Fun fact: cold drinks are awesome. Yet, the ability to insert caffeine into a bottle might not be as easy as you think. Iced tea has been common for millennia, and soda gets a pass by using caffeine created primarily in a pharmaceutical lab in China. (According to Murray Carpenter’s book “Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts and Hooks Us,” if cola weren’t dark, it would emit a blue fluorescent color.) To have a cool cup of coffee on demand, you get into a little difficulty. To brew a hot cup of coffee, and then cool it with ice, makes the coffee astringent, acidic and often bitter, which is why iced coffee is dominated by sweeteners and dairy products. But brewing beans directly for cold bottle readiness is a different process altogether. With all the new and fancy ways to make a cup of coffee, it might leave you wondering “can coffee be good for you?” There are so many conflicting reports out there, so I say if you like it, drink up!
Cold brewed coffee, as it is called, is made exactly as the names imply, by brewing ground coffee in cool water. But unlike hot coffee, cold-brewed takes 8-20 hours to infuse the water with the coffee beans. This does sound like a long time to wait for coffee, but if cold brew is the preferred way of drinking coffee, then waiting shouldn’t be an issue.
With that being said, the idea of how to get coffee delivered to my office may be one that some companies could look into, especially if there are a lot of staff members who drink coffee.
So having a cup of hot coffee to take to the desk won’t require much waiting. Drinks like cold brews though would be perfect for the summer, especially at parties.
It originated in Japan when Dutch traders brought in coffee from Indonesia in the early 17th century, leading to the name of “Dutch coffee.”
Numerous coffee roasters have been doing some wonderful things with this caffeinated obsession, allowing for coffee to become a refreshing sipper. Bottled cold brew has been becoming more and more prevalent as roasters see the artistic possibilities of the cold-brewed method, purchased to go and available to enjoy wherever the customer would like. Two common variations are to have bottles of coffee ready to drink out of the bottle or to have the bottle be a concentrated form of cold brew, meant to be diluted with water to make it drinkable. It can even be kept in the freezer as this coffee blog explains. Numerous companies throughout the Northwest have cold-brewed coffee by the bottle, and here are our top picks.
Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Portland ||Stumptown Coffee Roasters has become synonymous around the country for premium small batch coffee roasters. Their first foray into the cold brewed method began in 2011, and it quickly started setting the trend. Flavors range from lavender-like flowers, milk chocolate and orange citrus, all coalesced around a sweetly tart, almost syrupy mouthfeel. Stumptown Cold Brewed is offered in a 10.5 ounce bottle around the Northwest, and you can read our initial review of this caffeinated delight here. || stumptowncoffee.com
Pier Coffee, Seattle || Pier Coffee offers coffee drinkers both a ready to go bottle (or can!), and a concentrated form of the cold pressed method that can be leveled out at home by mixing with water. Arabica beans, grown in the Great Lakes region of Africa, offers flavors of caramel, black currant, hazelnuts and pears, which linger around a light silky mouthfeel. Producers suggest a one to one concentrate to water ratio. || piercoffee.com
Discovery Coffee, Victoria || Victoria’s Discovery Coffee began bottling this past summer of 2014, and Sip Northwest was on hand to review the occasion. Brewed for 18 hours, then poured through a double filter, Discovery Coffee plans to use different coffee beans every two months, so don’t expect your favorite flavor to be around very long! Handed bottled, and available for shipment anywhere in Canada, it’s a bottle worth having for any summer outing. || discoverycoffee.com
Jamaica Blue Coffee Company, Vancouver || 24 hours of stepping means this cold brew is strong-very, very strong. Where you go after the one part concentrate to one part water is your call, but the results will doubtless be good. The beans are sourced from only one area, Jamaica, which adds to a slightly increased price, but coffee aficionados will know the importance of terrior in the beans. Smooth and syrupy, Jamaica Blue’s cold brew offers a nice full mouthfeel with a slightly chocolaty finish. Recently, bottles were made available at Whole Foods at numerous locations around British Columbia, and shipments can be made around Canada. || jamaicablue.ca
Anchorhead Coffee Company, Seattle || After touring around the country with some A-list musicians, and D grade coffee, two audio engineer packed up their bags and started a coffee company. Last year, Sip Northwest editor-in-chief Erin James gave her review of the bottled coffee whose tagline is “We bottle happiness.” Widely available in the Seattle area and select locations around Portland, as well as online sales, the concentrate is cold brewed for 16 hours, then pre-mixed with 1:1 water to concentrate ratio, making for a ready to drink cold brewed bottle of coffee. || anchorheadcoffee.com
