These Coffee Makers Keep The Cold Brew Flowing

Chris Monroe/CNET Oxo Cold Brew Coffee Maker
A breeze to operate, the $49 Oxo Good Grips Cold Brew Coffee Maker offers an easy way to steep and strain grounds at room temperature. The cold brew the Oxo Good Grips makes is consistently strong, sweet and with deliciously low acidity. To add an additional layer of filtration, Oxo Good Grips bundles paper filters that can aid the brewer's stainless-steel mesh reusable filter. If you want to make hot tea, the Good Grips can also be used as a tea infuser.

I also limited this list to automatic machines and semi-automatic espresso machines. I excluded super-automatic espresso makers as well, sold by Krups, Philips, Miele, and others. They're a breed apart, costing many multiple times more ($2,000 to $3,000).

Chris Monroe/CNET Filtron Cold Water Coffee Brewer
Looking for an affordable way to make cold brew in big batches? The $40 Filtron Cold Water Coffee Brewer creates a full 36-ounce carafe of potent coffee concentrate that you can store in your fridge. Rich and tasty, the coffee concentrate you pour from the Filtron is of excellent quality. Just be warned: Its relatively complicated setup and large size demand lots of counter space. 

Plastic is lightweight and durable, but can transfer tastes and odors to your beverage. Glass bottles are safer to drink from than plastic and don't hold onto flavors but they're fragile and not ideal for rough outdoor activities like backpacking. Metal water bottles and stainless steel are usually made with insulation and are the best at keeping your beverages cold, but they can be heavy and subject to dents and scratches.

Lastly, I try my hand at frothing milk with each coffee machine equipped with a steam wand. I record the overall experience with the steam wand, whether the process is a snap, a tricky chore or somewhere in between.

Gourmia Cold Brew Coffee Maker
Need your tall glass of cold brew fast? Then the $109 Gourmia Cold Brew Coffee Maker is right up your alley. The vacuum pump-powered electric appliance can brew your beverage in 4 minutes flat. That's a ridiculously short time to create and pour cold brew in, but as you might expect, the taste of those 4-minute brews is weak. Fortunately, maxing the brew time out to 15 minutes produces a much stronger drink. And that's still not long to wait compared with the 12 hours of steeping that cold brewing usually takes.

After you decide what material you want your reusable water bottle to be made of, consider the lid type. Do you want a straw lid, a flip-top spout lid (like a travel mug) or a screw top? Maybe you need a lid that can attach to a backpack with a carabiner or a lid that won't unscrew in your work bag.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET If you over-extract, you run the risk of leaching out unpleasant flavors (bitterness) after the good. On the opposite end of the scale, under extracted brews tend to have undeveloped flavors. Lacking sugars and other caramelized organic chemicals, these shots will taste sour, weak and watery.      

Espro Press P5
One tried-and-true cold brew method for making cold brew is to use a French press, with the coffee steeping overnight. One drawback to these simple contraptions though is they tend to have poor filters. The result is often a gritty drink -- solid coffee grounds suspended in a liquid solution, especially if you don't have a coarse grind for your beans. The $60 Espro Press P5 tackles the gritty coffee grounds problem by using two stainless steel mesh filter baskets. The extra level of filtration helps the P5 create cold brew (or hot) that's wonderfully smooth and flavorful. However, the beverage the Espro brews isn't as concentrated as what other products make. If you loved this information and you would want to receive more info relating to MEDICAL GRADE TRUE HEPA kindly visit our own webpage. Another detractor is the Espro's price. It costs twice as much as an ordinary French press. 

AeroPress coffee and espresso maker
Amazon There are still other methods for brewing coffee -- and one of these is done via the wonderful AeroPress. Using these circular coffee filters, the AeroPress is small and lightweight, making it perfect for packing in your carry-on. It's kind of like the next step after the French press, creating a smoother cup of coffee by way of pushing the coffee through a paper filter. And, cleanup is even easier -- you're left with a puck-shaped cake of coffee grounds that you simply push into the trash (or into your compost bin) and then a quick rinse of the AeroPress sets you up for the next cup.

$20 at Amazon Not recommended
Sediment remained in water
Lifestraw Go
Lifestraw Despite being one of the most popular water-filtering products on the market, the Lifestraw Go did not meet my expectations for filtering. The double-stage filtration includes a hollow-fiber membrane and a carbon capsule, yet this was the only bottle that produced water with particles after passing through the filter. That's not to say the Lifestraw Go isn't safe to drink from -- the particles were probably just sediment -- but it did produce a relatively strong mineral taste compared to the other bottles on this list.