Not bold or smoky in a good way. It tastes like an ashtray, stale smoke, and it has done for three batches running. Same beans each time, a dark roast labelled Italian that I bought a kilo of.
The same beans are fine as espresso, which is what confuses me. Is this the roast showing up differently in cold brew, or is something in my kit going rancid? And which do I test first?
Test the equipment anyway, because it is free and it is cumulative. Coffee oils build up in grinders, jars, mesh filters and especially rubber gaskets, and once they go rancid every batch tastes burnt regardless of the beans.
Strip the cold brew maker down properly including the seals, clean the grinder burrs and hopper per the manufacturer, and replace cloth or paper filters rather than rinsing them. Mine tasted like this for a month and it was the burrs.
Run one batch on filtered water. Water is almost all of the drink and strong tap water shows up.
Order I would use, since you asked: clean everything, then switch to a fresh medium roast, then filtered water, then adjust steep time and grind. Change one thing at a time or you will fix it and never know what it was.
Steeping too long is lower down the list because over-extraction usually reads as harsh and bitter rather than ashy specifically, although it will make an already dark roast worse. Slightly coarser grind and a shorter steep within your recipe's range if the first four do not do it.
@roast_date_on_bag · 3d ago · 3 replies
Both are plausible and your own observation points at the roast. Very dark roasts, the ones labelled French or Italian or espresso, develop smoky carbon-like flavours. In hot coffee that reads as bold. Cold brew is smoother and much less acidic, so there is nothing to balance the ashy notes and they stand out.
So the same beans being fine as espresso is not a contradiction, it is the explanation. Try a medium or medium-dark for cold brew; chocolatey nutty mediums make much better cold brew than anything labelled Italian.
Reply
Report
@tastes_like_ashtray · 3d ago
I have most of a kilo left. Anything to do with it other than drink it as espresso?
Reply
Report
@roast_date_on_bag · 3d ago
Drink it as espresso, which it is good at. Also check the bag for a roast date rather than a best-before: a kilo bought at once is a lot of coffee and stale oils taste flat and papery and ashy in their own right, which would compound what the roast is already doing.
Reply
Report