Iced Coffee Owns My Soul...wait, isn't that like four things that do now?

Geez, my soul must be huge for me to have so many things that own it.

I love iced coffee. It has much more caffeine (double, from what I hear!) and is super refreshing in the spring/summer. Here in NYC it goes from winter, to spring for two days and then it's insanely hot. Lately, though, the weather has been slingshotting around and no one knows what the hell is going on.

Iced coffee concentrate. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?

Anyway, my day job is in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and there are like fifty coffeeshops near me (I'm sorry, Gorilla Coffee, I love you). Not kidding. I can look out the shop door and see two. It's insane. With my love of iced coffee, I had stopped in to get some and immediately wanted to never do it again. I loved the taste, loved the aroma, hated how much I had to pay. I get it, coffee is expensive, but I'm a cheapskate at heart so this needed to be fixed. Well, my fix needed to be fixed. Wait, what?

So I sat down and asked the internet how to make my own iced coffee. The plethora of articles I saw was incredible, such great info and little tidbits! However, I have next to no kitchen supplies anymore and I sure as shit don't have a french press. I had to play around and experiment!
I love experimenting.
Don't take that the wrong way.
Or do. Whatever. I won't tell you how to live your life.

I had to stop myself several times before gulping the crap out of  this on my walk to work.

Using the basics from The Nourishing Gourmet, I put together what I could and used this method:

Cold Brew Iced Coffee the Mande Way
Ingredients:
1 1/3c of coffee grounds (I have a huge bag of Blonde Roast coffee from Starbucks that my roommate gave me, but if you can get it ground fresh do so, the darker the better)
4c water
2 coffee filters
Salt, pepper (kidding, kidding!)

Method:
Mix together the coffee and water in a medium sized container (I didn't have one, so I used a small stock pot). Once it's properly mixed and all the grounds are immersed, pop it in the fridge overnight. By overnight, I mean at LEAST eight hours. You have to give it time to cold brew.

This is the part that takes a bit of time after you've waited a thousand years for your concentrate. I don't own a fine mesh strainer, so I had to improvise. I used a coffee filter positioned over another container and strained it that way. I had to do a bit at a time and be a little careful, but it worked just fine. Then, for good measure and because I know some grounds got through, I strained it a second time. This is why you'll need two filters.

Make sure you have ice cubes. I know this sounds stupid but I can't tell you how many times I wanted something cold and I don't have any. Alright, maybe it's just me.

Put a few ice cubes in a glass, and add in 1 part concentrate to 2 parts cold water. If you like to bastardize your coffee, go ahead and toss in sugar and whatever weird milk thing you put in there. Sometimes I like to add a boatload of sugar to it, but for the most part it tastes fine to me so I leave it.

This will yield about 8 cups of coffee. You can keep that concentrate up to a week in a sealed container, but honestly who can resist having 4 cups of coffee a day? You? Oh. Well don't you have some self-control.

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And that, my friends, is cold brewing iced coffee. I'm going to keep mine in a mason jar and drag it to work with me, so I can be hyperactive and obnoxious all day long.