PONY'TUDE Gets Cooking: Cold Brew Iced Coffee

Get excited for the return of my cooking posts!

In summertime, iced coffee is an essential part of my diet. It's delicious, it's caffeinated, and it's a great way to enjoy a cold treat pre- or post-ride. But buying iced coffee out can get expensive, not to mention that flavored iced coffee drinks, while tasty, can be PACKED with extra sugar and calories, and nobody needs that.

So, using my standard M.O. (cheaper and healthier!) I started making my own cold-brew iced coffee based off of the method in The Pioneer Woman's recipe. The process, while it does take some time, couldn't be simpler, and the result is delicious homemade iced coffee that you can fix exactly the way you like. Pour this liquid gold into an insulated travel cup and you're ready to hit the road!

Alli's Cold-Brew Iced Coffee

-Up to 1lb ground coffee, depending on the size of your brewing container. I prefer dark roast for iced coffee, but use whatever you like!
-Cold water; filtered is best but tap works just fine!
-Milk, cream, sugar, or flavored creamer to taste
-Ice

To make this delicious iced coffee, you're going to need a large container of some sort. I use this big 8-cup Pyrex measuring cup, but you could use any sort of pitcher, tupperware container, jar, bucket, etc. that fits in your fridge. Make note of the size of the container because...

I use a 1-4 ratio of coffee to water to make my brew. For an 8-cup batch, I dump about 2 cups of ground coffee into the container. Here's where you can experiment a bit - the more coffee you use, the stronger your cold-brew will be. Iced coffee should ideally be stronger than hot, as the melting ice will dilute your drink a bit. However, as with all of the recipes I share, you just do you! Experiment with ratios until you find what you like best.

In case you didn't know what water & coffee grinds look like when mixed together... here you go.

Pour your water over the coffee grinds, stirring it up a bit to make sure all of the grinds are wet. Slap a lid or some plastic wrap over the top of your container, and pop that bad boy in the fridge.

I need to go food shopping...

Wait for 18-24 hours. I know. It's a long time.

The most time-consuming part of this whole process is the straining. I've found a couple methods that work really well for me - Straining the coffee directly into the serving pitcher with a mesh strainer and coffee filter, OR using a french press machine to strain it. Use whatever you like, use cheesecloth in a strainer, I don't care, just make sure you have a way to get all of the grinds out!

HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC.

Since I broke my french press a while ago (whoops...) I'm doing this with a mesh strainer and coffee filter directly into the pitcher. It's slow going, but worth it!

This is a slow process...

And reminds me of the mud pits at Yellowstone just a little bit.

Once all of the coffee is strained into your serving vessel, pour yourself a big glass over ice and add milk, cream and sugar to your liking. Enjoy!