After mistakenly buying a large bag of ground coffee, i decided to learn the cold brew process. in the same way that pickleball is similar to badminton, cold steeping resembles espresso and pour over coffee. even though there are obvious differences, some things never change.
Grind
grind size usually affects extraction, but it has no effect here. on the other hand, it always affects filtration and i get very different results without reconfiguring my grinder (Orphan Espresso Lido 2).
for various reasons, i steep in a medium saucepan. first, i add crumbled star anise (because i own too much of it). then, i grind coffee directly into the saucepan.
Pour
i pour water around the perimeter of the saucepan to prevent ground coffee from floating there. then, i agitate the saucepan to submerge the island of coffee. i pour the last bit of water on the froth.
Filter
i filter my coffee more than usual, because my teeth are stain-prone. i also try to maximize yield, so the journey from the saucepan to my glass storage bottle is complicated.
while stainless pour-over filters were cheap, i bought one even though i didn't think it would work well. i wanted to be certain and guessed it would have other uses. it works quite well here, so it's my primary filter. i put it on a Hario flask, and pour the liquid into it.
after pouring almost all of the liquid, i lay the saucepan in my dish rack at an angle. if the beans were ground correctly, the grounds do not shift and liquid flows across the bottom of the saucepan to the other side. on a good day, this flow is invisible.
the second filter is paper, so i pour the insignificant amount of murky liquid in the stainless filter into a small saucepan. i also add the coffee in my storage bottle, because sediment seems to accumulate in it otherwise. then, i empty the glass flask into this saucepan.
there's no reason to use a good paper filter here, so i use a generic, bleached #2 filter in a ceramic holder. cold brew flows into the flask until the filter clogs. when there's enough room in the filter for the small amount of murky liquid in the medium saucepan, i pour that into the small saucepan before filtering it.
if the grind size is perfect, the grounds do not move while emptying the medium saucepan, but sometimes that mass disintegrates. pouring into the small saucepan avoids the worst-case scenario.
if the paper filter refuses to drain in a reasonable amount of time, i put its holder on a small glass measuring cup and refrigerate them. then, i pour the contents of the flask into the glass bottle.
in addition to minimizing drying time, maximizing yield respects the effort people made to produce my coffee beans.
Dry
strange as it may seem to those who reflexively advocate composting coffee grounds, this isn't always practical. coffee grounds are a large part of my garbage, and garbage that contains a lot of damp coffee grounds can become unpleasant.
first, i put the stainless filter in the medium saucepan and place them on top of my refrigerator. a day later, i knock the dried grounds out of the filter, rap the side of the saucepan to aerate the damp grounds, and bounce clumps off the bottom.
when the grounds are completely dry, i dump them, rinse the saucepan, and make coffee again.
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