Way back in October, I published the groundbreaking Drink Water – a post that changed the travel blogging landscape forever. I suggested then that cutting back just $2-3 every day on soft drinks, coffee and other beverages could save you over $700 per year. $700 you could be investing in an ING account to fund your drinking habit or feed your Russian nesting doll collection on your RTW journey.
Vagabondish is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read our disclosure.
In an effort to practice what I preach and constantly prune any unnecessary daily expenses, I’ve severed my Starbucks umbilical cord in favor of brewing coffee at home. I had been using a traditional drip-style coffee maker, hot brewing the coffee, and then refrigerating it. It’s pretty darn good, but I stumbled upon this cold brewed iced coffee recipe from a native New Orleanser … New Orleansite? Whatever. He’s from New Orleans – a place with a heavy French influence, where coffee is serious business. So I figured: why not give it a shot? I tweaked his recipe a bit to suit my tastes:
What You’ll Need
- 12oz. bag dark roast coffee, coarse ground (I used Seattle’s Best French Roast, but any dark roast will do)
- 10 cups water
Now What?
- Add entire bag of coffee to large plastic pitcher or container, preferably with a spout and handle.
- Add 4 cups of water and let steep for 5 minutes.
- Add remaining 6 cups of water
- Stir until well blended.
- Cover and refrigerate overnight or up to 24 hours
- Pour this cold concoction into a separate pitcher using a cheese cloth or copper coffee filter to remove all of the coffee grounds. This part can be a bit slow and tricky as the thick coffee mixture is slow to give up the steeped water it’s absorped. The link above calls for a toddy coffee maker, which I don’t have so I improvised.
What you’re left with is a kind of coffee “concentrate”. To serve your iced coffee:
- Fill a glass with ice
- Fill 1/3 of the glass with the above coffee concentrate
- Fill the remainder of the glass with milk leaving just a bit of room at the top
- Top it off with a splash of half-and-half
- Add sugar to taste
- Stir well
After a couple weeks of refining the preparation, I’m really enjoying it. I’m not missing my daily $3.84 Starbucks brew all that much anymore. It’s the closest thing to an iced latte I can make at home. Somewhere an Italian is reading that last sentence, openly weeping and crying “Il heretic!”. My apologies to him.
Tune in next week for Mike’s Famous Fat-free Macadamia Scones recipe!
And thanks to Ray at Metroblogging for this recipe!