I use a Chemex coffee maker, but I would love to find a cold drip coffee maker
like those I saw in Taiwan -- If you ever tasted cold drip coffee, you would be
a believer also. This is an article from MSNBC.com:
My coffee is cold A brewing system without
heat proves it's a contender when it comes to taste
By Jon Bonné MSNBC Updated: 7:13 p.m. ET Aug. 20, 2004
The notion of cold-brewed coffee sounded to us, frankly, weird.
After all, heat seems intrinsic to the coffee process. Why would
you possibly want to leave grounds soaking for half a day in
an ugly plastic pitcher, like so much Kool-Aid? There's only
one possible reason we were willing to try the Toddy coffee
system, one of a handful of cold-brew options available: It works.
Really, really well.
The more you think about it, the more clear it becomes that
hot-brewed coffee is by no means a culinary dictate. I personally
gave up drip coffee for espresso years ago, finding that filtration
brought too little flavor and too much caffeine into the mix.
Others find regular coffee too acidic. Of the estimated 54 million
Americans who suffer heartburn, according to the National Heartburn
Alliance, three-quarters say it can be caused by beverages.
Cold-brew systems largely solve these problems, which may
be why Toddy claims 20 to 30 percent of its customers are
coffee lovers who find regular brews too much to stomach.
No heat, no plug It's not an immediately comfortable transition. The
technology is profoundly low-tech: a plastic pitcher with a fabric
filter, sitting atop a carafe that catches the finished product.
No electricity needed, just gravity, a pound of ground beans and
nine cups of cold water. That and 10 to 12 hours steeping time.
"We live in a culture that almost demands something
be complicated," says Brett Holmes, a partner in
Houston-based Toddy Products. "It's got to have a plug."
The resulting concentrate is strong stuff. Toddy recommends
three parts of either hot or cold water to one part concentrate,
depending on how you like your coffee, not unlike an Americano.
During a two-week test in the MSNBC.com newsroom, the 3-to-1
ratio was rarely used, given our preference for maximum coffee
in minimum time. My own fave was 1-to-1 with cold nonfat milk.
As it turns out, cold brew is familiar to the caffeinated
elite. Many die-hard coffee fiends swear by systems like Toddy,
which retails for $35, or the similar Filtron. Seattle's Best
Coffee fessed up earlier this month that they have for years
used industrial-sized Toddys to brew concentrate for cold
coffee drinks, and will now sell Toddy systems in their stores.
None other than Seattle's Best founder Jim Stewart brought
Toddys into the chain's back rooms because they could turn out
flavorful coffee without astringent or chemical qualities. Even
after the coffee chain was bought by java megalith Starbucks, it
opted to keep its own brewing traditions, including the Toddy.
"We're not just trying to make up another of what
everybody else is doing," says Shannon Jones,
Seattle's Best's director of field marketing.
Breaking the rules The more you think about cold brew's weirdness, the
less weird it seems. After all, coffee has been around since before
1000 A.D., depending on whose version of history you believe, yet
it was initially thought to have been eaten as a berry, not brewed.
Who decided on the drip method anyway? Prior to the early
1700s, when the Europeans developed a rudimentary coffee
filter known as a biggins, coffee grounds were usually left
in the brew. It wasn't until 1908 that a German housewife
named Melitta Bentz devised a paper filter for drip.
Even the precise espresso process -- now a backbone of
coffee consumption -- wasn't engineered until 1901. So why
should the world be governed by the laws of Mr. Coffee?
"I can serve hot or cold coffee at the same time, and I can
serve a large group without standing in the kitchen for a
good 30 minutes pouring hot water through a drip filter,"
says Toddy fan Kristin Yamaguchi, who first bought one
to conserve space in her tiny Yokohama, Japan, kitchen.
Yamaguchi became an instant convert. While she prefers coffee
cold, she not only enjoys hot Toddy but unlike regular
coffee, can drink it later in the day and without food.
Four decades ago, a similar rethinking of coffee norms prompted the
creation of the Toddy, due to sell its one millionth unit this fall.
In 1964, a newly graduated chemical engineer named Todd Simpson,
ordered coffee in a small cafe in Guatemala. He received a small
carafe of cool concentrate and some boiling water, which set him
wondering whether his mother -- who couldn't otherwise stomach
coffee -- might be able to enjoy the cold stuff. She could, he
devised a formal brewing device and the Toddy business was born.
Smoother on the stomach Though coffee aficionados have
murmured about it for the past 30 years, Holmes and his former
college roommate, Strother Simpson -- Todd's son -- now hope
to take their contraption to the big leagues, including a
marketing campaign, a redesign of the plastic pitcher and a
line of ready-to-mix bottled coffee and tea concentrates. (As
many Southerners will attest, tea can be cold-brewed, too.)
Where cold brew truly comes from is a total mystery. The Simpsons
believe it may be an ancient Peruvian method, and coffee
concentrates first showed up in 19th-century America. Another
theory traces it back to Java. The trail seems to stop there.
What's apparent, though, in Toddy's independent lab tests
and in our own less scientific tastings, is that cold
concentrate contains far less acid and a good bit less caffeine.
Toddy claims to brew up two-thirds less caffeine than regular
coffee; in a side-by side test using Starbucks' regular blend,
the Toddy version had a pH of 6.31 and 40 mg of caffeine per
100 grams of coffee, while Starbucks store-brewed clocked in at
a pH of 5.48 and 61 mg of caffeine. (Lower numbers on the pH
scale, which is measured logarithmically, denote more acid.)
In a beverage near you Not all our newsroom testers were convinced.
One enjoyed the taste but thought the mechanics of cold brewing were
a bit much. (He compared it to a fondue pot.) Another suggested
coffee fans who cherish a full dose of acid and caffeine might be
turned off. There were inevitable comparisons to instant coffee.
Still, a carafe of concentrate remained fresh over a week,
with no dulling of flavor. It even avoided absorbing the
tastes of the newsroom refrigerator's other contents --
possibly the first beverage ever to avoid that fate.
Potential uses kept emerging. Camping trips.
Coffee ice cubes for undiluted iced lattes.
Seattle's Best recently announced it will take over cafÃ
operations at more than 400 Borders locations, so Toddy
concentrate could soon appear across the nation -- though you
might not know you're drinking some. (Seattle's Best's Naughty
Toddy and JavaKula iced drinks, among others, feature it.)
I'm likely to stick to my espresso machine at home. But cold-brewed
coffee may just become a regular work habit, and not just because
the always-overheated communal coffee pot fills me with dread.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactiv
© 2005 MSNBC.co
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5728227/
Here is some more information about the Toddy Cold Brew System:
http://www.toddycafe.com/cbinfo/
But, the cold brew systems in Asia are *way* cooler than the Toddy -- They are
enormous drip systems, several feet tall!
--
Clay Irving
[email hidden]