Filtron Cold Water Coffee Concentrate Brewer

Works great but you don’t need most of the parts! Buy just a few parts and save money!This system makes it easy to make really tasty cold brew coffee.But you don’t need most of the parts. it will work better, and cost you much less, if you buy just a few of the parts.All you need is the coffee bowl, the wool filter pads, the rubber stopper. All the rest of the parts are unnecessary.If you buy just these three parts at filtron it will cost you less than the whole system and as a bonus you will get additional filters, and rubber stoppers included when you buy the parts, so you won't have to buy replacement parts later.Here’s the story: All you need to do to make cold brew coffee is mix coffee grinds with cold water and let it sit for as short as overnight or as long as a week. Ideally let it is uncovered in a refrigerator.You want it to be uncovered so the bitter gasses evaporate leaving a much sweeter coffee.This Filtron system has two nice advantages. It has a filter on the bottom of the coffee bowl (where the grinds mixed with water sit), and a rugger stopper on the bottom.This means once the coffee has been sitting in the refrigerator and is ready to be filtered out all you have to do is put the coffee bowl on an open wide mouth jar and pull out the rubber stop, and let gravity do the rest.While the coffee is draining out through the filter into the jar below, you can aid the process if you want by stirring the mixture from time to time to make the liquid easier to go thru the filter.All the extra pieces of this apparatus, are unnecessary. The water bowl that lets water drip slowly into the coffee grinds to mix with the coffee is unnecessary because it is faster and easier just to mix the grinds and water with a spoon.The white round plastic piece with holes is also unnecessary, and the filter paper serves no purpose except to add expense..The large plastic flask that you put under the coffee bowl when you pull out the stopper does work fine to fill with coffee once you pull out the rubber stopper -- but any large wide mouth jar will work equally well.As a result if you buy just the coffee bowl, filters, and rubber stoppers, and use your own wide mouth jar, you can get a system that is less expensive to buy, easier to work with, faster and easier to use, less expensive just buy buying the coffee bowl, rubber stoppers and filters. And you get several stoppers and filters as part of the package. You can order the parts directly from Filtron. Direct or on Amazon.Note: the coffee will keep indefinitely frozen, and for several months refrigerated.. It tastes best when mixed about 1 oz concentrated coffee to 11 ounces milk,. I had previously made cold brew by letting grinds and water sit in a large pitcher, and then pouring them through a regular coffee filter in a brew basket from a coffee machine.This is much easier, and does a better job of getting almost all of the liquid out of the grinds, since they drip through the filter under the force of gravity.The company has informed me and I have verified from use that the coffee bowl you mix coffee and water in can be washed in the dishwasher.The Only thing that that is not ideal is that to let the coffee drip out in to the t once it has been sitting overnight with the grinds, it is necessary to reach under the container and pull out the rubber plug. This is a bit difficult to do since the black container with the coffee is heavy, and it is hard to pull out the rubber stopper without getting a little coffee on your hands.I manage to do this while holding the coffee container with the coffee against my chest over the sink above the jug while pulling out the stopper,It's doable and you can get used to it, but its far from elegant.That said the coffee is great, much better that heated coffee. It is very very concentrated, but makes a great latte with one part coffee to 8 to 11 parts milk.You can buy filter paper but it is not necessary, as the cloth filter that comes with it does a fine job by itself.You can clean the cloth filter by boiling it in water in a microwave.for a few minutes.All in all an excellent system.

*** UPDATE after three years ***Still using it and loving it. As my review suggested have been using flavorful medium roast with finest grind possible.**************************************I just bought this and have made one batch (1 pound) of coffee. The product is easy to use and the positive reviews are mostly right on. However, there are some things you should know, because what you make will NOT be the same as hot brewed coffee. I give four-stars instead of five because I had to do a lot of research to figure stuff out. Most of the best information is from a chef who did a lot of coffee research: [...].Things you should know.1) Water/concentrate ratio is critical. I tried the recommend 6oz water/1oz coffee and got brown water. Bleah! The next time I made the coffee too strong and got a bitter taste. I like strong coffee so that was actually much better for me than my first attempt. Now I'm consistently getting a strong but not bitter, somewhat sweet taste. I like mixing with chocolate soy milk to make mocha and it tastes wonderful.2) Making coffee with cold water produces less coffee with less caffeine than using a hot brewing method. There are many estimates, but maybe 30-35 6oz cups per pound for cold vs. 40-45 cups hot. There is maybe 30% less caffeine. I followed the method of reusing the grounds a second time with half the water and that seemed to get closer to an equivalent amount of coffee as hot. I needed an extra container to hold the extra coffee I got from the second run.3) There will be less (or no) coffee aroma. I smelled some while "brewing", but the resulting coffee has no aroma, even after microwaving.4) The chef I mention above used a French press. I simulated this by putting a bowl on top of the grounds (my plates were too big) and pressing down with my hand. I did this while it was draining into the carafe, so obviously you need to be careful to not press sideways and send everything flying all over the kitchen. It wasn't that hard, just be careful. Pressing like this seemed to extract more coffee. Warning, pressing also buries the plastic "grounds separator" under the grounds. I forgot about it and threw it away with the grounds (but realized my mistake right away and retrieved from trash).5) Filtron recommends grinding your coffee to coarse/medium. I used an auto-drip grind I already had and it worked OK. Filton's recommendation didn't make sense to me because cold extracts less coffee. I would think you'd want a much finer grind to extract more coffee. The chef I mention above agrees with me. Next time I'll try a very fine grind and see how it works.6) Filtron supplies two paper filters that you can optionally use. I used one but it seems like they are not necessary. I'm not sure what difference they make since the main filtering is done by the filter pad.7) I like dark roasts, but my many times mentioned chef recommends medium so you get more coffee flavor and less "roasting process" flavor. I think I can taste what he is saying and will try a medium roast next time.It would have been helpful to know all this up front, but overall I like the product and think it will produce better coffee for me with much less work than daily brewing. I make both cold coffee and hot (by microwaving the diluted concentrate) and like both. But it is different and it does take some practice getting it right.

The paper directions were a little iffy for first time use, but I'm also notoriously bad with paper directions. I found a youtube video to follow along with and boom, instant success. The concentrate that comes out of this puppy is delicious; I will be enjoying lots of cold brew this summer.

no bells or whistles but makes excellent cold brew - especially appreciate the wool filter. It ensures no particulates which are the usual cause of bitterness