cold brew coffee

It's 3:44 AM. I find myself awake for the daily commute to work despite the fact that I know very well there is nothing waiting for me on the other side this morning. I dunk a scoop of hummus directly into the salsa jar. Winter is coming.

This feeling of desolate emptiness is one that I know all too well and can only be cured by two things: alcohol or caffeine. I've decided that it's too early in both the morning and my life as a whole to start hitting the bottle, though, so coffee it is. We're going to brew up some delicious fridge coffee and it's gonna taste just like the kind they sell at the shops, only ours isn't going to cost four dollars.

Non-dairy milk is seventy-five cents extra? My ass, it is. I've got a whole carton-full of the stuff, right here. And I didn't even have to walk all the way down the street to get it.

coarsely-ground coffee

two cups of cold water

almond milk

stevia packet, lifted from local starbucks

Today begins the way a lot of days begin around here: depressed and in a mason jar. Fill it up about three-quarters full with cold tap water. Let's dive the fuck in.

Something a lot of rookies try to do is steep the grounds in hot water and then refrigerate the nonsense that process creates; this is a fundamentally incorrect approach for many reasons, most notably because of the fact that it straddles the line between cold-brewing the coffee and actually brewing the coffee. Choose a side. Soaking the grounds in hot water from the faucet is going to produce a watery, inferior drink that embodies the worst of both worlds. It will lack the subtle sweetness that cold-brewing imparts.

Scoop two tablespoons into the water. Give it a good shake.

By this point, we're pretty much out of the woods. This thing needs to spend at least twelve hours in the fridge before he becomes a real boy, but longer is ideal. You want to give it a chance to develop; patience here is a virtue.

I tried really hard to get a shot of me pouring the coffee through the sieve. The pictures turned out terrible and I ended up making a mess. It's hard to do everything by myself with only these two hands. We're going to fast-forward through that particular disaster and the ensuing clean-up, just to save you folks a bit of time.

There we go. Ain't that a handsome cup 'a joe? I have a feeling that I'm going to be drinking a lot of these in the coming months, and I'm not just saying that because my resume has gotten rejected by every studio in the greater LA area. I'm saying it because I'm an alcoholic in recovery.

This is a beverage that will make you want to get up in the morning. It's smooth, refreshing, and classy enough to suit even the fussiest of your friends and/or colleagues. It's definitely not a mimosa, but it'll do.