Cold Brewed Coffee vs. Iced Coffee

Recently I posted about making iced coffee now that the weather has decided to act like summer is close rather than winter. I also posted about how I wanted to try doing a cold-brewed coffee as well. Well, the wait is over. Recently I did a taste testing of cold-brewed coffee against iced coffee to see which I liked better.

Firstly I wanted the playing field to be level. Cold brewed coffee needs a coarser grind than doing a drip brew, so I needed to grind my own beans. I pulsed some beans in my coffee grinder to make a coarse grind for the cold-brewed coffee, and then ground some other beans normally to use in the drip coffee maker. I used the same coffee for both brewing methods so that I could get a good baseline for the flavor of each method. The recipe for cold-brewed coffee recipe I used can be found HERE on www.food52.com.

Same coffee beans used for both methods

Once the coffees were together, I did add one tablespoon of white sugar to each 32 ounce container, because for me cold coffee needs a little bit of sugar, and this allowed me to keep the amount of sugar controlled. Then it was time to begin the taste-test.

First I tasted both of the brews with no milk added. Here, both coffees were similar tasting. The iced coffee tasted a little more bitter than the cold-brewed, likely because of the heat added to the beans in the brewing process. The cold-brewed coffee was not as bitter, and you got a better sense of the flavor of the beans.

Iced coffee on the left, cold-brewed on the right. 

When I added milk to the cups is when the differences really shone bright. Like with the sugar I used a controlled amount of whole milk (one tablespoon per cup) so as to not influence the taste one way or another. The iced coffee tasted a little muddy with the milk added - no flavor really came through, and it felt like it needed some more sugar or another flavor to make the brew seem complete. Not so with the cold-brewed coffee. The addition of the milk added a definitive smoothness to the cup, and did not overpower the coffee flavor - which remained strong despite the addition of the milk.

Overall, the victor here was cold-brewed coffee. It takes more time - a good 10-12 hours to get the brew strong enough. But if you are willing to put the time in, your efforts will be handsomely rewarded. The beverage is sufficiently strong to wake you up, but does not need much enhancement to be delicious and smooth.