Cold-brew coffee is strong, sweet, packed with flavor and much less acidic-tasting than regular hot-brewed coffee or iced coffee. Those are just a few reasons why this delicious drink is so hard to resist. Your local coffee shop and restaurants know that too. They’ll try to tempt coffee drinkers into paying exorbitant prices for regular coffee, iced coffee and delicious cold brew. Don’t give into them. Making cold-brew coffee can be as easy as adding room-temperature water or colder water (not hot water) to ground coffee and letting it steep. Thanks to a growing number of home cold brewers, you can whip up a batch of your own in style. It’s way better than a traditional coffee pot.
Some cold brew maker options even make cold brew in a fraction of the time it usually takes. The Gourmia Cold Brew is an excellent example. The counter machine completes the process in minutes, rather than hours.
The Bialetti Cold Brew Coffee Maker.
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If speed isn’t a priority, there are plenty alternatives. Oxo’s cold brewer is affordable and easy to operate and makes excellent cold-brewed coffee concentrate. Likewise, the Takeya and Bialetti pitchers also have prices that are easy to swallow. Traditional cold brewer maker options like those require at least 12 hours of brewing time, but devotees will tell you the stuff is worth the wait.
And, no matter how you prefer your chilled coffee — beans or grounds, ultraconcentrated, ready yesterday or with minimal hassle — find the best cold brew coffee maker for you in this list. I’m sure one of these will fit your needs as a coffee lover perfectly and won’t get you into hot water.
Read more: Best coffee maker for 2020
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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 brew 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 stainless steel fine mesh reusable 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.
Read our Oxo Cold Brew Coffee Maker review.
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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, and the airtight lid keeps the taste fresh when you’re hankering for coffee that is iced. The concentrated brew it makes is also 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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One tried-and-true brewing method for making 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) that’s wonderfully smooth and flavorful. However, the beverage the Espro brews isn’t as concentrated as what other products make. What is nice is that you can brew tea with the Espro just as easily.
Read our Espro Press P5 review.
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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 concentrate you pour from the Filtron is of excellent quality. Just be warned: This Filtron brewer has a relatively complicated setup and large size demand lots of counter space.
Read our Filtron Cold Water Coffee Brewer review.
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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 four minutes flat. That’s a ridiculously short time to create and pour 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.
Read CNET’s full review of the Gourmia Cold Brew Coffee Maker.
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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 also easy to clean and makes solidly satisfying cold brew. If you want strong, concentrated coffee though, this product isn’t your cup of tea. It brews a weaker drink than other similar products.
Read our Takeya Cold Brew Coffee Maker review.
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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 still brews beverages just as concentrated as it larger sibling.
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Make your own delicious cold-brew coffee at home
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