With summer in full swing, many of us are longing for a refreshing cup of cold brew. However, due to the long time it takes to make the beverage, prices in coffee shops and supermarkets are high. Luckily you can easily make a batch for yourself and without spending any money at all.
If you’re someone who tends to drink and prepare a lot of coffee, you’ve certainly already wondered about what to do with all those coffee grounds you keep ending up with. You could of course very well use them as a slug-repellant in the garden or as a natural scrub but there’s more to them then meets the eye.
Next time you’re longing for a cup of cold brew, try saving some of those spent coffee grounds and putting them aside. In the fridge, spent coffee grounds can be kept for a few days and if you put them in the freezer, there’s almost no limit to how long they can be preserved, giving you all the time you need to assemble a little stash. Alternatively, you could also ask your local coffee bar for some spent grounds. Try to aim for at least 300 grams.
Why keep that waste aside, you ask? As it turns out, spent coffee grounds can easily be recycled into a refreshing cold brew. They still contain a lot of flavour and caffeine and, if you give it some time, extraction is easy. And once you’ve prepared them for the second time around, you can still recycle them as you wish.
Ingredients
- 300 grams of spent coffee grounds
- 1 litre of (filtered) water
Preparation method
- Put the grounds and the cold water into a container of your choosing.
- Stir, put a lid on the mixture and set aside in the fridge for approximatively 16 hours – a little longer won’t hurt.
- Pour the mixture into a bottle through a coffee filter or fine sieve.
- Keep the bottle in the fridge – it should last for at least 4 days – and serve yourself a glass of cold brew (with ice) whenever you want.
- If you prefer to drink your cold brew with some sweetener, milk or plant-based drink, you can of course add anything you want to bring it up to taste.
