Manhattan Roasts

How to Make Cold Brewed Iced Coffee

Manhattan Roaster — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:51:53 +0000

Summer’s almost here in NYC so it seemed like a perfect time to write a how-to on one of my favorite summer drinks – cold brewed iced coffee! What is cold brewed iced coffee? Well, it’s iced coffee “brewed” by sitting in cold water for an extended period of time, rather than brewed quickly with hot water. Cold brewing your coffee will extract all the natural flavors of the coffee bean without the bitterness you normally get with hot brewed coffee.

This being Manhattan Roasts, a place where we do nothing half-assed, I decided to start with some green coffee beans (from Roasting Plant in NYC) and ended with a delicious glass of fresh cold brewed iced coffee!

Green coffee in the bag:

Roasting the green coffee in my Behmor drum roaster:

Wait ~24hrs for the roasted coffee to be ready for consumption, then grind it up in my Baratza Virtuoso grinder (affiliate link). I used a medium-coarse grind just finer than what I would use for a french press:

Next, the actual steps for cold brewing iced coffee!

What you need:

- Pitcher
- Coffee filter
- 18T ground coffee
- 4-5 cups of water (filtered is best, just like normal coffee!)
- Second container for straining
- A long spoon

How to do it:

1. Pour the ground coffee into the pitcher.
2. Pour the 4-5 cups of (filtered) water into the pitcher.
3. Stir briskly and make sure all the coffee is mixed in.
4. Let the coffee sit in the fridge. I prefer 12-24hrs, but a few hours is fine.
5. Pour the coffee through the coffee filter into your second container.
6. Add a little extra water to taste (your pure iced coffee may be very strong!)
7. ENJOY!

Extras:

You can filter one glass at a time if you like:

Or if you want to get really fancy why not use your original Chemex Coffee Maker (affiliate link) to filter?!

Coffee Plant Update

Manhattan Roaster — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:06:42 +0000

Just a short update on my experiment to grow coffee plants in a New York City apartment. Both plants are thriving! We’ve had some bug issues, but nothing catastrophic. One plant is a little crooked and not growing as tall, but growing VERY bushy. The other is growing nice and tall, but I need to work on the bushy-ness. Picture of the taller one below!

Survey on Carbonated Iced Coffee

Manhattan Roaster — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:29:46 +0000

We’re working on something cool here at ManhattanRoasts and would love it if you would check out our survey below to help us out. . . . → Read More: Survey on Carbonated Iced Coffee

Coffee Consumption Around the World

Manhattan Roaster — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:56:14 +0000

This is a pretty incredible graphic on coffee consumption across the world.

http://chartsbin.com/view/581

It is pretty amazing that the African countries that produce a large amount of the world’s coffee are some of the lowest consumers. Also amazing that US coffee consumption is so much lower than the Scandanavian countries, Switzerland and even Canada! Anecdotally I would think this is because of the exceptional amount of soda we drink, but wow… Imagine if you could create a company that would close the gap between the US and Canada (approximately 2.3kg of coffee per person per year…)

Thanks to Seb Roder for passing this along . . . → Read More: Coffee Consumption Around the World

Orouba Coffee

Manhattan Roaster — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 15:08:50 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of trying a new kind of coffee for me, an Egyptian. Now, this was not just “an Egyptian coffee”, like you would get a "Kenyan" at Starbucks (stay tuned for a Kenyan "from Kenya" post soon!) it was an Egyptian coffee that was “exported” from Egypt straight into my hands (well, with a few non-commercial handlers along the way – thank you Seb and Seb's co-worker!). The coffee had two interesting features, its taste and its consistency. First, on the taste - this is a very dark roast that reminds me of an illy espresso. It is deep and full, with an aftertaste that coats the back of your throat up into your nose. There is no getting around the aroma of this coffee! Some of the Orouba coffees come with a hint of cardamon, but I was relegated to just the regular (yet still delicious and high-octane) version. A little cardamon would add a great flavor to this dark roast though... Maybe next time I will just add my own. The consistency of this coffee, however, is unlike any western one. The beans came pre-ground, which I usually dislike (for freshness reasons), but in this case it forced me to drink the coffee how it is intended. The grind is incredibly fine, so fine in fact that it will clog my Rancilio if I try to make an espresso, so the options are to make it as a traditional Turkish coffee or to prepare it in my french press. Being a lover of the french press (and a complete novice at Turkish) I chose the press, knowing that the mesh would likely not be fine enough to strain out any but the largest grinds. This gave me a thick, toothsome cup of coffee that is almost a meal unto itself. This, my friends, is the Guinness of coffees. . . . → Read More: Orouba Coffee

Growing Coffee Plants

Manhattan Roaster — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:16:07 +0000

We are very excited for something a little different over here at ManhattanRoasts! Over the past couple years we have provided you with coffee news roasting information and coffee reviews, but now we are going to add something a little different to the mix. We have procured 2 coffee plants (these little guys are about 18 months old) and are going to take a crack at growing to see what kind of bean we can get! Without further ado, here they are! We have already shown how you can roast your own coffee out of a Manhattan apartment and now we look forward to sharing all of our new York City coffee growing trials and tribulations with you. Hopefully you look forward to following our progress as we attempt to cover everything coffee from earth to cup. . . . → Read More: Growing Coffee Plants

The First Cupping

Manhattan Roaster — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:39:48 +0000

After a couple days of furious roasting we decided it was finally time to try all the new coffees and roasts. To pit them in a battle head to head, mano a mano, roast to roast! Well… nothing THAT exciting, but we did break out 3 different kinds of coffee, 4 different roasts, and one kind of weird concoction.

From left to right we have: Bali Kintamani, Ethiopa Yirga Cheffe Kochere, Brazil Cerrado (roasted to just past second crack), Brazil Cerrado (roasted just past first crack).

I will go into a little more detail on performing a cupping in a later post, but for now… the coffee!

From worst to best:

Brazil Cerrado (dark): This coffee was just roasted way to dark for a cupping (which should normally be done early in first crack). Rather than tasting the origin of the bean, instead we mostly got the taste of the roast. More on the Brazil Cerrado to come. (Note: I later found out that because the Brazil Cerrado is not a very dense bean, at a dark roast it will pick up an ashy flavor VERY easily. If you want to roast this bean dark, you should stop it immediately after second crack.)

Bali Kintamani: The Bali was as-expected, a nice floral aroma, though not terribly sweet. As I mentioned in my first post on the bean my roast was extremely light, which contributed to a strong “jute” taste, which really shone through in the cupping process. Not something you want to shine through… Letting the roast go for another 20 seconds should really help this coffee blossom.

Brazil Cerrado (light): The Brazil Cerrado light roast was a very subtle nutty flavor. As a cupping coffee it was decent, but at this light roast its flavors would make an incredible espresso.

Ethiopa Yirga Cheffe: The Ethiopian coffee definitely won this home cupping competition. With an incredibly light, but powerful sweet, fruity taste, this coffee makes you want to pour a small cup to slowly bask in while forgetting about the world around you.

Bonus: The one weird “roast” we tried was the Ethiopian with a touch of salt ground in. While the salt smoothed the coffee out (removing all bitterness), it also dulled the sweetness. I think there might be a level at which salt could help the coffee (perhaps a grain?), but our experiment was a failed one.

Bali Kintamani

Manhattan Roaster — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:59:22 +0000

First roast with the Behmor was a Bali Kintamani. Roasted a little light for the suggested roast on it (full city plus) so didn't bring out as deep a flavor as I should have, but it was very bright and very fruity nonetheless. Looks delicious... And became. . . . → Read More: Bali Kintamani

Roasting: 21st Century Style!

Manhattan Roaster — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 02:44:46 +0000

. . . → Read More: Roasting: 21st Century Style!

ManhattanRoasts is Back?

Manhattan Roaster — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 18:07:23 +0000

I know I know, the absence has been shameful. Well, we’re back! Kind of…

We’re going to be trying a couple new things in the land of ManhattanRoasts over the next little while. The first is a new roaster! Now that we have moved and no longer have a balcony, stovetop roasting is a little more difficult as there is nowhere to cool the coffee and get rid of the chaff (a balcony on a high floor is AMAZING for both). So, we had to find an alternative method of roasting.

We’ve used the i-Roast before (the latest model, not the old one, which was apparently crap) and really liked it (even though it was little more than a glorified popcorn maker with heat profiles), but alas they are out of stock and have no plans to produce / release more in the near future. Bummer.

So that brings me here. Soon we will be welcoming into the ManhattanRoasts household a brand new Behmor 1600! Check it out here. Should arrive in the next couple days!

The second piece of excitement, well… I don’t want to spoil it yet, but suffice it to say… it’s aallliiiiiveeee!