Today I’m going to talk about one of my all-time favorite summertime beverages: cold-brewed iced coffee. I’m not talking about pouring regular coffee over ice and calling it a day. I’m talking about the glorious, chocolatey-silk tasting iced coffee. The nectar of coffees. This isn’t your give-me-some-caffeine-because-I-have-to-wake-up beverage. It’s so much more delicious than that.

And why? Cold-brewed coffee doesn’t have the harsh acidity or bitterness of regular-brewed coffee. It’s more drinkable. You could gulp it.

I know of three places in Walla Walla that serve cold-brewed iced coffee during the summer: The Walla Walla Roastery, the Patisserie and Olive. They all serve the roastery’s coffee and they all use a Toddy coffee maker to brew it.

With the Toddy, you simply let coarse ground beans sit in water for 15-24 hours. After that, you filter the liquid into a large flask. The result is a coffee-concentrate, which people usually mix with 2-3 parts water and/or milk.

I make cold-brewed coffee at home without a Toddy. (I lost mine during one of my haphazard moves.) I mix coffee grounds with water in a pot, let it sit in the fridge overnight, and filter the concentrate into a pitcher using paper towels and a fine mesh strainer. The concentrate keeps for up to two weeks. You can mix the concentrate with hot water or with cold water and ice.

The only drawback of making it at home is that you can quickly become over-caffeinated from replenishing your glass too many times.

The Walla Walla Roastery serves their cold-brewed iced coffee with milk and vanilla flavoring, the Patisserie serves it with just milk, and Olive lets you do your own doctoring. (I personally favor the Patisserie’s method. It’s just served perfectly, especially since I don’t like a lot of sweetness in my coffee.) It’s more pricy than a drip coffee, but well worth the treat.

So, if you aren’t already obsessed with cold-brewed coffee, I encourage you to go out to one of these places and try it!