How to Make the Perfect Cold Brew at Home
Cold brew is not iced coffee. It extracts differently — slower, cooler, smoother. Here is the exact method we use at the roastery, and why Arabica makes it better than anything else.
Cold brew is not just iced coffee. That distinction matters. When you pour hot espresso over ice you are still drinking heat-extracted coffee — all the bright acidity, all the bitterness — just cold. Cold brew is something else entirely. No heat ever touches it. The result is smoother, rounder, with a natural sweetness that surprises people who have only ever had it from a plastic bottle at a petrol station.
Why Cold Brew Favours Arabica
Heat extraction is aggressive. It pulls everything out of a coffee bean — the good (aroma compounds, sweetness) and the bad (chlorogenic acids that become bitter on the palate). Cold water is selective. It extracts sugars and mellower aromatic compounds first, leaving the harsh acids largely untouched.
This is why Arabica shines in cold brew. Arabica beans carry more natural sugars and fruit-forward compounds than Robusta. When you slow-extract Arabica at room temperature or in the fridge, those qualities come forward without the bitterness that hot-brew can mask with milk. What you get is clarity — the actual taste of the bean.
Cold water is selective. It extracts sweetness and aroma first. With 100% Arabica, that is the whole story.
The Bereiken Method
We developed this method at our Surat roastery using our Classic and Caramel variants. Both work beautifully — Classic gives you a clean, bold concentrate; Caramel adds a natural butterscotch note that is extraordinary over ice with oat milk.
Recipe
Bereiken Cold Brew Concentrate
You Need
Method
- 1Add 3 heaped teaspoons of Bereiken to the jar. Because it is spray-dried Arabica, no coarse grinding is needed — it dissolves fully.
- 2Pour 300 ml of cold (not chilled) filtered water directly over the granules. Stir briefly — 10 seconds — until fully dissolved.
- 3Seal the jar and leave at room temperature for 2 hours, or in the fridge for 8–12 hours. Fridge gives a cleaner flavour; room temperature is faster and bolder.
- 4Stir once more before using. No straining needed — the coffee is fully soluble. If you prefer absolute clarity, pass through a cloth once.
- 5Serve over ice at a 1:1 ratio with water or milk. Store concentrate in the fridge for up to 5 days.
Three Ways to Serve It
- Straight over ice with a peel of orange — the citrus note amplifies the natural brightness of Arabica cold brew.
- Bereiken Cold Brew Latte: equal parts concentrate and chilled oat milk, one cube of ice, no sweetener needed — Caramel is naturally sweet enough.
- Cold Brew Tonic: pour the concentrate slowly over chilled tonic water and ice. Do not stir. The layers settle into something that looks as good as it tastes.
A Note on Caffeine
Cold brew has a reputation for being very high in caffeine because of the longer contact time. With Bereiken, the contact time has no bearing on caffeine content — the granules fully dissolve in the first two minutes. The longer rest is only about flavour development. So your cold brew has exactly the same caffeine as your regular cup.
Make it tonight
Put a jar in your fridge before bed. Wake up to the smoothest cold brew you have made at home. Classic or Caramel — both built for this.