Cold Brew Equipment Guide

A Beginner's Guide to Making & Serving Cold Brew Coffee

Cold brew coffee is a premium drink that can command a premium price from a growing number of consumers. In fact, cold brew coffee sales shot up more than 100 percent between 2014 and 2015, thanks in large part to millennial spending.1 That demographic isn't going anywhere and cold brew's popularity continues to rise, so it can be a strong addition to any beverage menu. Whether you're opening a new coffee shop or simply want to expand the drink options at a restaurant or bar, this beginner's guide to cold brew will teach you everything you need to know about what it is, how to make it, and the cold brew equipment you might need to serve it.

Table of Contents

What is Cold Brew Coffee?

Cold brew coffee doesn't refer to its serving temperature, but to how it's brewed: by placing coarse coffee grounds in unheated water for several hours. Instead of pouring boiling hot water over ground coffee beans like in traditional brewing, cold brew coffee uses cold or room-temperature water to extract the essence of the coffee. Grounds being cold brewed should steep for more than 12 but less than 20 hours.2 Steeping the grounds slowly at a low temperature produces a smooth, low-acidity coffee concentrate that can be enjoyed plain or reconstituted with water, ice, milk, and other additives to create flavorful cold brew coffee drinks.

Cold Brew Coffee: Origin & History

Cold brew coffee can keep for weeks without spoiling, compared to hot brew that loses its appeal after a few hours. It makes sense that cold brew coffee first gained popularity in Japan in the 1600s as an import from Dutch sailors3 who used the method to have drinkable coffee on long sea voyages, reheating the coffee concentrate or serving it cold. The Japanese adapted those cold brew techniques to produce a slow-drip variant known as Kyoto coffee.

Several centuries later, modern versions of cold brew coffee have exploded in popularity and can be found prepackaged in cans, sold in convenience stores, or on the menu at restaurants, cafes and coffee shops, and brunch spots.

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Cold Brew vs. Regular Coffee

Cold brew coffee has no shortage of dedicated drinkers, but is it better than hot brew? Well, it depends on what "better" means to your customers, but cold brew coffee's differences from hot brewed coffee go beyond how it's made.

Cold Brew Benefits: Taste, Acidity, & More

Is cold brew less acidic? Yes! In fact, two cold brew coffee benefits fans of the drink most often comment on are its sweeter taste and lower acidity. Without the extreme heat of a hot brew, the more acidic chemical compounds in coffee aren't extracted and other flavors shine through. Proponents enjoy the fruity or nutty notes that can be extracted through the cold brew process, which are typically overshadowed by a hot brew's bitterness.

Cold brew has as much as 70 percent less acid content4 than hot drip or espresso coffee. The lower acidity makes cold brew coffee ideal for those with sensitive stomachs, acid reflux, and frequent heartburn. Acidic drinks can also stain or damage your teeth over time, but cold brew coffee's lower acidity can be a tooth-friendly alternative to traditional coffee.

Is cold brew stronger than regular coffee? This is a tricky question that depends on how the coffee is made. When measured per part of ground coffee bean, cold brew coffee typically extracts less caffeine; however, cold brew coffee usually uses more grounds than regular coffee. The dilution used with cold brew coffee determines how much caffeine is in each ounce of the final drink.

The finished cold brew coffee concentrate usually is packed with caffeine because of the total amount of grounds used in production, but if you mix this concentrate with water, as most drinkers prefer, the caffeine content is diluted. Overall, the cold brew process extracts less caffeine5 from the ground coffee beans than a hot brew process, but a cold brew drink may well have more caffeine than a cup of hot brew. Like traditional hot brew, cold brew coffee can be made with decaf beans to eliminate most of the caffeine content.

Is cold brew coffee healthier? Because cold brew coffee is sweeter and less acidic than regular coffee, most drinkers don't feel the need to add as much sugar or creamer to their beverage. The process of cold brewing is gentle and leaves some of the harshest parts of the coffee grounds behind.

For some coffee enthusiasts, it's not really coffee without the acidity and bitterness, but cold brew is a great way for drinkers who prefer a smoother taste to have coffee without added calories from sweeteners.

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Adding Cold Brew Coffee to Your Beverage Menu

Customers see cold brew as a premium drink and are willing to pay a little more per cup for cold brew vs regular coffee – or even traditional iced coffee, which has been a go-to cold coffee beverage for customers – so coffee connoisseurs and restaurateurs alike are interested in adding cold brew to their menus.

KaTom offers cold brew systems to help businesses begin serving cold brew coffee, from draft dispensers capable of making nitro cold brew to simple countertop options; you'll also find commercial coffee grinders that can grind large batches of beans.

How to Make Cold Brew Coffee

Every aspect of this process – from the beans you use to how long your grounds steep – can be customized to produce the brew you like best. Our suggestions are below, but we recommend experimenting to find the product you, and your customers, like best.

  1. First, acquire your favorite whole coffee beans.
  2. Coarsely grind the beans using a conical burr grinder.
  3. Combine the grounds with filtered water. You should use 1 ounce of grounds for each cup of water (or, for larger batches, 1 pound of grounds for each gallon of water).
  4. Stir the water and grounds to ensure saturation. All the grounds must be wetted before steeping.
  5. Cover the steeping coffee tightly and let it sit in the fridge for around 16 hours.
  6. Filter the grounds with a fine mesh strainer, cheesecloth, or coffee filter. If using coffee filters, start out using more than one at a time, as the higher concentration of grounds in cold brew can tear the filter and make a mess.
  7. Take your cold brew concentrate and store it in an airtight container. When refrigerated, cold brew concentrate can last for a week or longer.
  8. Use your fresh concentrate to make iced coffee. The concentrate can be poured over ice and mixed with an equal amount of water to create a simple iced coffee, but there are thousands of recipes out there for making cold brew mixes. You can start with the cold brew coffee recipe below, courtesy of our friends at Service Ideas.6

Cold Brew Recipe Courtesy of Service Ideas

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  1. Cold Brew: The Beverage That Attracts Millennials. FSR Magazine. Accessed April 2021.
  2. Cold Brewing FAQs. Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Accessed April 2021.
  3. Coffee: How Cold Brew Became the Hot New Thing. The Guardian. Accessed April 2021.
  4. 9 Impressive Benefits of Cold-Brew Coffee. Healthline. Accessed February 2024.
  5. Does Cold Brew Coffee Contain More Caffeine Than Hot Coffee? Huffington Post. Accessed April 2021.
  6. Spice It Up! Creative Cold Brew Recipes. Service Ideas. Accessed April 2021.