By now, you may have discovered that cold water process brewing of coffee produces a lower acidity brew. That’s great news for people suffering from acid reflux or other gastrointestinal ailments. But what is the cold water process all about and how do you perfect this technique at home?

It is really a very simple coffee brewing method and is more or less just an adjustment from your normal routine.

HOW TO DO IT YOURSELF :

Step 1: Grind your coffee beans to a coarse setting.

Step 2: Place your coarsely ground coffee in a container and add cold water. A good rule of thumb is approximately one pound of ground coffee to nine cups of cold water.

Step 3: Let coffee grounds and cold water steep for 12 to 24 hours at room temperature. Many prefer to let their mixture sit overnight. There is no need to stir.

Step 4: Separate the ground coffee beans from the water to create a liquid coffee concentrate. There are a variety of techniques and appliances to assist in filtering the mixture, including paper filters, metal sieves, French presses and commercial products such as the Filtron unit. I have even heard of people scooping the grounds out with a perforated spoon, albeit somewhat messy. Pick the filter method best suited to your needs.

Step 5: You now have a coffee concentrate able to produce multiple cups of coffee. Pour a small amount of concentrate in a cup and add hot water to produce a wonderful mug of low acid coffee. Simply experiment with the dilution ratio of water to concentrate to perfect the preferred taste. A good starting point would be 1 part concentrate to 3 parts water. From this point, it’s a tasting game. Adjust concentrate versus water as appropriate.

Step 6: Store remaining concentrate in the refrigerator for future use.

That’s it! You have now completed the cold water process brewing of your coffee beans. Most individuals find the taste comparison between hot brewed and cold brewed coffee very different. Because the acidity is lower, you may find a sweeter, smoother coffee without the “bite” (but without the heartburn as well!). Many of the subtle underlying flavors which are produced only by high temperatures will be deficient, as a cold brew process will extract a different chemical profile. Now it’s your turn to give it a shot!

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Heartburn, anyone?  Low acid coffee might be a solution.  Acid reflux, indigestion, GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) – all names referring to that uncomfortable burning that starts in the pit of your stomach, coats your esophagus and radiates up to your chest and throat.  Anyone who experiences heartburn symptoms on a regular basis can tell you the importance of diet and how certain foods and drinks, usually acidic, can trigger a flare of this condition.  For people who love drinking coffee, this can create quite a conflict.  To drink or not to drink, that is the question.  Thankfully, there is the existence of low acid coffee. 

Coffee, in general, absorbs tastes and attributes from the surrounding terrain and region in which it is grown, as well as other environmental factors.  Coffee naturally produces acids and sugars among other properties of the coffee bean.  Coffee growing regions of the globe each produce distinctive coffee beans with variations in genetic properties, including taste, smell, color, and yes, even acidity.  Low acid coffee beans can be found in specific areas where coffee plants are inherently bestowed with natural low acid characteristics.  That’s good news for the reflux-afflicted consumer.  The easiest way to find these low acid coffee beans is to simply ask. 

Besides the naturally grown low acid coffee bean, there are other ways to generate a low acid cup of coffee.  Certain roasting and brewing processes can significantly impact the amount of acid created without affecting the taste or aroma of the coffee itself.  Special roasting techniques designed to balance pH levels can minimize acidity.  A time consuming, yet simple and productive, cold brewing process can significantly reduce acidity as well.  The cold brewing method can be achieved with any ground coffee of choice and involves adding cold water to the coffee grounds and allowing them to steep for approximately 12 hours.  After steeping and subsequently separating the grounds, the concentrate can then be served by adding the desired amount of hot water  - and voilà, you have a cup of low acid coffee. 

For those coffee lovers suffering from chronic reflux or heartburn and the coffee conundrum this creates, investigate the benefits low acid coffee provides.  The less acid, the less likely it is to aggravate the gastrointestinal system, leading to a “happy” stomach. Perhaps it will be discovered that you can have the best of both worlds. 

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Back to the daily grind, coffee grinding that is.  The number of people who understand the variations in coffee grinding is surprisingly low.  So here’s a crash course on the basics of coffee grinding and why the consistency of the grind is so important. 

For starters, your “perfect cup” of coffee highly relies on how your coffee is brewed and correspondingly, your brewing method is interrelated to the fineness or coarseness of your coffee grind.  Brewing methods include your average “Mr. Coffee” auto drips, French presses and espresso machines among many.  The general grinding consistencies are coarse, medium and fine, although there are mid-level grinds, such as medium-fine and super-fine, etc.  Different brewing machines expose the ground coffee beans to heated water for varying amounts of time and you must therefore “match up” the brewing technique with the coarseness of your grind.  For example, a French press requires a coarse grind secondary to sediment and design, whereas the usual auto drip coffee machines work best with a medium to fine grind.  The more the coffee bean is ground (i.e., fineness) the more surface area is exposed to the hot water.  Keep this in mind, as this is just one of the elements in coffee grinding that dictates the consistency vs. brewing method relationship. 

The following is a short description of each grind which may help in your coffee grinding endeavors:  A coarse grind is chunky with obvious fragments, kind of like potting soil; a medium grind is similar to rough sand; a fine grind is smoother still and has a texture comparable to salt or sugar; a super-fine grind is very much like powdered sugar or flour with maybe a slight bit of grit still felt; a Turkish grind, one step past super-fine, is as near to a flour consistency as you can get. 

Coffee grinding methods include the usual blade grinding and burr grinding machines which you can purchase through multiple outlets.  If you want to try coffee grinding without these machines, you can try chopping, pounding and even roller grinding.  Some suggestions that have been thrown out there about how to “do-it-yourself” include crushing the coffee beans with a hammer, using a rolling pin and even mortar and pestle.  A simple blender goes a long way in coffee grinding as well, although you will not be able to achieve a fine or super-fine grind with most blenders. 

Given a little bit of time and experience (or should I say “experiments”) your coffee grinding knowledge will translate well into your coffee cup.  With the unending “do-it-yourself” tactics and/or coffee grinding machines, we’ll leave it up to you to decide exactly how you want to grind your coffee bean.  Here’s to each cup getting better and better!

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Coffee is the second most traded product in the world after petroleum. It is the second most popular drink, second only to water.

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