Cold Brew Coffee is one of the most popular coffees. It has 67% low acid content compared to normal hot coffee. Although the brewing process plays a role in its flavor and acidity, however, a lot of the taste and flavor depends upon choosing the best coffee beans for the cold brew.
Factors to be Considered to Select The Best Coffee Beans for Cold Brew
Cold brew is very complex and involves an incredibly tough brewing process. Therefore the flavor of the cold brew depends on many factors such as:
- Variety of the Beans
- Where it was grown
- The elevation at which it is grown
- How the bean was picked
- How the bean was processed
- How the bean was roasted
- How was the bean stored
Top 3 Best Coffee Beans For Cold Brew
1. Bizzy Organic Cold Brew Coffee
The Bizzy Organic Cold Brew Coffee is best coffee bean for preparing amazing quality cold brew coffee at home. Brizzy serves coarsely grounded coffee beans for optimum cold brew preparation and provides users the choice to select the roast type.
It has many flavors providing several options for its users. These beans are 100% organic to provide the best cold brew.
Features:
- Organic Coffee Beans: It provides 100% organic coffee beans for brewing, which are sourced coffee from Guatemala, Peru, and Nicaragua, to provide the best quality coffee.
- Ground Type: This coffee consists of coarse ground coffee beans, for providing the best cold brew coffee.
- Flavors: This cold brew coffee provides different flavors and roast types to its users to choose from. This coffee provides the users to choose from many options such as dark, medium, and light-roasted coffee beans.
- Preparation Time: This coffee requires about 14-20 hours for brewing and final preparation, and can serve about 15-20 cups of coffee at a time.
2. Stone Street Coffee Cold Brew Reserve
The Stone Street Coffee Cold Brew is a mix of Columbian origin, and hence is pretty dark-roasted and pre-ground. Made up of 100% Colombian Supremo beans, it offers supreme quality cold brew coffee. It is available in both ground and also as whole non-ground forms.
Features:
- Roast type Used: The Colombian Supremo beans are dark-roasted for obtaining a bold, yet perfectly smooth and sweet cup of cold brew coffee.
- Ground Type Used: Its grounded form is available in forms of coarse ground.
- Packaging: It is packaged in a 0.06-ounce bag natural kraft resealable foil bag to facilitate proper freshness and flavor retention.
3. Cold Brew Lab Organic Coarse Ground Coffee
The Cold Brew Lab brand was set up in New York City and is famous for producing quality coffee beans. The Organic Coarse Ground Coffee is one of their special products that are perfect for cold brewing, as the source, roast, and grind have been made perfect for slow(cold) extraction.
This top cold brew coffee beans are available in both coarse grounded and ungrounded form, with the grounded form being better for most audiences.It’s Organic nature further adds to its popularity.
Features:
- Organic Beans: Cold brew coffee largely depends upon its flavor due to its low acid content. Hence the Cold Brew Lab Organic Coarse Ground Coffee Beans are 100% organic, made up of the famous Arabica beans.
- Proprietary Roast Blend: It uses a blend of medium & dark roasted coffee beans to create a unique roast level that is perfect for cold-brewed coffee flavor.
- Coarse Grounds: These beans are freshly ground to an extra coarse grind size so that they can be brewed in any device that provides the right amounts of flavor and caffeine in the water.
How to Select The Best Beans for Cold Brew?
1. Type Of Coffee Beans To Be Selected
The first factor that should be pondered upon is selecting the right type of coffee beans to prepare the best cold brew coffee. There are two main species of coffee grown commercially around the world – Coffee Arabica and Coffee Robusta. Among them, Arabica grows at a higher altitude is less prone to diseases, compared to Robusta that grows on a higher altitude.
Although most of their qualities are similar but Arabica coffee beans have more aromatic oils and sugar, leading to more complex, less harsh, and a smooth final cup of brew. Robusta, on the contrary, is cheaper and generally used in cheaper quality coffees.
Now although the word ‘Arabica’ always doesn’t guarantee quality, it goes without mentioning that most of the popular cold brew coffee beans are of Arabica type.
2. Single Origin Or Blends?
Another common question that comes in the mind of people is to select coffee beans from a single origin, or to purchase coffee that contains a blend of different types of coffee beans.
Single-origin refers to the beans being from a specific farm, whereas blends refer to the combination of beans from two different origins.
When it comes to selecting between these, one must understand that single-origin beans are somewhat unpredictable and vary from season to season, whereas blends are prepared to provide consistency and predictable results.
Although there are some of the good single origin beans, we recommend the buyers to be little cautious while picking light, fruity beans which are more hot brew specific. Hence blended coffee beans are more suitable for cold brew.
3. The Roast Type Of The Cold Brew Beans
The roasting type of the beans plays a significant role in the taste of the cold brew coffee. There are three main types of bean roast options: Dark roast, medium roast as well as a light roast.
According to our research, majority of users recommend use medium-dark to dark roasted coffee beans to prepare the best quality cold brew coffee.
4. Grind Factor Of The Coffee Beans (The Ultimate Variable)
While it is extremely important to select the right beans from right the origin for cold brew, the most vital factor is selecting the grind type of the coffee beans.
One can prepare cold brew coffee by either using ground coffee beans, or by purchasing ungrounded whole beans, and physically grinding them. Although maximum freshness is obtained in the latter case, but in most cases, people do not have that much of time to physically grind the beans, or do not have a grinding machine, and hence purchase already grounded coffee beans.
While purchasing already grounded coffee beans, the coarse grounds are by far the best for cold brew coffee.
5. Age Of The Coffee Beans
A lot of people think that freshness and age of the coffee beans play a very important role in the taste of the coffee. However, in the case of cold brew coffee, it is not so, since some soluble elements in the coffee beans go unextracted during the cold brewing process. One can make perfectly fine, sweet and caffeinated cold brew coffee by even using coffee beans that are a few weeks old.