Favorite Things.

It may not come as a surprise to you that there are few things I love more in this world than a good cup of coffee. Hot, Iced, Drip, Espresso, you name it – I love it (within reason, I do have a certain level of contempt for certain mainstream, corporate coffee… but lets not go there).

Even though I considered myself the aficionado, nay… SNOB, I had no clue what cold-brewed coffee was. To quote a good friend of mine; “Cold-brewed? Is that even possible?!”. Why yes, yes it is.

Allow me to introduce you to Toddy. No, this isn’t like a hot toddy, there (sadly) is no alcoholic content. Don’t let that deter you, though… Toddy is infinitely delicious.

Wikipedia tells us:

The Toddy process requires grinding coffee beans at a coarse setting and soaking those grounds in cold water for a prolonged period of time (usually 12 hours or more). The grounds must be filtered out of the cold water after they have been steeped; therefore, the grounds can either be put in a bag-like filter before steeping or the mixture can be fed through a filter after soaking (similar to the Toddy system). The end result produces a concentrated coffee that is often diluted with water and or dairy, and served steaming hot, over ice or blended with ice and other ingredients such as chocolate.

The fantastic part about this process is that cold-brewing the coffee is EXTREMELY less acidic, thus making the coffee it self taste sweeter and richer. Part of the toddy process for us at the store is to select coffee with already naturaly rich, sweet tastes to make our toddy.

My favorite configuration so far is a large glass filled with ice, 2-3 shots worth of toddy, a pump of honey-sweetner and soy milk. Stir it up and ENJOY. My god, it is inconceivably delicious.

This has quickly become my summer drink-of-choice. Don’t make me responsible for drinking it all, come try it!

Love and Stitches,

David.