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06/30/2001 Archived Entry: "Cold-Brewed Coffee Extract"

My dear friend Suzanne Hamlin, “That Hamlin Woman,” as a listener once called her and I continue to when I want to tease her a little, were talking about coffee and how to make it the other night. It’s a subject we visit frequently.

As I often say (to myself if no one else), when all else is going wrong, I can at least count on my morning coffee to give me pleasure. When I’m traveling and I’ve had enough, I say “It’s time to go home and smell my own coffee.”

For the last few months, I’ve been drinking Sumatran coffee roasted dark. “City roast” is what my local coffee shop, Leaf & Bean on Seventh Ave. in Park Slope, calls the roast. I have it ground fine for a stove-top espresso pot, which is called a “moka” in Italian. I know that having it ground in the store is a slight concession to quality, producing a cup that is less than perfection, but I have it ground because I hate the sound of the grinder first thing in the morning. It’s true that the first pot of my pre-ground coffee is the best, but I store the coffee in an air-tight glass jar with a ground glass cover, where it does stay very fresh and flavorful for the week it takes me to use it.

Sometimes, I drink canned coffee. Kimbo, imported from Italy, the one in the black can that is said to be Napoletano, is my favorite, although I occasionally buy the less darkly roasted Kimbo in the gold can. At Buon Italia, the great Italian food store in the Chelsea market, they sell the jumbo sized gold can. Having such a large quantity of wonderful coffee in the house makes me feel secure, even though I know the flavor of the last half of the can is somewhat poorer than the first half.

Sometimes, I drink Ethiopian Yrgacheffe that is not roasted as dark as the Sumatran because it has the deep, relatively low-acid chocolatey quality I love without dark roasting. Because I buy it mainly for afternoon and after-dinner drinking, I do grind that coffee at the moment I make it and I brew it in a French press, a pot that extracts every nuance of flavor from fine coffee.

All this coffee talk is to demonstrate how particular I am about my morning coffee and why I was so shocked that Suzanne, a connoisseur of everything else she eats and drinks, makes Martinson’s in the blue can in an electric drip coffee pot with a heating pad.

Could I trust her that cold-brewed coffee extract that can be stored for days in the refrigerator was going to satisfy me? Obviously not.

But it did.

Suzanne has a gizmo for doing this. Suzanne loves gizmos. But then she has a large house with many closets and a basement. I wanted to make the coffee extract about which Suzanne was raving, without gizmo.

Why bother? Cold-brewed coffee extract makes excellent, I would have to say the best iced coffee and very convenient hot coffee. It lacks acidity because the cold water does not extract much acidity from the beans, but the lack of an acid edge is an advantage to some people. Acidity, not caffeine, is their problem with coffee. And for iced coffee, the cold-brewed technique produces a beverage that does not cloud or develop off-flavors as it sits in the refrigerator.

Cold-Brewed Coffee Extract
Makes about 1 1/2 quarts

1 pound good quality coffee, ground for drip
2 1/2 quarts cool tap water

In a minimum 3-quart pitcher or jar, combine the coffee and water. Let stand for 12 hours. Strain the coffee through a regular kitchen strainer into a 2-quart jar or pitcher. After the bulk of the coffee Place the strainer over a bowl for a few hours to get every last drop.

I find that tastes vary about the strength of coffee. For instance, a guest the other night who was familiar with coffee extract requested her iced coffee be made with nothing but the extract, ice, milk and sugar. I needed a shot of water in mine. For morning coffee, however, I found that three parts water to one part extract, as the manufacturer of Suzanne’s gadget suggests, was too weak for me. I preferred two parts.

For Iced Coffee
Stir together equal parts of the coffee extract and cold tap water (or bottled water). Pour over ice. Add sugar and milk to taste.

For Hot Coffee
Use one part coffee extract to 2 to 3 parts just-boiled water.