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At my friends coffee shop they make cold brew with an elaborate laboratory glassware setup that drips ice-water through a filter. Looks pretty neat and sciencey. They got 4 of these devices running all the time in the back room. I was telling him all the other shops in town just fake it, he should put one of the devices out front so people can see his cold-brew is for real.

Perhaps the Yama cold brew tower CDM25 is the device you saw. It is used at many fine establishments including my kitchen, and I also have the smaller CDM8. The numbers 8 and 25 correspond to the number of cups of diluted 1:1 cold brew that it produces in a single cycle (6-12 hours).

https://yama-glass.com/collections/cold-brew-towers

If any HNers are looking for a cheap entry point into the style without spending $250+ on a beautiful bunch of laboratory glass ware, there's the puckpuck[1], which sits on top of an aeropress and turns it into functionally the same device as the Yama towers - slow controlled valve dripping cold water at a controlled rate onto a bed of coffee and a paper filter over the course of hours.

I've found it a nice way to play with the style without investing the money and space. Still want one of those towers if I ever see them cheap though.

[1] https://puckpuck.me/ - no connection, just a customer.

I would literally go to a shop doing this, like as often as possible. As a coffee lover, this is peak coffee shop.

He could even double down and make Breaking Bad references around the shop, since thats what this makes me think of.

I'm guessing it's not in Florida, or I would ask you for the address. He should at least get a window into that backroom installed or something to that effect.

I think this is called "Kyoto-style slow drip" coffee. I agree with you that the contraption should be in plain view of the customers!

I remember being really interested in a cup of Kyoto-style one day, only to be told to make a reservation and come back tomorrow... it was worth the wait.

It seems to be a niche taste among my friends, yes it's sour and bitter that's why I like it!
To be fair all you need to actually make cold brew is a pitcher and a cheesecloth or some other filter. The absence of an apparatus does not make it fake.
Chilling warm brewed coffee is definitely faking it. And I presume all places selling "cold brew" is faking it so this guy is losing money by not showing off doing real cold brew with his apparatus.
I’m not talking about chilling warm brewed coffee. All you need to make cold brew coffee is soak coffee grounds in cold water. Whether that is in a mason jar or through a thousand dollar complex laboratory setup is entirely an aesthetic choice.

https://www.loveandlemons.com/cold-brew-coffee/

My favorite route to camp coffee is running this GSI filter backwards:

https://gsioutdoors.com/products/h2jo-filter

Put a week's worth of grounds in the bottle, screw on the filter, pour in some cold water, steep for 24h, and transfer to another bottle. If somebody wants "drip" strength they can cut it with water, hot or cold.

The way I've seen it done is with one of those massive plastic commercial kitchen lidded containers, and a softball sized teabag of coffee sold by the restaurant supply company specifically for cold brewing like this. Then they put it in the walk in for a while to steep and sell it after a certain number of hours.
It’s a market for lemons at this point. Unless you can see an expensive apparatus or observe them soaking the coffee, there’s no way to know if it’s correct, and as a customer it means it’s risky to buy if you care about the difference between refrigerated hot coffee and cold brew.
Risky to buy? It's not real estate it's a cup of coffee. And if you're worried about people faking it, just buy a $2 mason jar and make some in the fridge while you sleep.

I don't get the fascination with paying exorbitant prices and constantly complaining when it's next to zero effort to make it at home, cold or hot. And the best part is you get to choose where your beans come from, you don't have to worry about the political slant du jour of the coffee shop, and you can do it all for a fraction of the price even when using the most expensive beans.

> you don't have to worry about the political slant du jour of the coffee shop

I can't say this has ever been an issue for me. Generally, they just want to sell me some coffee.

Yes, risky to buy. In the same way a slot machine has an expected value of 80-99% payout it’s still a bad use of money even if you only put in $5.

If you object to the word “risky” I used it in the sense of “uncertain you will get the value you expected”. Perhaps there’s a better word.

> In the same way a slot machine has an expected value of 80-99% payout it’s still a bad use of money even if you only put in $5.

Why is this a bad use of money? When I go to a restaurant and give them $20 for dinner, it’s not like I’m getting $20 worth of ingredients.

It sounds like you just don’t like gambling?

> It’s a market for lemons at this point. Unless you can see an expensive apparatus or observe them soaking the coffee, there’s no way to know if it’s correct

Presumably the taste should tell you whether it's correct. Otherwise why care if they fake it?

If they "fake it" and it tastes better... then why are you going out of your way chasing some marketing term that tastes worse to you?
I prefer to know what I'm buying before paying for it.
Unless I'm a visiting tourist I'm likely to go back to a good coffee shop many times. Being surprised my cold brew isn't cold brew - both the caffeine content and taste are tells IMO - for one visit isn't life or death here. I just don't get it again.
Caffeine content in the cup is not a good metric. It is one of the most easily extracted compounds and is roughly equivalent across brew types. The beans themselves are a bigger variable in this regard. Even if you are using a roaster's signature blend, the bean composition of that is going to change month to month and year to year. Even beans from the same physical trees will have varying caffeine content depending on agronomic factors.

In the same cafe on the same day, the reason different drinks have noticeably different caffeine content comes down to the different doses and concentrations they end up using. E.g. 20g coffee would normally produce either a 40mL espresso or 12oz drip. So putting that 40mL espresso in a 5oz cappuccino is much more concentrated than a 8oz filter.

100% agree. This is exactly what we do at our brewery and it comes out great. A simple fermenter with a pour spigot works wonderfully (we use this one because we already had it [1]). Soak the ground beans for 12-24 hours in a mesh bag in the cooler, remove the bag and drink on it all week.. or till it's gone.

[1] https://www.ssbrewtech.com/products/brewbucket

French press with cool water over 24 hours is simple and works well.
One that I'm aware of - Black Blood of the Earth - https://www.funraniumlabs.com/the-black-blood-of-the-earth/

> Fast forward 14 years. An acquaintance working and living in Japan went on holiday and discovered a bar with this exceptionally beautiful rig for the preparation of Viennese Triple Cold Extraction Coffee. Upon sampling this, he felt that, and I quote, “I could see colors that weren’t in the visible spectrum, and could vibrate through walls.” I looked at this I said to myself, “Hey, you’ve got enough virgin laboratory glassware lying around the house that you could probably build something like that.” Probably several somethings, actually, but that’s beside the point.

It has a picture of the original glassware in Japan and his first iteration in the kitchen. A sibling comment links to Yama glass ... which is out of Taiwan. The similarities might not be coincidence.

> At my friends coffee shop they make cold brew with an elaborate laboratory glassware setup that drips ice-water through a filter. Looks pretty neat and sciencey.

Likely the Yama cold brew tower [1].

[1]: https://prima-coffee.com/equipment/yama/yamcdm25sbk-yama-pp

That is awesome! I would absolutely love it if more cafes did this. Let us know where it is so we can go patronize.

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