Cold Brew Coffee

 

Cold Brew Coffee: Does Modern Times Know More Than Ancient Times?

 
I would say yes. We have an incredibly advanced technological advance compared to 200 years ago. Equipment, advanced research, discoveries. We could almost say that our ancestors had nothing compared to us!
And yet, you will discover that almost two centuries ago, without our tools today, these enthusiasts knew perfectly well what they were talking about!
 
Originally, cold brew coffee was intended to be drunk hot.
Today, it is called Cold Brew everywhere and is drunk cold, or even iced. And a multitude of recipes can be derived from it.
A search on the internet will often show you this:
Cold brew has indeed become very trendy in France and Europe in recent years. This method was invented in the United States in the 1960s by Todd Simpson.
I must admit that this description, appearing first in my search results (it may be different for you), leaves me wanting more. And the rest will show that the shortest path is not always the best.
On the site
https://www.brewnbottle.com/blogs/the-brew-blog/the-cold-brew-revolution
We can read this:
54 Years of Cold Brew Coffee Toddy Simpson was a creative entrepreneur who seemed to have a stream of new business ideas constantly brewing in his mind. As his son, I looked up to him figuratively and literally - he was a grand man at six and a half feet tall. Even though he was busy, he loved to sit and visit with anyone who would enjoy a hot cup of coffee with him.
Unfortunately, his wife Betty was not able to enjoy this coffee ritual without her stomach becoming irritated. My father started to pursue a smoother, less acidic cup of coffee using skills he learned from Cornell’s College of Chemical Engineering.
He discovered that brewing at high temperatures extracts a large percentage of undesirable acids and oils which led him to start experimenting with cold brew. He found that cold brewing produced a cup of joe that had 66% less acid and oil than the hot brew alternative. In 1964, he launched a coffee revolution with his patent of the first cold brew coffee maker.
Some Like It Hot
Cold brew coffee is naturally a delightful iced beverage, but it was originally created to be enjoyed hot. Unlike a traditional cup of coffee that becomes undrinkable at room temperature, cold brew remains ultra smooth as it cools. This advantage of cold brew particularly appeals to today’s busy coffee aficionados who want a hot cup in the morning but don’t have the time to finish it before it reaches room temperature.
I have been involved in many extensive tests comparing cold-brewed hot coffee to hot-brewed hot coffee, and the results are clear: cold-brewed hot coffee overwhelmingly comes out on top. In a 2013 McDonald’s focus group test, 84% of the consumers preferred the cold brew served hot rather than traditional hot coffee.
Since cold brew has less oil and acid, it is much easier to distinguish the attributes of single-origin coffees such as a Guatemalan (nutty and chocolate notes) or Ethiopian (blueberry or other fruity flavors). What’s the use of paying more for high-quality coffee if you won’t be able to taste the subtle characteristics that make it special?
Brewing New Ventures
My parents transformed their garage into a workspace and individually assembled and packaged every cold brew coffee maker before hand-delivering it to the post office. In the ‘70s and early ‘80s, there were very few coffee shops, and the majority of the cold brewers were sold through kitchen and hardware stores.
In 1987, my wife Maryfrances and I took on the family business. We rebranded the packaging and started promoting the cold brewing method as a way to make delicious iced coffee beverages at home or in gourmet kitchens. We traveled the country pitching cold-brewed ice lattes at specialty food shows. If we could get someone to taste our cold brew, we made the sale!
Iced coffee beverages were still an odd concept to most people back then. Slowly but surely, folks caught on. In the late 1980s, we added a small chain called Starbucks (perhaps you’ve heard of it?) to our customer list. Many coffee shops and chains soon started buying our cold brewer to produce their signature iced coffee drinks behind the counter.
In 1988, we started producing cold-brewed coffee and tea concentrates so that companies could make their own unique beverages quickly without having to utilize a cold brewing system. Before we ultimately sold the company, we developed and produced concentrates for major chains such as Seattle’s Best, Peet’s, Honest Tea, Arizona, Caribou Coffee, and many others.
In 2015, I started a new cold brew adventure. My developmental company, Brew N Bottle, formed an alliance with a large, SQF-certified manufacturing facility to produce custom cold brew coffee and tea products that taste as if they were brewed fresh at a local coffee shop. Many beverages on the market deteriorate very quickly and become sour. Our revolutionary process slows down the pH drift that is common in many of the products that are on the shelf today. Our facility has the ability to fill totes or drums with bulk concentrates as well as plastic and glass bottles, bag in box, for ready to drink beverages.
Several decades ago, cold brew coffee existed exclusively to be served hot. I’m not sure my father could have imagined that people would be flocking to coffee shops for cold brew in dozens of forms, including ready-to-drink cans, iced lattes, and the latest nitrogen-infused cold brew served from a tap. It has been quite the journey, and I am looking forward to what is on the horizon for the cold brew revolution.

There you have it, the story is beautiful, and congratulations to them for the work done over all these decades. But we must still continue the story, you will see that it is quite surprising.
 
Here we learn a little bit about cold brew coffee that the Dutch and Japanese were drinking in the 1600s:
https://www.gusdeancoffee.com/post/history-of-cold-brew
History of Cold Brew Coffee
The origin of the cold brew is not known. Dutch sailors in the 1600s were the first documented consumers of cold brew.  Coffee was cold brewed on board the ships to make a concentrate that could last the length of a long voyage.
It is speculated that the Dutch traders introduced cold brew to the Japanese who refined the process by developing the Kyoto-style brew in which individual beads of water are very slowly dripped through coffee grounds to make a concentrate...
I invite you to read the rest directly on their site.
 
 Here is a series of interesting dates talking about cold brew coffee.
https://www.drinktrade.com/blogs/education/cold-brew-coffee-history
It may seem like cold brew has only recently taken over the world, but its origins are deeply rooted in coffee's broader history. As global trade circulated new commodities and ideas at the dawn of the Modern Era, cold brewing as a concept began to take root far beyond its point of origin in Japan.
I also invite you to read the rest directly on their site.
And finally, here, the writings of our ancestors. Once again, the Internet is no stranger to books.
In this French book from 1832, there is no shortage of words, tests, and experiments to brew coffee other than with boiling water. I invite you to read these fascinating lines that are almost 200 years old! And you will see that the curiosity of the ancients was pushed very far.
Internet research, easier, faster, often takes us on paths that form truths that are not always correct. Copy-pasting, repeating itself endlessly, does not always leave room for reality. This is why books keep this magic. Especially if they are old.
When we go from an Internet search to reading a book, we often wonder who invented what and when!
But if we make the effort, with a book, to delve into the past, we are entitled to a journey that is difficult to shorten. And once we have started, we absolutely want to go all the way!
 
THIS IS THE BOOK
Monograph on coffee or Manual for coffee lovers. By G. E. GOUBARD D’AULNAY in 1832.
ON INFUSION WITH HOT WATER.
CHAPTER 28
(I will intervene immediately to clarify that the author is not going to talk about hot water in the sense of very hot or boiling. As one might expect when talking about coffee.)
The quality of coffee as a drink depends mainly on the degree of heat of the water. Experience has shown that mediocre quality coffee, infused at a suitable heat, gave a very good liquor. While excellent coffees, on which boiling water had been thrown or that had been put in boiling water, had only offered a very mediocre drink. So, instead of throwing boiling water, or at 80 degrees (Celsius), into a porcelain or earthenware coffee pot from Sarguemine (Sarreguemines, a town in Moselle in France, a major pottery factory at that time), those who are keen not to drink ink instead of coffee will only use water heated to 50 to 60 degrees (Celsius). This degree of heat is recognized when you cannot dip your fingertip in the water without burning yourself (obviously, today, we would use thermometers of all kinds to do this). We have seen, by experimenting on six cups, that the coffee treated with boiling water only gave a weighting degree of 6 1/8 degrees on the coffee meter. The weighting represents the quality. Thus, the first cup served, always showing a much higher weighting degree on the coffee meter, is always much higher than those that are served afterwards, and especially the last ones. But it is on the mixture of these different nuances of quality that each cup presents that flows from the first to the last, that the total sum of the quality of the liquor depends. The water is poured in two different times in equal parts. We must wait, to pour the second half of the water, until the infusion has begun to flow. Let us see, according to Mr. Cadet de Vaux, what will be the degree of weighting of six cups of coffee, using very hot water, without boiling, that is to say from 50 to 60 degrees (Celsius).
1st cup: 4 degrees 3/8.
2nd cup: 1 degree 5/8.
3rd cup: 0 degrees 6/8
4th cup: 0 degrees 4/8
5th cup: 0 degrees 2/8
6th cup: 0 degrees 1/8
TOTAL: 7 degrees 5/8.
We therefore obtained the result 7 degrees 5/8 by hot water, while boiling water only presented 6 degrees 1/8 of weighting.
Let us therefore give up boiling water, which is only suitable for extracting from coffee principles that only serve to destroy the aromatic parts, which make it a delicious drink, and which are easily extracted by hot water that does not alter, and even by cold infusion.
Coffee, infused with hot water, is clear, of a brilliant color. Its perfume is delicious, its flavor is exquisite.
The first cup poured is the essence, true ambrosia worthy of the gods.
The second, although much inferior, since one marks 4 degrees 3/8 on the coffee meter, while the other only marks 1 degree 5/8, has a perfect taste.
It is these first two cups that are poured out that communicate their quality to the other four and give for the six cups, in the experiment that we have indicated, a perfumed liquor, and almost unknown to all those who prepare coffee following the old methods.
Wow! These explanations definitely make me want to try this method!
We will move on to the next chapter which talks about infusion with cold water.
 
Monograph of coffee or Manual of the coffee lover. By G. E. GOUBARD D’AULNAY in 1832.
CHAPTER 29
ON COLD WATER INFUSION
Cold water infusion, like hot water infusion, recovers all the aromatic principles of coffee, and does not extract any, or at least detaches very little gallic acid. Coffee prepared in this way is much less bitter, it requires much less sugar, it is not comparable in quality to coffees obtained by boiling or boiling water infusion. It requires very little care, because one can prepare one's coffee in the evening when going to bed, and one finds it ready in the morning when one gets up. It is wrong to claim that more coffee is needed when one makes the infusion in cold water. Perhaps this opinion must be attributed to the habit of seeing coffee which, loaded with gallic acid, is very dark in color, while coffee infused with cold water presents only the light capuchin color, but all that it loses in color it gains in flavor. The coffee must be put, for the infusion with cold water, in the same proportions as if one wanted to pour boiling water over it and, despite its light color, one can convince oneself, by the coffeeometer, that the degrees of weighting, for each cup, are entirely to the advantage of the infusion with cold water. As, by the infusion with hot water and cold water, the extraction of the soluble principles is slower.
In order to make the filtration less long, one can pour the day before, on the coffee powder, the quantity of water that the grounds must absorb, quantity that we have indicated for each cup. The next morning, you only have to pour the exact number of cups you want to obtain. The coffee made in advance will be even better, because you will have to reheat it, and it is recognized that reheated coffee acquires a higher degree of quality. (Obviously, the author is talking here about reheated coffee that has been brewed in hot water of 50 to 60 degrees Celsius or that brewed in cold water. There is no question of reheating coffee that has been boiled in water).

 

 
 
Monograph on coffee or Manual of the coffee lover. By G. E. GOUBARD D’AULNAY in 1832.
CHAPTER 30
OF REHEATED COFFEE
The most suitable apparatus for heating coffee is the bain-marie, such as the one that Harel established for his Sarguemine earthenware coffee pots. After having prepared the coffee the day before or in the morning, either by infusing it with cold water or by infusing it with hot water, and having taken care to keep the coffee pot hermetically sealed, the bain-marie is placed on the fire some time before serving. Then a quarter of an hour before bringing the coffee to the table, the coffee pot, still tightly closed, is placed in the bain-marie. They can also be placed both together on a low heat, half an hour at the most before serving. This continuity of a gentle heat releases from the coffee the essential volatile oil which constitutes the aromatic part of the coffee, which makes all its goodness and which we see swimming on the surface of the cups when the liquor has been well prepared. We thus obtain, with less care than by the processes of boiling and infusion with boiling water, a finished coffee, a true nectar of gourmets. Those who do not have a bain-marie, can simply expose the tightly closed coffee pot, an hour before dinner, close enough to the fire so that the coffee can be very hot, because this is one of the essential conditions, and far enough away so that it can neither boil nor even simmer, because this would take away its perfume and its quality. But then, it is essential that the coffee pot be very full, otherwise it would contract this unpleasant taste that all liquids have that we expose in front of the fire in unfilled saucepans. We are not subject to these disadvantages with the bain-marie. The heat coming from below and being communicated by the contact of the water, one can put into the coffee pot the quantity of liquor that one wants without exposing it to taking on a bad taste. One can keep brewed coffee in well-stoppered bottles. One pours some gradually into a coffee pot well closed with its lid and exposes it to a bain-marie. This process is a great resource for travelers.

 

Reading these chapters on coffee brewed with hot water, cold water and reheated coffee brought back some deep-seated memories!
I just remembered this phrase that we often heard as children:
Café bouillu, café foutu.
It’s a French phrase with the word bouillu that doesn’t exist.
The real phrase would be: café bouilli (boil), café foutu (ruined).
We simply wanted to make a rhyme between bouilli and foutu. So we transformed the word bouilli into bouillu. And this word is only used in this expression: café bouillu, café foutu.
If, for example, a friend puts his pan on the stove and you notice that he forgot it, you shout: café bouillu, café foutu!!!!
At home, at this warning cry, we know that something is going to burn on the stove or in the oven! So we run and it makes everyone laugh.
If I go back to my childhood, the 1970s, I see my grandmothers grinding coffee beans as needed.
The coffee used was always the same: Café TOTAL from RAVERDY located in the north of France. We found this coffee in all our stores in the east of France. And then, one day, it disappeared, never to return to the stores in our region. It was, if my memory serves me right, at the end of the 1990s, at the beginning of the 2000s.
Today, I learned on the internet that the company was saved in 2008 by Patrick Pasqueille.
You can buy it online! This coffee is also distributed in stores in the north of France.
The smell, the taste and the particularly clear color were the characteristics of this coffee prepared like grandmother.
The water was kept hot in a metal teapot with its lid (not completely airtight) and placed in a place that was not directly on the hottest part of their wood or coal stove. The water never simmered and never boiled. They checked from time to time to add a little water to supplement the small evaporation.
They had a classic coffee filter holder like those still exist today.
When it was time to brew the coffee, they placed the filter holder over a porcelain teapot and gently poured the water over the coffee powder.
I remember this smell that invaded the whole kitchen and even the living room.
When the coffee was served in the cups, I was amused by these little bubbles that floated on the surface. But after reading the chapters of the book above, I now know that it was the oil from the coffee!
Sure, my grandmothers followed a process for making coffee that was almost identical to the instructions in the chapters of the book. And the phrase "coffee boiled, coffee ruined" makes perfect sense! However, from 1830 to 1975, there is a 145-year gap.
In our region, in the 1970s, many people had gas or electric stoves.
But many were also iron ore workers. As a result, they were entitled to what is called the coal bonus or heating bonus, even after retirement. As a result, one of my grandmothers received coal for free. And this coal was used both to heat the house and for the stove in the kitchen.
Once the coal (sometimes wood) was filled, the heat was produced for hours. Depending on the seasons or cooking needs, more or less coal was used. But you could keep water warm without ever having to worry about it, or almost.
You will understand that our elders were not going to bother with electric or gas stoves, electric coffee makers with all the consumption costs that this implies! They had their habits for so long and, as always, this idea that modern things are for young people!
And then, believe me, their old wood and coal stove was something magical for cooking, simmering, slow cooking, very slow, sometimes from morning to night! On a not too hot side of the stove, in the evening, what a delight!
Who would cook something today in this way on the gas or electric stove? We must be aware that there are things that we will never taste again.

 

So, the big question: where did grandma's coffee go?


In the 1980s, the mines closed their doors. The grandparents' children wanted modern equipment. Pre-ground coffee, coffee makers and electric kettles.
Things are heating up in the cottages!
We are teenagers, we drink coffee like the neighbors. We don't ask ourselves if it's good. For a decade, we pick up bad habits, without realizing it.
In the 1990s, we settled down, we had a family life, bad habits persisted. We didn't have time to take our time, work, work and more work.
The coffee was still as bad, but we didn't even realize it anymore.
In the 2000s, the Senseo appeared. A new product that changed things. We all found this coffee excellent. It was new, it changed. Everyone was getting into it.
New habits were established.
In the 2010s, Nespresso! Well, we moved up another range. Great! But honestly, not for everyone's budget.
End of the 2010s, L'Or Barista, we adapted.
2025, we found tons of coffee brands, tons of types, tons of flavors. Capsules of different sizes for different brands of manufacturers or distributors.
We found bean-to-cup machines for every budget.
I have tried almost everything. There are many things that I like and many that I do not like. But it is not up to us to say what is good or bad.
By country, by region, by education, by habits, everyone will like something that the other will not like and vice versa.

 

And to finish this article, I will have only one thing to say:
If you knew how much I would like to find the smell of grandma's coffee again! Its taste, its magic.
So I will soon take the time.
I will order TOTAL coffee beans from RAVERDY.
I want to try the coffee from the infusion with hot water, with cold water, the reheated coffee.
I want to try to grind the fine and coarse coffee electrically.
I want to try to grind the coffee in a mortar.
I want to try my mixtures in a bain-marie.
I want to try to reheat in the microwave. Too many people think that microwaves can only be used at maximum power in a very short time. Few people know what things can be achieved with this device if you learn to know it well.
I want to use thermos-type containers to keep my drinks as safe as possible from
oxygen.
Containers with a very thin neck that are tightly sealed.
When you are young, they say that you never have time.
When you get old, you regret not having taken the time when you were young.
When you are too old, it is too late.
At the age of being wise, a big question bothers me.
Do modern things come at the expense of taste?
Modern things all have the same concern. Go quickly, save time.
Far be it from me to think that modern things offer bad, disgusting tastes, since I myself appreciate them a lot.
But isn’t the quintessence found in old, slower things?
Whether in cooking or in coffee?
Slow cooking of meat, low-temperature cooking of vegetables, slow and cold infusion of coffee?

 

Was it better before or is it a memory distorted by a melancholic nostalgia in which we sometimes like to voluntarily immerse ourselves? The only way to know is to try these recipes, these ways of doing things from the past.

 

I hope that this article has taught you as much as I learned while writing it and that it will open your mind to new horizons, new things to try! Maybe we should even say old horizons and old things!
 
Good coffee is never drunk alone. You should always at least be with yourself, T.J.

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