5 Cold-Brew Coffees To Try

If you think cold coffee is something sipped through a straw from a clear plastic cup full of ice, you’d be mistaken. That’s iced coffee (and its milky, syrupy siblings, iced latte and iced mocha). Though iced coffee has its appeal -especially if you don’t actually like the taste of coffee – for coffee sophisticates, there’s a new (cold) brew in town.

Cold-brew coffee is medium-coarse ground coffee steeped in cold water for 12 to 24 hours and strained, while iced coffee is generally brewed hot and poured over ice. Because cold-brew coffee is never heated, the acids and oils that can give hot coffee a bitter taste are never released, resulting in a smoother sip that’s naturally fruity, chocolaty and slightly sweet. The higher bean-to-water ratio gives also gives cold-brew a more concentrated flavor (also more caffeine).

You can find bottled ready-to-drink cold-brew coffee as well as cold-brew concentrate at coffee shops and specialty grocery stores. Typically, it’s near the kombucha, frequently in retro-stubby bottles. Try it over ice with milk or cream to temper the intensity or straight-up black if you’re hardcore.

Many finer coffee shops also serve cold-brew coffee infused with nitrogen gas. “The idea behind this is to give the cold brew a creamy body and a look similar to a freshly poured Guinness,” says Cole Torode, director of coffee for Rosso Coffee Roasters, which serves nitrogen-infused cold brew. “When properly infused, you can see a cascading appearance down the side of the glass as the nitrogen interacts with the coffee.”

Summer is too short to drink bad cold coffee.