How To Get Great Tasting Cold Coffee Mason Jar Brew For Hot Summer Days

Summer is well on its way now, and soon it will be blazing hot outside. It’s time to put away the kettles and teapots…. and bring out the cold brew filters for mason jar cold brew coffee!

If you don’t know what cold brew coffee is, it is a cool and refreshing drink for summer. Chilled and deliciously smooth, cold coffee drinks are the number one go-to when the temperatures start to rise. Cold brew coffee is very different from traditional filter hot coffee. More than just a temperature difference, it is less acidic and tastes sweeter.

Top 5 Reasons for Cold Brew Coffee

1. Easy to make – first and most important!
2. More affordable – buying from a coffee shop everyday adds up
3. Made-ahead – one less thing to do on busy mornings
4. Great taste - smooth, slightly sweet and super refreshing
5. Cold can be hot – can heat up to hot coffee easily

If you crave not just good iced coffee this summer but the BEST iced coffee, then there’s only one solution: homemade cold brew coffee. This method guarantees a smooth and icy cup, every time. Ditch the overly bitter, watery tasting, not worth your time iced coffee.

Making your own cold brew coffee right at home is no great secret and it doesn’t require the ninja-level skills of a trained barista. You can absolutely master the techniques for high-quality cold coffee. You don’t even need a lot of special equipment beyond a few simple items.

As we mentioned in reason number 5, you can serve the cold brew cold or hot. Obviously, it’s super simple to make iced coffee — just add cold water and ice to the concentrate. For hot coffee, you simply boil water and add it to your cold brew concentrate. It can also be heated in the microwave if you’re in a rush.

BUT!!! If you want to become a self-proclaimed cold brew aficionado, keep reading!

Make Cold Brew At Home In Mason Jars

Now that you’ve got your mind set on homemade cold brew coffee, you’ll need to get yourself the simple basics tools:

• 2 quarts (64 ounces) or 1 quart (32 ounces) mason jar
• cold brew filter

Yes, that’s it!

Of course, you need coffee…but for the actual tools, that’s it!

You will want to get yourself a dishwasher safe, reusable, stainless steel cold brew filter made for mason jars. It is important your filter is top notch, as you will be using it all summer long and you only want top quality for your iced coffee.

Basic Cold Brew Coffee How-To in 3 Easy Steps

Here’s the deal: this ratio is flexible. What you are making is a cold brew concentrate, and you can dilute the concentrate to suit your taste once it’s finished.

1. Use 1 to 1 and a half cups of coarsely ground coffee beans. Pour the grounds into your wide mouth mason jar and fill it halfway with cold or room temperature filtered water. Gently stir the mixture to wet all the grounds and then fill the jar the rest of the way with water.
2. Put the lid on the mason jar and place your coffee mixture in the refrigerator. Allow the coffee to steep for 12 to 24 hours (times will vary). The longer it steeps, the stronger your coffee will be. 
3. After the 12 to 24 hours steeping time, simply remove the cone-shaped strainer filter. And, pour the cold coffee mixture into your coffee cup!  The filter is easy to wash and easy to store for your next cold brew. 

Homebrewed iced coffee made this way may be stronger than you are used to. Try it straight and then dilute the coffee to your liking. To brew a really strong cup of iced coffee, you will need about a 1:4 ratio of coffee grounds to filtered water. To compare, regular hot coffee calls for a 1:16 ratio, but iced coffee is stronger – because it’s better! You can definitely drink your freshly brewed coffee straight up or you can add some nice cold milk. Try a 1:4 ratio of coffee to milk. 

You will NOT be disappointed as it is refreshing and tastes incredibly delicious. The resulting cold brew is silky smooth and full bodied, which allows for the rich chocolate notes of the coffee to come through even with the addition of milk.

Tips For Success

• Don’t over grind your beans: make sure your beans are coarsely ground. You may think you need to grind the beans to a sandy power to make the brew, but just like for drip coffee, if ground too finely, it can result in an over-infused coffee and make the strained coffee gritty and muddy. Your beans should look like coarse cornmeal, or even slightly rougher.
• Use filtered water: while this is certainly not necessary, it is just good coffee practice in general. Your coffee will have a cleaner, sweeter flavor if you use filtered water to make it.
• Steep for at least 12 hours: the coffee needs time to fully infuse the water. Straining too early can give you a weaker cup of coffee. On the flipside, you need to be careful of over-steeping, which can start to extract some of the bitter flavors that we are avoiding by homebrewing. The steeping time is flexible. Suggested time is between 12 and 24 hours. With some experimentation, you will find what flavour you are looking for!
• Use high-end tools: luckily, you don’t need many. A wide mouthed mason jar and a cold brew filter is all you need. The best mason jar cold brew filter bang for your buck is the stainless-steel reusable filter. You want it easy to wash and easy to store.

Not Just for Cold Brew

The cold brew filter is multi-purpose. As much as we all love coffee, we all love variety as well! The best part of our reusable filter is that it can also be used for making sun tea. Simply fill the filter with loose tea or tea bags and let it sit out in the summer for 3 to 5 hours. Move the container if necessary, to keep it in direct sunlight.

Or, do you want to infuse your water with fruits? Again, simply fill the filter with fruit and let it sit at room temperature for 1-2 hours or for 3-5 hours in the refrigerator. The recipes are very simple – try orange, lemon, cucumber, lime, and strawberries, or watermelon, pineapple, mango, coconut, and kiwi.  Delicious.

Get What You Need for Homebrewing Today 

At Brewing America, we can help you take your home brewing cold coffee game to a whole new level! We only offer the highest of quality products as we take pride in manufacturing and sourcing almost all of our products in the USA. Best of all…. we even offer free shipping within the USA.

We offer a few more items for your DIY cold brew coffee making. Shop our full store to check out the mason jar lids–they are leak proof with a flip cap pouring spout! Summer is approaching, so don’t wait as quantities quickly sell out!

Check out or recipe guide here - Brewing America Cold Brew Coffee Guide