19th
Cold brewed Coffee, and Sun Tea
While this is not leftovers, it certainly fits in the category of bringing vs buying your food. This weekend was filled with passive brewed beverages, two of my favorite summer drinks. I brewed my first batch of Cold brewed coffee this weekend, and I have to say I’m really impressed. It’s dead simple to make, just add a bunch of coffee to a large picture of water.
Let it sit for 12 hrs, and then strain. I used 1/2 gallon water, 1/2 lb coffee. It made 32 ounces of coffee concentrate. To make the best iced coffee I’ve had in a long time I mix 4:3:1 concentrate:water:1/2 and 1/2. It’s extremely rich, but not in the least bit bitter. I’ve also read you can mix it with hot water to make hot coffee as well. You may be wondering what makes this frugal. It is a lot of coffee for so little extract. However, once you make this, you may never visit the coffee shop for an iced beverage again, saving you from spending 3.25 for a turbo ice or the double espressos.
On Saturday we filled a jug with water, 1/2 a sliced lemon, some sugar, and 1/2 dozen tea bags, and placed out on the patio to absorb some sun. Making a beverage does not get much much easier than that. Sun tea used to be a common place at Nana’s, there was always a large glass juice jar out on the picnic table brewing. It too has all the strength of a properly brewed cup, but seems to lack the harshness you get from over steeping your tea, or over extracting your coffee. I guess there is something about low and slow ‘cooking’.
Between cold brewed iced coffee, and Arnold Palmer’s made with sun tea I could subsist all summer on passive brewed beverages.
