How to Make Cold Brew Coffee At Home

Cold brew has somehow become both wildly popular… and wildly expensive (like anything in 2026 perhaps?).

But it feels outsized considering how darn easy it is to learn how to make cold brew coffee at home. It’s one of the more forgiving ways to brew coffee, which means that your likelihood of error is pretty small and your margin for tastiness is pretty wide. 👍

The best cold brew tastes smooth and almost creamy without adding anything at all. Making excellent cold brew at home is surprisingly easy once you understand a few fundamentals. You do not need expensive equipment. You do not need barista certification. And you definitely do not need to spend $7 every morning at a coffee shop.

After years of making cold brew at home, here’s our go-to cold brew coffee recipe.

Cold brew recipe

• 1 cup coarse-ground coffee
• 4 cups water for ready-to drink; 2 cups for concentrate
• Combine
• Steep 12–18 hours
• Strain
• Refrigerate
• Serve over ice

How to make cold brew coffee, step by step

Our default method at home is the Toddy Cold Brew System. We’ve experimented with mason jars, French presses, and dedicated cold brew makers over the years, but we keep coming back to the Toddy because it’s simple, makes a big batch, and produces a consistent cup.

That said, the fundamentals are the same regardless of which brewing method you use.

1. Grind your coffee coarse

Aim for a grind size that looks similar to raw sugar or coarse sea salt.

We use a Baratza Encore set to 32, which gives us the texture we’re after: coarse enough for long extraction without creating an excessive amount of sediment.

2. Combine the coffee and water

For ready-to-drink cold brew, combine:

• 1 cup coarsely ground coffee
• 4 cups filtered water

For concentrate (our preferred approach), combine:

• 1 cup coarsely ground coffee
• 2 cups filtered water

Give everything a gentle stir to make sure all of the grounds are saturated.

3. Let it steep for 12 to 18 hours

Put a lid on it and walk away.

We almost always brew at room temperature because extraction happens more efficiently there than it does in the refrigerator. And no, I don’t obsess over whether it’s exactly 14 hours or exactly 16 hours. Somewhere between 12 and 18 hours works for our kitchen and lifestyle.

4. Strain the coffee

If you’re using a Toddy, simply remove the stopper and let the coffee drain into the carafe.

If you’re using a mason jar, pour the coffee through a fine-mesh strainer lined with a paper filter or cheesecloth.

If you’re using a French press, slowly press the plunger and transfer the coffee to another container.

This is also where patience pays off. Rushing filtration is one of the easiest ways to end up with a gritty, muddy cup.

5. Dilute, refrigerate, and serve

If you brewed a concentrate, dilute it to your preferred strength. A 1:1 ratio of concentrate to water creates something similar to what you’ll find at many coffee shops.

Either way, you’ve just made a week’s worth of cold brew for a fraction of what you’d spend buying it at a coffee shop or Starbucks.

Our cold brew coffee-to-water ratio

If you only remember one thing from this guide, make it this: most cold brew problems are ratio problems.

When people say their homemade cold brew tastes weak, bitter, muddy, sour, or too strong, the issue is often not the beans or the steep time. It’s that they used a recipe without understanding whether it was designed for ready-to-drink cold brew or cold brew concentrate.

Those are two completely different things, and many recipes blur them together.

Ready-to-drink cold brew is meant to be poured directly over ice and consumed immediately. Concentrate is intentionally brewed much stronger and diluted later with water, milk, or ice. If you (accidentally) drink concentrate straight, it can taste harsh and overwhelming. If you dilute a ready-to-drink recipe, it often turns watery and flat.

We always brew concentrate that we can dilute to our taste preference. I like having the option to add sweetener or creamer without losing the taste of coffee (if I add it to the ready-to-drink stuff, it can end up tasting like sugary milk rather than a nice coffee beverage). And sometimes I like to add homemade cold foam, too!

For concentrate, our go-to cold brew recipe ratio is:

• 1 cup coarse ground coffee
• 2 cups water

Most concentrates can be diluted somewhere between 1:1 and 1:2 depending on preference. This is also the better approach if you enjoy sweeter or milk-heavy coffee drinks because the stronger base flavor cuts through dilution more effectively.

If you want cold brew you can pour straight over ice and drink immediately, we recommend starting with a 1:4 ratio:

• 1 cup coarse ground coffee
• 4 cups water

Mason jar vs. French press vs. dedicated cold brew makers

1. Mason jar method (Best beginner method)

This is the easiest and cheapest way to start making cold brew. This method has almost no startup cost and is easy to scale. It also works surprisingly well if you like to avoid single-use products in your kitchen (I get it. Here’s looking at you, stowed-away sous vide set up). 

But all is not paradise. If you’ve ever tried this method, you know that filtering can be fiddly and messy. It’s hard to have a sediment-free outcome, too. Sometimes I need to do extra filtering to make it palatable. 

What you need

• large mason jar or container
• coarse ground coffee
• water
• fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth

Instructions

1. Add 1 cup coarse coffee grounds to the jar.
2. Pour in 4 cups filtered water.
3. Stir gently to saturate all grounds.
4. Cover and let steep for 12 to 18 hours at room temperature.
5. Strain through a fine mesh sieve lined with a coffee filter or cheesecloth.
6. Refrigerate and serve over ice.

2. French Press method (Best for easy clean up)

This is probably the sweet spot for most people. It is easier to clean up and less messy filtration than the aforementioned mason jar. It’s great for smaller batches and uses a brewer that many people already have in their at home coffee line up.

What you need

• French press
• coarse ground coffee
• water

Instructions

1. Add coffee and water using your preferred ratio.
2. Stir gently.
3. Place lid on top without plunging.
4. Let steep 12 to 18 hours.
5. Slowly press the plunger down.
6. Pour into another container for storage.

3. Dedicated cold brew maker (Best for frequent drinkers)

If you like having a stash of cold brew in your fridge regularly, dedicated systems start making sense. The biggest advantage is convenience. A good cold brew maker simplifies filtering, all but removes any sediment, and handles large batches cleanly.

The Toddy Cold Brew System remains popular for a reason. It’s simple, reliable, and genuinely good at producing smooth concentrate. Here’s our full run down of our Toddy  Cold Brew System, and we’re currently testing the Oxo Cold Brew maker to see if it makes something even better.

That said, a dedicated system improves workflow more than flavor. You can absolutely make excellent cold brew at home with a jar and a strainer.

Grind size for cold brew

In short: Use a coarse grind when brewing cold brew coffee at home. Think raw sugar, sea salt or what you’d use for your French Press.

If you grind too fine, you’ll end up with a sludgey mess that makes filtration miserable (it makes me go from 0 to annoyed VERY quickly). Grinding too fine is one of the fastest ways to ruin cold brew. Too fine of grind also tends to over-extract and create bitterness on top of the muddy texture that clogs filters and leaves sediment floating around in your cup.

A coarse grind solves most of those problems immediately. It extracts more slowly and evenly, which is exactly what you want during a 12-to-18-hour brew. 

This is also one of the reasons a good burr grinder matters more for cold brew than many people realize. Blade grinders tend to create a chaotic mix of giant chunks and fine powder at the same time. That inconsistency leads to uneven extraction: the tiny particles become bitter while the larger chunks stay weak and underextracted. You end up with coffee that somehow tastes both muddy and hollow simultaneously.

A burr grinder produces a much more consistent grind size, which gives you more predictable flavor and cleaner filtration. We’ve used the Baratza Encore for years because it hits a really practical sweet spot for home coffee brewing. It’s simple, reliable, and excellent for coarse brewing methods like cold brew, French press, Chemex, and drip coffee without getting absurdly expensive (it runs about $150).

The Baratza Encore grind size for cold brew that we use is 32. That range gives us the coarse, even grind texture we want for long immersion brewing without creating excess bitterness or sediment. If you’re curious about the grinder itself, we go deeper in our full Baratza Encore review.

The best coffee beans for cold brew

In our opinion, a big misconception about cold brew is that you need ultra-premium coffee beans to make it taste good. From our POV, cold brew is the brewing method where expensive specialty coffee matters the LEAST.

That doesn’t mean bean quality is irrelevant. Fresh coffee still tastes dramatically better than months-old stale coffee. But cold brew extracts flavor differently than hot methods like pour over or AeroPress, and that changes what’s worth spending money on.

Cold brew tends to mute the delicate nuance that makes specialty coffee exciting in the first place. A delicate gesha from your favorite roaster might taste incredible as a pour over and merely “pretty good” as cold brew. Save that to shine in a V60 instead of getting flattened during the long cold extraction.

That’s why we approach shopping for the best coffee beans for cold brew differently than most of our other coffee brewing.

In our house, cold brew is about:

• making large batches
• keeping coffee in the fridge all week
• convenience
• consistency
• caffeine
• cost per cup

We’re not standing over the counter carefully evaluating acidity structure at 7 a.m. We’re pouring a glass over ice on a Tuesday afternoon.

So for cold brew, we usually buy coffee beans in bulk from Costco. While we normally stan natural process and light roasted coffees, solid medium or dark roast bulk coffee often performs well in cold brew. The brewing method itself smooths out rough edges and emphasizes richer, broader flavors anyway.

FAQs on cold drip coffee

Should you brew cold brew in the fridge?

You can, but room temperature brewing usually extracts more effectively.

We recommend steeping at room temperature and then refrigerating after straining for drinking hours or days later.

Cold fridge brewing typically requires longer steep times, and doesn’t have meaningful benefits in our experience.

How long does cold brew last?

We let it last for weeks in our fridge, though we the flavors peak within the first few days. But as a “functional beverage” motivated as much by a need for a caffeine-hit as a tasty cup, a few weeks is fine by us.

Can I use pre-ground coffee for cold brew?

Yes, but it works best if it’s coarsely ground. Most supermarket pre-ground coffee is too fine and can create bitterness and sediment.

Can you make cold brew quickly?

Sort of. There are “flash” methods and rapid cold brew gadgets, but most excellent cold brew still benefits from long extraction.

Can you heat cold brew?

Yep (my mom, Junebug, does this). Cold brew heated gently can taste incredibly smooth and low-acid compared to traditional hot coffee.

TL;DR on making cold brew at home

Good cold brew is less about fancy equipment and more about avoiding the handful of mistakes that quietly wreck flavor.

The broad points can be summarized as:

• Use decent beans.
• Grind coarse.
• Filter carefully.
• Don’t oversteep it.

That alone puts you in the ball park of a shocking amount of coffee shop cold brew.

And once you dial in your preferred ratio and beans, homemade cold brew becomes one of the cheapest and easiest ways to drink genuinely excellent coffee every day.