This $10 Aldi Gadget Can Save You Money On Cold Brew This Summer

There's no better pick-me-up on a hot day than an iced cold brew coffee, but if a $5 to 7 coffee shop visit is a daily habit, it could cost you nearly $50 a week. But the discount grocer Aldi is here to the rescue! The new Aldi Crofton Cold Brew System is only $10, easy to use, and can make you into a home kitchen barista. It cranks out delicious cold brew coffee for under a dollar per 12-ounce serving, the exact price depending on where your preferred beans lay on the cheap to fancy scale. Even compared to Dunkin's $2.29 small sized cold brew, using Aldi's new cold brew maker will save you money.

The instructions on the Aldi Crofton Cold Brew System are simple, but if you're not used to making cold brew coffee at home, you might be missing some crucial information. The label on the box says to place ¾ cup of coarsely ground coffee into the carafe filter, fill the rest of the cold brew maker with water, and let the mix steep for 12 to 24 hours. That wiggle room of 12 hours can produce quite a range of strength in your coffee, so when making cold brew for the first time, give it a sample every couple hours to see what your preferred steep time is. And if the coffee is too weak for your taste after even 24 hours, consider bumping up the amount of grounds. Chowhound recommends a cup of ground coffee for every four cups of water.

If you've already got a drip coffee maker, you might think you can get iced coffee just by cooling down your hot brew. And sure, it's technically potable, but it won't taste nearly as good as a proper cold brew. That's because the two methods extract different flavor compounds from the coffee bean. A good hot coffee will feature malty, roasty flavors with a full body and rich aroma. But the compounds that are extracted in a hot brew can oxidize and taste stale as a drip coffee cools to room temperature, and is then iced. With cold brew, that's avoided from the start by extracting significantly less acidic and harsher flavored compounds from the grounds, keeping it sweet and mellow.

That process is expensive for coffee shops. Cold brew uses at least twice as much coffee beans than hot, making for tighter margins. It's no big deal for someone at home to make a cold brew on Monday to drink on Tuesday, but that 24 hour turnaround on a commercial scale means tricky sales forecasting, and a risk of spoiled, unsold product. Dry beans have a longer shelf life compared to cold brew concentrate. But the Aldi Crofton Cold Brew System only makes four servings at a time, so it's easy to drink the iced coffee before it goes bad. If you've never been to Aldi, here's what else you need to know if picking one up marks your first journey to the store.