Cold Brew

Cold-brewed coffee has roots stretching back centuries. In 17th-century Japan, Dutch traders — forbidden from using open flame aboard wooden ships — experimented with steeping coffee in cold water during long voyages. The technique took hold in Kyoto, where it evolved into the elegant slow-drip towers known as Kyoto-style cold brew: ice water dripping drop by drop through grounds over many hours, producing a concentrate of remarkable complexity.

The modern immersion method owes much to Todd Simpson, a chemical engineer and garden nursery owner who tasted cold-steeped coffee concentrate during a plant-gathering trip to Central America in the early 1960s. Captivated by its smoothness and low acidity, Simpson developed the Toddy Cold Brew System — an immersion brewer still in production today — and began selling it commercially.

Cold brew remained a niche method until the 2010s, when Stumptown Coffee Roasters began bottling their cold brew in stubby glass bottles in Portland in 2011, bringing the style to grocery shelves and a mainstream audience. Within a few years, every major roaster and coffee chain followed, and cold brew grew from a curiosity into one of the fastest-growing segments in the coffee industry.