I'm a Cook Not a Chef: How to Make Cold-Brewed Coffee

I know all of you who have been reading have been hearing me complain about coffee for nearly a week. It's about time I get off my high horse and make some coffee myself!

You can see the darkness level I like it at.

I found that glass here in the US for $1!! I love it. When I make my coffee I usually use that to measure. I used the measuring cups in my demonstration to make it easier to see how much I use.

Starting off with our Ingredients.

I usually use flavored coffee exclusively. My favorite is from Flying Bean Coffee. They have the best coffee in the world IMO. Of course, I don't have any Lao Coffee here with me to compare..

Also needed are two jars and a coffee sock plus some sort of measuring tool.

All you really need if you don't have these things lying around:

Some sort of container to hold your coffee+water, a cup to pour it into, some kind of filtering material. While at a hotel I used paper towels. Yeah, I know.. I prefer minimalism in the kitchen. Don't go out and buy new things for this if you can make do already. Trust me it doesn't make the coffee taste any better (well..)

As for measuring, I am only using ratios. This means no real measuring of exactness occurs. If I fill up my glass 1/4 full of coffee then I use that as the beginning of my ratio. It's 1:5 in case you were curious. I'll go into this more in detail in a sec.

As you can see here, I am putting in 2/3 cup of coffee into my container.

Now I fill that 2/3 measuring cup with water and dump it into my container with the coffee. I do that five time. This is where the ratio 1:5 comes in. I prefer my coffee a bit stronger than most. That's 1 coffee to 5 waters. You can increase to 1:6 if you like or add water later. Try it stronger and dilute later if needed.

Give it a good shake and let it sit overnight

This is a coffee sock. In Laos this is what all of the street vendors use to make their coffee. Therefore these are very cheap to acquire in Laos. Therefore I now have one. On the fridge are my motivational pictures. One of me at my heaviest weight: 276 lbs, one of me deadlifting a bazillion pounds and a pic of Franco Columbo.

Once we've waited patiently we can now filter out the grounds using whatever filtering medium you happen to have. I've read online where you only need 8-12 hours but I usually make it as soon as I have drank all of the previous days brew in the morning and let it sit all day and overnight. I did say I like mine strong..

When using my coffee sock all of the grounds are on the bottom so it can make the process kind of slow. You can carefully squeeze it with your hands but watch for coffee leaking above your hand.