BEVERAGES ON THE BRAIN.

At least this post isn't about food......but it's the next door neighbor.

I like coffee. I don't drink very much coffee during the week because my SweetiePie won't eat breakfast at home. He likes to go up to his favorite hangout for breakfast and since he's not out chasing women or at a bar, I don't have a problem with his breakfast vice. If I drink too much coffee it kinda upsets my stomach and so I usually drink tea most mornings.

I read over on Apron Thrift Girl's blog about cold filtered coffee. After some more research I decided to try the cold brewed process.Of course I had to find a cheap, recycled way to do this.

This process makes a cold process concentrated liquid that you store in the fridge and reheat as much as you want when you want. I found online instructions using  recycled items to make a simple brewing system.

I had two large styrofoam cups from fast food and customized them for the cold filter system. Save the two lids from both cups. One stays whole and one has a circle cut out of the center to fit the bottom of the cup. You'll see why in later pics. The lid on the left has had the center cut out. The cup on the left has lots of  small holes punched in the bottom to allow the water to drain out. Not so many so the bottom tears out, but just enough to let the water drain.

Now stack your two cups together, the one with the holes inside the unaltered one. Add your coffee of choice. I used one cup of a Colombian blend coffee.  Keep in mind that you are making a concentrate and you need lots of coffee to make a strong brew. In hindsight I should have used more coffee, about 1 1/2 cups because my brew is a little weak. Next time I'll use more.  Now add water. I just used plain tap water. You could use distilled or spring water, but I don't buy bottled water because it is just water with a name.Make sure your cups are securely stacked together. Fill your top cup with water.

Pop the unaltered lid on top.

Now put you cups in a place where they won't be disturbed. I got paranoid about the coffee leaking out where the two cups were stacked and I put the cups in a bowl. The only coffee that I spilled was when I picked the cup up to put in the bowl....go figure.

Now, comes the hard part. Wait.....wait.....wait.....about 24 hours to let your coffee "brew". You can put it in the fridge, but I didn't and had no problems.
The next day you can separate the two cups. Now is where the lid you cut the hole in is handy.

Separate the two cups and let the water drain into the bottom cup.

After the drain of coffee slows down, slip the lid with the hole over the bottom cup and let the cup on top drain into the bottom.

Now in theory this works great. I guess I had too much water and the top cup ended up sitting in the water/coffee and didn't finish draining. The hole was too big. I dug around in my junk drawer and found this handy dandy little veggie can drainer from the $tore and used that instead.

This worked better than the lid that I cut too big a hole in.

Yeah...you are almost done. Remove the top cup that should have about 90% of the grounds and dump them out. You can rinse your cup out and reuse if you want to make another batch. Recycle...and...Reuse. The bottom cup has you coffee concentrate. There may be a little sludge in the bottom that you don't want to transfer to your storage bottles.You need to transfer it to a jar or something that you can easily store in the fridge. I had these two really cute penguin bottles sitting around and I used them. My batch made about 1 3/4 penguin.About 20 ozs.

Aren't they cute?

Stash these in the fridge, they don't mind the cold.

To make my cup of coffee I used 1/4 cup of concentrate (heated in the coffee cup in the microwave) and finished filling  the cup with hot water from my kettle. I used a regular sized mug for my initial mixture to guage the correct amount of concentrate to use.

This method of cold brewing makes a really good cup of coffee with no bitter, acid taste at all and didn't upset my stomach either. I don't think I would make coffee this way all of the time, but it is convenient when you just want one cup and don't want an upset stomach.The concentrate keeps in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Now sit back and enjoy a cup of coffee and maybe a muffin....or two.