Cold-brew coffee is surprisingly easy to prepare at home, despite the price markup on the caffeinated beverage at stores and coffee shops. It can be as easy as adding room-temperature or colder water to ground coffee and letting it steep. With a growing number of handy cold-brew gadgets on the market, you can make a batch to rival the cold brew from your favorite shop down the street.
Refreshing and loaded with caffeine, cold brewing is a great alternative to a traditional coffee pot, especially on humid summer mornings. Some cold-brew coffee makers can whip up a batch in a fraction of the time you might think it takes. The Gourmia Cold Brew Coffee Maker, for instance, completes the process in minutes rather than hours.
If speed isn’t a priority, there are plenty of cold-brewing alternatives. Oxo’s cold brewer is affordable and easy to operate and makes excellent cold-brewed coffee concentrate. Traditional cold-brew makers, such as the Takeya and Bialetti pitchers, are also reasonably priced — though they require at least 12 hours of brewing time, devotees will tell you it’s worth the wait.
No matter how you prefer your chilled coffee — beans or grounds, ultraconcentrated, ready yesterday or with minimal hassle — this list will help you find the best machine to fit your needs as a coffee lover, without getting into hot water. We update this list periodically with new products.
Read more: Best Coffee Grinder
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A breeze to operate, the Oxo Good Grips Cold Brew Coffee Maker offers an easy path to steeping and straining grounds at room temperature when cold-brewing coffee. The cold drip coffee the Oxo Good Grips makes is consistently strong, sweet and with deliciously low acidity. To add an additional layer of filtration, Oxo Good Grips bundles paper filters that can aid the brewer’s reusable, fine-mesh stainless steel filter. If you want to make hot tea, the Good Grips can also be used as a tea infuser to fill your cup or jar.
Beyond utility, this drip coffee maker dispenses into a stylish glass carafe and the brewing container would look amazing on your table as you serve guests.
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One tried-and-true brewing method for making delicious cold brew is to use a French press, with the coffee steeping overnight. One drawback to the brewing process of these simple contraptions though is they tend to have poor filters. The result is often a gritty drink — solid coffee grounds suspended in a water solution, especially if you don’t have a coarse grind for your coffee beans. The Espro Press P5 tackles the gritty coffee grounds problem by using two stainless-steel mesh filter baskets. The extra level of filtration helps the P5 create cold brew (or hot coffee) that’s wonderfully smooth and flavorful. However, the beverage the Espro brews isn’t as concentrated as other products make. What is nice is that you can brew tea with the Espro just as easily.
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Looking for an affordable way to make cold brew in big batches? The Filtron Cold Water Coffee Brewer creates a full 36-ounce carafe of potent coffee concentrate that you can store in your fridge. Rich and tasty, the coffee you pour from the Filtron is of excellent quality. Just be warned: This Filtron brewer has a relatively complicated setup and the large size of the cold-brew system demands lots of counter space.
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Outside of an old-school Mason jar, it’s hard to beat the low price of this Takeya cold coffee brewer. The BPA-free dishwasher-safe plastic pitcher comes with an airtight seal and has a slim profile made to slide into fridge door shelves. With its fine-mesh reusable filter, It’s easy to clean and makes solidly satisfying cold brew. If you want a strong, concentrated coffee, though, this product isn’t your best choice, as this cold-brew maker produces a weaker drink than similar products.
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If you want the convenience of Oxo’s bigger cold coffee brewer in a more compact size, this kitchen gadget is for you. The pint-size Oxo Compact Cold Brew Coffee Maker shoehorns into tight spots around the home. Despite its petite stature, though, the coffee maker brews beverages just as concentrated as its larger sibling’s.
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Need your tall glass of cold brew fast? Then the Gourmia Cold Brew Coffee Maker is right up your alley. The vacuum pump-powered electric appliance can brew your beverage in 4 minutes flat. That’s a ridiculously short time to create cold brew in, but as you might expect, the taste of those 4-minute brews is weak. Fortunately, maxing the brew time out to 15 minutes produces a much stronger drink. And that’s still not long to wait compared with the 12 hours of steeping that cold brewing usually takes.
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Made to live in your fridge, the affordable Bialetti Cold Brew pitcher can pour directly into glasses. This coffee machine’s internal stainless-steel mesh filter basket has a wide mouth that accepts the coffee grinds without making a mess, while the airtight lid keeps the taste fresh when you’re hankering for iced coffee. The concentrated brew it makes is strong, rich and packed with a pleasant coffee taste. The main drawback with this cold brew maker is you need to drain its filter into the carafe by hand.
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Make your own delicious cold-brew coffee at home
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