious Eats also has a great article on cold brewing:
I'm not a huge fan of cold brewing for normal coffee -- but then again, I kind of like a slight bitter taste to it (and I tend to drink it black). My technique was crazy simple though, so maybe I didn't do it very well?
I did, however, cold brew a whole bunch of coffee to use in a coffee oatmeal stout that I brewed once, and it was absolutely amazing.
I do this with a Toddy, and previously with large mason jars. It tastes great heated and makes for the best iced coffee. I love that I can dilute entirely with milk or water. You're right it tastes good for up to 2 weeks or so, but do you know anything about the caffeine content through that time? I figure (especially in the fridge) it should be pretty stable, but I don't have the domain knowledge to be certain of this.
The area around Mint Plaza in SF, specifically at and around Blue Bottle, does this well. This was achieved by closing off that street to vehicle traffic, and allowing only people on foot and bikes in that area.
That can't happen without massive (and forcible) population relocation.
For example, the UK has a smaller land area than Oregon, but has ~64 million people, compared to ~4 million for Oregon. France is smaller than Texas, but has 66 million people compared to ~26 million for Texas.
The idea of "just getting rid of cars" will never happen for a similar reason. The U.S. is too big and there are way too many people who live outside the range of any reasonable public transit system that's been devised so far.
Maybe it will happen someday, but I don't think so.
Vishaan Chakrabarti actually specifically defines a city as "30 dwelling units per acre" or "population dense enough to support train-based transit". Latter is paraphrased.
Hmm... I'm not sure I'm comfortable with a definition of city that excludes (e.g.) Los Angeles and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Reading what I wrote above in the light of day makes it sound like I'm advocating forcible population redistribution. I'm not... just pointing out that a European-style urban environment probably can't happen in the low densities typical of the United States, and that the only way to achieve such densities here would probably require force (which would be a bad thing, IMO).
I haven't finished reading his book, so I can't speak to the context in which he says this.
I guess it depends on what you consider force. If you stop encouraging suburb development, would that be force? It would certainly promote such redistribution, but I wouldn't consider that force. As another HN link noticed, this kind of financial incentive to move into the city has already started happening, but it has been a bottom-up bit.
I live in SF and have both a personal commuter bike, and a BABS membership. When I factor in the convenience of not having to do any maintenance on the BABS bike, don't have to worry about fixing any flat tires, don't have to worry about theft (a big problem in SF), and can quickly dock a bike where I'm going, $88 a year feels like a very good deal. The only thing preventing me from going 100% BABS is the network of stations in SF is very sparse and located mostly downtown (see: https://twitter.com/ptraughber/status/388368763281625089).
