In this article, you’ll learn:
- Optimising cold brew flavour: From coffee sourcing to infusions
- The importance of circulation in improving cold brew’s flavour
- Understanding the cold brew flavour development process
- Achieving higher cold brew extraction yield with automated equipment
Cold brew coffee is an increasingly popular choice for consumers, but truly unlocking its flavour potential takes a lot of work. Since manual cold brew techniques take a long time – usually at least 12 hours – there are a number of operational bottlenecks that can hold you back.
Therefore, knowing how to make better, more consistent cold brew is crucial for winning new customers and building loyalty. After all, if your customers are impressed with the flavour and quality of your cold brew, they’ll be more likely to come back and buy it again. Increasing agitation during steeping is one of the best ways to achieve this, but why is this the case?
To learn more, I spoke to Divya Jayashankar. She is the founder of Beachville Coffee Roasters, a specialty coffee shop based in Chennai, India. Read on for her insight into a more efficient cold brew extraction yield.
Tips for improving your cold brew extraction yield
To start with, Divya advises determining the flavour profiles and consumer demands behind your cold brew. It’s a drink that is becoming increasingly popular in coffee shops, with cold brew in particular growing at a staggering rate of 22% a year. Given its rapid growth, you need to decide how to position cold brew alongside your existing menu.
“At Beachville Coffee Roasters, I look at cold brew as an easy, sippable cold beverage for a market that largely likes milk-based drinks,” she says. “Therefore, the flavour profile needs to be something that would easily please any coffee drinker.”
Generally, cold brew is associated with smoother, sweeter flavour notes compared to hot coffee. The lower temperature results in fewer of coffee’s acidic compounds being extracted from the grounds, resulting in a naturally sweeter flavour profile.
To ensure Beachville’s cold brew aligns with demands for sweeter, accessible flavour notes, Divya recommends carefully choosing your coffee. “We use coffees that are chocolatey with low or mild acidity,” she says. “The resulting cold brew is mellow and easy to drink.”
Equally, you may consider adding flavours to your cold brew to appeal to broader consumer tastes. Especially if your customer base isn’t acclimated to the distinctive taste of cold brew, it’s a way to make the drink more accessible and consequently more popular.
“We add flavours to our cold brews on order, for greater control over flavour pairings,” Divya explains. “Our most popular added flavours are coconut water, mint, orange peel, and hazelnut syrup. All of these add pleasant sweetness to the cold brew without being overpowering or changing the body or mouthfeel.”
While this is commonly achieved by using syrups, equipment like the Baby Hardtank allows you to add additional ingredients directly to the filter basket. For example, you can place mint leaves or orange slices into the basket alongside your ground coffee, naturally infusing their flavour profiles during production.
How important is agitation for your cold brew extraction yield?
While changes to ingredients and the coffee you select are both ways to make better cold brew, agitation is just as important. Due to the low extraction temperature, diffusion of coffee’s soluble particles (including acids, sugars, and oils) is generally slower.
This process, known as agitation, breaks up the coffee slurry that forms, exposing more grounds to water to increase your cold brew extraction yield and strength. Crucially, it also significantly enhances the quality of cold brew.
Therefore, in manual production methods, you need to stir the slurry during steeping to increase your cold brew extraction yield. However, this can be challenging to standardise across batches, and may be inconsistent if different staff members are agitating the grounds.
Studies show that agitation during steeping can increase the cold brew extraction yield from 5.4% to 8.6%, leading to more developed flavour notes and better quality. In the pursuit of high-quality cold brew, it’s clearly essential. Beyond quality, precise agitation significantly reduces the overall brewing time, allowing for faster production cycles.
“Over a 16-hour brewing time, we agitate the vessel once and not more,” Divya explains. “Any more agitation leads to muddy brews, rancidity, and bitterness.”
For Beachville’s cold brew, she follows a precise method for agitation. “It’s usually a sideways movement, with just enough force to move the grounds a little, after about eight hours of immersion,” she says. “With such a long brew of a medium roast, we stress the importance of slow and stable steeping of flavours.”
As Divya makes clear, it’s important not to over-agitate the grounds. Otherwise, too much of the coffee’s undesirable compounds, such as polyphenols, are extracted. This leads to harsher, woody flavour notes that may put your customers off cold brew entirely.
How automated machinery makes better cold brew
Given the negative consequences of imprecise, uncontrolled extraction, automated machinery can lead to significantly better cold brew. Equipment that uses constant, but controlled, agitation is far more precise than manual methods.
While you risk over-extracting the grounds by manually stirring – either too much or too aggressively – machinery with controlled extraction avoids bitterness.
For example, Hardtank uses a patented recirculation system that gently pumps water through the coffee bed at a consistent rate. This prevents the muddiness that can be caused by manual stirring, which leads to a less desirable mouthfeel. The equipment also uses fine mesh filters to reduce sediment, ensuring no unwanted fines extract after steeping is finished – a critical step for preserving cold brew quality before it’s served.
“For commercial brews, we use a fine mesh to screen out the grounds after brewing,” Divya explains. That way, the flavour remains consistent and you don’t need to worry about its notes changing once it’s served.
Therefore, controlled, precise, and measurable agitation is the best way to increase your cold brew extraction yield. With the Hardtank, you can also program repeatable brewing profiles, which ensures consistency across batches. It removes concerns of manual error from over-stirring. Additionally, it significantly reduces the preparation time by gently but consistently agitating the grounds.
Want to increase your cold brew extraction yield and achieve faster production times? Learn more about Hardtank’s cold brew equipment here or get in touch with the team for a quote.
FAQ
What is agitation in cold brew, and why is it important?
Agitation is where you gently stir or circulate the coffee grounds during steeping. It increases the surface area of ground coffee that is exposed to water, which increases the extraction rate to enhance yield and flavour.
What happens if you over-agitate cold brew?
Over-agitating the coffee grounds leads to more of the coffee’s bitter, astringent compounds being extracted. This will result in a less desirable flavour that may put customers off. It can also lead to a muddy texture and mouthfeel.
What role does Hardtank equipment play in cold brew agitation?
Hardtank’s cold brew equipment uses a patented recirculation system to consistently and gently agitate the coffee grounds during steeping. Not only does this significantly reduce the brew time, but it also increases yield and ensures consistent flavour.
