We are pretty serious about coffee around here. You may have gleaned that from the fact that fully one fifth of our kitchen is devoted to it. We like our coffee like we like our spouses: hot. Except May through October, when I find the idea of hot coffee as repulsive - nay, impossible - as putting on close-toed shoes. (Does the hot like our spouses thing even work? It's late over here. Sorry).

Anyway, we've been cold-brewing our own coffee for a while now. We actually do a cheater version, using our French press. We measure our coffee into the bottom of a large French press, pour cold water over it, stir, and let sit for 8 hours. In the morning, we press with the French press plunger. No straining, no muss, no fuss. It makes a perfectly serviceable cold coffee.

But at a friend's home recently, I spied something called coffee concentrate. I'd never heard of it, so I went home and did some Googling, and it turns out it's a thing. Bon Appetit had a recipe, and not being one to shy away from pouring water over beans, I decided to give it a try. The main difference between coffee concentrate and regular cold brew coffee is, as you may have surmised, the ratio of coffee to water.

When we make regular coffee, we use about 4 ounces (8 tablespoons) of coffee per 7 cups of water. The coffee concentrate calls for 12 ounces -- the whole bag in many cases -- of coffee per 7 cups of water. That's a lot of coffee.

The other big difference is a second filtering rather than cold brew's one and only. I was curious about whether this second filtering would be a total pain, and if it was, whether the resulting coffee concentrate would be good enough to outweigh the hassle.

Preliminary results: Yes. Yes. Yes. Coffee concentrate is fantastic. It is smooth and mellow and strong. It's intense and makes a fantastic morning drink when you mix it, about 1:1, with the milk of your choice. I thought both 2% cow's milk and almond milk, with a splash of simple syrup, were amazing. Curious?

Make Your Own Coffee Concentrate

(Recipe from Bon Appetit)

Ingredients

12 oz coffee (Bon Appetit specifies coarse ground, but we just use our favorite finely ground espresso roast)
7 cups filtered water

Directions

Place ground coffee in a large container. Gradually add 7 cups cold water. Stir gently to be sure all grounds are moistened. Cover with a layer of cheesecloth. Let stand at room temperature for 15 hours.
Remove cheesecloth and use it to line a fine-mesh sieve set over a large pitcher. Pour coffee through sieve into pitcher (do not stir). Discard cheesecloth with solids.
Line same sieve with a large coffee filter (or several filters) and set over large-mouthed pitcher, jar or bowl. Strain coffee through sieve into container. (It may take up to 45 minutes for all of the coffee to drip through.) Cover and chill. Coffee concentrate can be made 2 weeks ahead. Keep chilled.
Fill a glass with ice. Dilute 1 part coffee concentrate with 1 part milk, if desired, or water.

So here's where I'd normally tell you that this is easy, and you should make it. And you should -- at least for company or a special occasion sometime. It's truly delicious. But should you make it your everyday brew?

Fifteen hours is a long time, and no one has 45 minutes for double filtering in the morning (though it's never taken us that long), so how do you work around that if this is your bev of choice? What about cost? At a bag per batch of concentrate, it does seem pricey. And of course there's question of how it stacks up. Even though we were sure the results blew away the sort of half-a**ed take on cold brew we'd been making at home, we weren't sure how it would fare against stiff competition. Is the coffee concentrate we made better than the coffee concentrate fave on the market? And how did it stack up to a locally popular cold brew, which is actually concentrated on tap and diluted (with water, not milk) at local coffee houses?

Clearly, more research was in order. Luckily, we were just the two intestigatory journalists to undertake the task. We did a little coffee taste test, and we'll share the results next week!

Thanks for stopping by!