Best coffee for cold brew: what to look for and our pick

The best coffee for cold brew is a medium roast with low acidity, heavy body and chocolate in the notes, ground coarse, and roasted recently enough that it still smells like something when you open the bag. Origin matters less than people think; process and roast matter more. Our pick from our own ten is No. 6 Hegemony, a pulped natural Brazil, and the recipe below is the one we use with it.

What to look for on the bag

Roast: medium, not dark

Cold water extracts slowly and pulls less acidity than hot water, so cold brew is already smooth by default. A dark roast on top of that tends to taste like ash after a 16-hour steep. A medium roast keeps the sweetness and the chocolate without the burnt edge. Medium-light roasts can work too, but they can taste thin cold; save those for flash-brewed iced coffee.

Process: pulped natural or natural

Coffees dried with some of the fruit still on (pulped natural, honey, natural) have more body and sweetness, and both survive the cold steep. Fully washed coffees are cleaner and brighter, which is great hot and a little polite cold. Not a rule, just a lean.

Notes: chocolate, nuts, caramel

Whatever the label says is what you will taste more of in cold brew, because the steep concentrates sweetness and body and mutes brightness. Cocoa, caramel and "smooth" are good words to see. Citrus and floral are words to save for hot pour-over.

Freshness

Cold brew is forgiving, but stale coffee makes a flat, papery concentrate no matter how long you steep it. Coffee that was roasted after you ordered it, in a bag with a valve, will make a noticeably sweeter pitcher than a can that sat on a shelf.

The recipe (1:8 concentrate, overnight)

1. Grind coarse. If your grinder has a French press setting, go one step coarser than that.
2. Combine coffee and water in a jar or a French press. Stir until every ground is wet.
3. Cover and steep. In the fridge it is slower and cleaner; on the counter it is faster and a bit heavier.
4. Filter through a paper filter set in a strainer, or press slowly if you used a French press, then pour through paper once.
5. Keep the concentrate covered in the fridge. It is best in the first four days and fine for a week.

To serve: half concentrate, half cold water or milk, over ice. For a stronger glass, two parts concentrate to one part water. A 12 oz bag makes roughly three of these batches, which is about 18 to 20 tall glasses.

Our three, ranked for cold brew

No. 6 Hegemony (Brazil). Pulped natural, medium roast, cocoa and smooth on the label, grown low at 750 to 1,050 m, which means low acidity and heavy body. This is the pitcher everyone in the house drinks. The pick.

No. 1 Common Sense (Colombia). Fully washed, medium, cocoa, red apple, brown sugar. Cleaner and a little brighter than the Brazil; the red apple survives the steep as a faint tang that some people prefer. A very good second choice, and the better choice if you drink it black without milk.

No. 10 Folklore (Peru). Fully washed, medium, salted caramel, citrus, silky. Mild and round, makes a lighter concentrate. Best if you mostly mix cold brew with milk and want the caramel to come through.

Whole bean or ground?

Whole bean, ground coarse right before the steep, makes the cleanest concentrate. If you do not have a grinder, the ground version is a drip grind: steep it 12 hours instead of 16 and filter twice through paper. It will be a touch cloudier and still better than most bottled cold brew. If cold brew is your summer default, the every-two-weeks subscription lines up with roughly one pitcher a week, and all ten coffees ship free anywhere in the US.

Coarse grind, 1:8, overnight, paper filter. The coffee does the rest.