Easy jar cold brew
Stir coarse coffee into cold water, wait 12–18 hours, filter. Smooth all week.
⏱️ 735 minEasy
Starting recipe
100 g coffee + 800 g cold water (1:8), steep 12–18 hours, then filter. Dilute to taste.
Grind: Extra coarse, like peppercorns
You need
- 100 g fresh coffee, ground extra coarse (like peppercorns)
- 800 g cold filtered water
- A big jar or pitcher (at least 1.2 liters) with a lid
- A kitchen scale and a spoon
- A filter: paper coffee filter, cloth, or fine mesh sieve
- A clean bottle for storing
Step by step
Grind extra coarse
Weigh 100 g of coffee and grind it extra coarse, like cracked peppercorns. Coarse grounds keep the brew clean and are much easier to filter.
Add water and stir
Put the grounds in the jar and pour in 800 g of cold, filtered water. Stir gently until there are no dry clumps.
Cover and wait
Put the lid on and leave it in the fridge for about 16–18 hours, or on the counter for about 12–14 hours. Room temperature extracts a bit faster.
Start it in the evening and it's ready the next afternoon.
720:00Give it a gentle stir
Before filtering, stir once gently and let it settle for a few minutes. It helps the grounds sink.
Filter
Pour it slowly through a sieve first to catch the big grounds, then through a paper filter or cloth for a clean result. Be patient: paper can drip slowly. Don't squeeze the grounds.
Store it cold
Bottle it and keep it in the fridge. It tastes best within about a week.
Serve and dilute
This is fairly strong. Start with equal parts cold brew and water or milk over ice, then adjust to taste.
Taste and adjust next batch
Sour or thin? Grind a little finer or steep longer. Bitter or woody? Grind coarser or steep less. Weak even undiluted? Use more coffee.
Common mistakes
- Grinding too fine: it gets muddy, over-extracted and painful to filter.
- Squeezing the grounds or the cloth, which pushes bitterness and sludge through.
- Steeping for days and getting woody, flat flavors.
- Drinking it undiluted and getting a caffeine surprise.
- Leaving it uncovered in the fridge, where it picks up other smells.
Tastes off? Fix it
| If it… | Try this |
|---|---|
| Sour or thin | Steep longer (toward 18 hours) or grind a little finer. |
| Bitter, woody or dry | Steep a few hours less or grind a little coarser. |
| Weak | Use more coffee for the same water next time, for example 110 g instead of 100 g. For now, dilute less. |
| Too strong | Dilute more when serving, or use a bit less coffee for the same water next batch. |
| Muddy or cloudy | Grind coarser and filter through paper as a final step. Pour gently and leave the sludge behind. |
Words you'll hear
- Steep
- Letting the coffee sit in water to extract. For cold brew that's many hours, not minutes.
- Immersion
- All the coffee sits in all the water at once, then you filter it out.
- Concentrate
- Extra-strong cold brew that you dilute with water, milk or ice before drinking.
- Ratio
- Water weight divided by coffee weight. 1:8 means 100 g of coffee to 800 g of water.
- Drip rate
- How fast drops fall in a slow-drip tower, usually counted in drops per second or per minute.
- Extraction
- How much flavor the water pulls from the grounds. Under-extracted tastes sour and thin; over-extracted tastes bitter, woody or dry.
- Bloom
- Pre-wetting the grounds with a little water first, so the rest of the water soaks in evenly instead of channeling.