Cocktails with Cold brew coffee
Cold brew coffee is coffee steeped in cool or room-temperature water over many hours rather than brewed with hot water.
Taste profile
Smooth and rounded on the palate with a medium body, carrying strong roasted-coffee aroma, a mild bitterness, and notably less sharp acidity than hot-brewed coffee.
How it's used
Bartenders build or shake it in as a base liquid or a coffee accent, adjusting strength by dilution since the purchased form is frequently a concentrate; undiluted it delivers far more coffee intensity and caffeine per volume. It is unsweetened as brewed, so any sweetness is added separately with sugar, syrup or milk.
Substitutes for Cold brew coffee
Another coffee form works only where cold brew is a small accent; a hot-brewed coffee can approximate it but keeps a sharper acidity, and no non-coffee ingredient can stand in because the roasted-coffee aroma is the whole point.
Often confused with
Iced coffee
Iced coffee is brewed hot and then cooled or poured over ice, while cold brew never contacts hot water; the cold extraction gives cold brew a lower titratable acidity and smoother profile even though both are served cold.
