Now that it’s warm and muggy outside, a hot cup cup of coffee just doesn’t sound very refreshing. Unfortunately, I still require that nice jolt of caffeine in the morning to get me going. Last summer, I experimented with different methods of brewing coffee for iced coffee which ranged from throwing a bunch of ice cubes into a cup of hot coffee to cold brewing the coffee grounds.

While the former can be done at the last minute if I desperately want an iced coffee, the latter yields a much better tasting, richer, and not so diluted cup of iced coffee.

The best part is that cold-brewing doesn’t require anything special. Actually, you can cold brew coffee without any special machine or equipment. You just need a little time.

The night before, I pour 1 part ground coffee and 2 parts water into a seal-able container. I mix it up a little bit and leave the coffee in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, I place a coffee filter over a cup or jar and make sure that it is fastened to the container so that it doesn’t fall in with the coffee. I like using a ball jar because I can make sure the rubber band, or twine in my case, is anchored in those groves. This part takes a little bit of patience. I pour the coffee mixture up to the top of the coffee filter then walk away and let it go to work. Then I give it a minute or so the fill it up a bit more.

This step also takes some time. But you can do this well ahead of time and store the filtered coffee for the week to use whenever you want a cup. If you like a nice big cup of black iced-coffee in the morning, then I suggest brewing 1.5 to 2 cups of water for every day you want a cup (for 5 days, I would brew 5 cups of ground coffee with 10 cups of water).

But if you are like me and like a healthy dose of milk in your coffee, then you may only need one cup of water for every day (for 5 days, I would brew 2.5 cups of ground coffee with 5 cups of water).

Do you switch to iced coffee in the Summer? What is your favorite way to brew it?