So, I realize that cold brewing is kind of passé, or whatever. And I realize that this was a cool experiment to run maybe 2 years ago when all the best Jesses in coffee were doing it. But I’m finally trying out cold brewing and wanted to do it out with a hot – nay, hott – bloom.

I did two 12 hour brews, in mason jars. Both were brewed with 30 grams of coffee and 500 grams of water. The coffee was ground pretty coarse with this thing:

And it fits right on the mason jars that I wanted to brew in!

The only difference between the two brews was that I did a bloom with hot – nay, hott – water in one of them (about 80g of water, which counted toward the ultimate 500).

After they sat for 12 hours in the fridge, I strained through a paper filter in the nearest drip brewer I had around, a Clever:

results
I am admittedly a total noob to cold brewing, but both brews tasted weaker to me than other cold brewed coffee I’ve had. I’d like to follow up soon with some experimentation changing various variables with the goal of creating a stronger brew – and hopefully one that is tasty. Post to come.

In the meantime, the hot bloom was bitter, dry, and weak. The regular ol’ cold brew was honey-sweet, and even weaker. The hot bloom clearly pushed the extraction along, but not necessarily in a great way with this particular recipe.

I’ve got a lot to learn still. I’ll be posting more about cold brewing soon as we (maybe) look forward to some warmer weather in Boston.