A classic cold-brew maker is a little like a kindergarten art teacher for coffee. It requires a whole lot of patience—and really it’s just there to let the coffee express itself.
And so the best cold-brew coffee maker isn’t necessarily the most high-tech. It’s often the device that best gets out of the way, granting cool-steeped coffee grounds the space to slowly release their natural sweetness and most delicate flavors—not to mention a bracing hit of caffeine. The result is a refreshing and low-acidity brew that’s gentle on both the stomach and the palate. But as with all subtle things, what goes wrong while making cold brew can also be subtle.
We carefully tested dozens of cold-brew devices to find our favorites, the ones that consistently lead to a full-flavored and full-bodied cup without off-notes or unwanted grittiness. We assessed ease of use, consistency of brews, simple messiness, and simple beauty. And we also tried a new generation of devices that aim to hurry up the process, from slow-drip coffee devices that look like chemistry sets to some of the most hyped new devices in the coffee world—to see whether any of them can match up to the long, slow process of just letting coffee be itself.
Be sure to check out our other coffee guides to round out your coffee tool set, like the Best Espresso Machines, Best Latte & Cappuccino Makers, Best Portable Coffee Makers, Best Coffee Subscriptions, and Best Coffee Grinders.
Updated December 2024: We’ve added the Fellow Aiden, Cumulus, Bodum Melior and Bean, Kinto Capsule, Ovalware Cold Brew Maker, and Mueller Smoothbrew, and adjusted picks, pricing, and product descriptions throughout.
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What Is Cold Brew, and What Isn’t It?
Cold brew is not a kind of coffee. It is, instead, a process.
Cold brew was first documented and refined in Japan as far back as the 1600s, and the idea behind it is quite simple: Let coffee grounds steep in cool water. Add nothing. Strain and drink the result.
While other coffee makers rely on heat or pressure to quickly extract flavors from coffee grounds, cold brew relies, instead, on time. Lots of time. At room temperature, coarse-ground coffee must be steeped for 12 or 16 or 24 hours before the beans release their optimal flavors.
It is a gentle process, with gentle results. When left for hours to steep in cool water, coffee grounds can reveal flavors that are smoother and more subtle and maybe even sweet, devoid of many of the acidic and bitter compounds extracted by hot coffee machines.
Those aggressive compounds are what can make hot coffee such a well-rounded and exhilarating ride, of course. But cold-extracted coffee offers different comforts: the full and satisfying creaminess of fats slowly coaxed from the bean, light floral and tea-like notes that might otherwise go lost, natural sweetness that may serve to remind you that coffee is a fruit. Cold brew is also less harsh, a boon for sensitive stomachs.
Note that iced coffee, which involves brewing coffee hot and then icing it back down, is not cold brew. Those compounds released during hot brewing will lead to a much different character, with more oxidation and often higher acidity or bitterness.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Cold brew steeps for a very long time. This leaves plenty of time for variables, for temperature fluctuations, and for off flavors to seep into the coffee from the fridge.
Wherever possible, we tested multiple similar cold-brew makers at the same time, under the same conditions. Which is to say, we left them on the same counter when we tested room-temperature brewing. And we put them in the same fridge at the same time, when we used the fridge.
We then tested the resulting cold brew against cold brew made with other devices. We did so blind, when possible, and against packaged cold brew made with the same or similar beans.
For our first round of testing, we used the recipe recommended on the device’s packaging. We also tested each device’s capacity to make good drinking-strength coffee at a 12:1 water to coffee ratio, and its ability to make concentrate at a 5:1 ratio. In general, we tested room-temperature cold brew after around 16 hours, and waited 24 hours for fridge brew. That said, we also sampled at earlier intervals, and let coffee steep longer if extraction was poor.
Coffee makers were assessed for their ease of use, ease of cleaning, flexibility in making coffee at different strengths, elegance of design, simple lovability, and how much space they took up in a fridge or on a counter. But in the end, the results mattered most: If a device can’t make good coffee, it doesn’t matter if it’s pretty.
What Are the Different Kinds of Cold Brew Makers?
Classic cold brew makers take one of two forms.
Full-immersion bucket brewers, like the classic Toddy, fully immerse coffee grounds in a single container, then strain and/or filter the result to get drinkable coffee. This method allows a great deal of flexibility in the coffee’s concentration, allowing home brewers to make coffee concentrate that can later be diluted to drinking strength.
Filter-basket pitchers have an important distinction: Rather than just be scooped into the water, coffee grounds are instead scooped into a filter basket within a carafe of water. That removes the need to filter out coffee grounds from the resulting cold brew: all one needs to do is remove the basket, and drink the cold brew from the carafe.
On the one hand, the pitcher-style brewers are easier and less messy. On the other, they tend to limit the user’s flexibility in choosing ratios of coffee to water. In the worst case, they can lead to uneven or poor extraction if filters get clogged, or if coffee is packed too densely. This could lead to thin and tea-like coffee, or unevenly extracted coffee that’s both weak and bitter.
In recent years, another process of cold brewing has risen to prominence. The slow-drip or “cold drip” method, developed hundreds of years ago in Kyoto, involves dripping cold water one drop at a time onto a bed of coffee grounds, and letting the water slowly filter through the coffee.
This method takes significantly less time than immersion cold brew, about 6 to 12 hours, but requires much more attention to ensure good results. It also makes slightly different coffee: Compared to immersion cold brew, slow drip makes a lighter, brighter brew with a less full body but more pronounced aromatics. Some prefer this method to highlight flavor notes in single origin coffees.
Other new-school cold brew devices attempt to speed up the process using pressure or agitation or vacuum distillation, or by doing a quick “hot bloom” to release gases and pull a bit of flavor before a cold brew or slow-drip. Some of these methods work better than others.
And, it bears repeating: Iced coffee, or “flash brew,” kinda isn’t cold brew at all. It’s hot coffee that’s been rapidly chilled. It’s a different drink with different characteristics, the same way an Americano isn’t drip coffee. But it’s still cold, and sometimes it’s nice.
How Do You Make Cold-Brew Coffee?
Step One: Mix
I’ve had great cold brew with every grind size. It just depends on what kind of body you want in the finished product. For lighter cold brew, go coarser; for darker, heavier cold brew, go finer. The amount I use is usually about one part coffee grounds to four or five parts water. Depending on your brewer, you usually just pour water over your grounds and stick the whole thing on your counter or in your fridge. You’ve likely heard that you should wet your grounds for a few minutes first, to “bloom” them, but blooming your cold brew doesn’t, in my experience, make any difference to the final product. Because we’re using cold or cool water, any off-gassing the coffee going to do will happen very slowly and during the rest phase.
Step Two: Rest
Next, I give it a light stir to make sure the grounds are fully wetted, but I don’t like to shake them or stir them too heavily at this point. We want time and gravity to do the work for us. I always refrigerate, which takes longer for the aforementioned reasons, but I like the results I get from going low and slow with cold brew. Patience is our friend here. Let it rest in your fridge for 24 hours, taste, then decide whether you want to give it another eight to 12 hours. When the brewing is complete remove the grounds from the brewer and refrigerate the coffee you just made. You’ll probably want to dilute it some with milk or water when drinking. If you don’t like the taste, adjust your methods a bit or try different coffee beans. —Jaina Grey
Does Cold-Brew Coffee Have More Caffeine?
That depends, but generally no, not really.
The amount of caffeine in cold brew depends on its concentration and the ratio of coffee to water. It also depends on how long you steep it. Drink a strong cup of cold brew, and it will have more caffeine. But the same could be said of hot brew.
In general, heat speeds up chemical reactions, cold slows them down. Cold water extracts caffeine (and all the other compounds that comprise the flavor of coffee) from coffee grounds much more slowly than hot water does. But because cold brew steeps longer, and uses more coffee grounds, cold-brewed coffee can have higher caffeine than a hot cup.
A 2017 study in Canada pegged a typical 12-ounce cup of drinking-strength cold brew at around 200 mg of caffeine. The same-sized hot cup, whether Americano or drip, can careen wildly from half to double that amount.
This is complicated still further by the fact many cafés will pour your cold brew over ice, or leave room for even more dilution with milk. You’re often getting less caffeine from a café cold brew.
That said, cold brew is easy to drink. So it’s easy to get a lot of caffeine into your system quicker than you might expect. If cold brew makes you especially jittery, this is probably why.
How Long Does Cold Brew Coffee Last?
A couple days to a couple weeks, depending.
Oxidation is one of the main things that makes old coffee taste stale and acrid. The oxidation process happens quite quickly when coffee is hot, and much slower when it’s cold. Some sources say refrigerated cold brew can last one to two weeks in an airtight container.
But there are some big caveats here. If your cold brew contains grit or microparticles of coffee—and it almost certainly does, unless you used a wool or paper filter—those particles will continue to extract bitter flavors and change the flavor of your coffee. Which is to say, filtered cold brew will taste better longer.
And if your palate is sensitive to the flabby cardboard flavor of oxidation, you may start to notice woody notes or a small deterioration of flavor as soon as a couple days after brewing. By a week, this decline may be quite pronounced.
When and whether you’ll taste the difference depends on your preferences and individual setup.
Best Brewers
Best Overall Cold Brew Maker
If you want the sweet, smooth, full-bodied character of classic cold brew, it turns out nothing beats a full-immersion device like the Oxo Compact. The robust and lovely coffee we’ve made with this device compared favorably to the best packaged cold brews—but at a fraction of the cost per cup. The Oxo’s brewing chamber is basically a bucket, with grounds steeped directly in the water and then filtered out. A device like this, so simple you can hardly call it a device, is almost certainly what your local cafe uses to make the cold brew you pay $5 or more a cup to receive.
So what gives the Oxo Compact the edge over similar devices, including the iconically classic Toddy? Ease, elegance, flexibility, a lack of mess, and a firm respect for shelf space. The Oxo’s “rainmaker” lid provides the water agitation needed to extract a full-flavored brew without additional stirring. Filtration is as easy as placing the immersion chamber atop Oxo’s glass carafe, and waiting 15 minutes.
You can adjust your desired strength to your heart’s content. And the device’s mesh filter can be augmented with an optional additional paper filter for a cleaner-tasting, fine-free cold brew that’ll keep its flavor longer. All parts unscrew easily and can be cleaned with ease, and the device’s design is low-key graceful, with a cork-topped and airtight carafe that a previous Wired reviewer has called “adorable.” When you want to stow the Oxo, the carafe fits inside the device’s other half like a Russian nesting doll.
One overnight steep makes about a pint of cold brew, meaning the Oxo Compact is best suited for making strong cold brew concentrate that you can dilute one-to-one with water or milk. We recommend 110 grams (about 4 ounces) of course-grind coffee, plus 600 milliliters (about 20 ounces) of water. Why? This uses up about one-third of a standard 12-ounce coffee bag, and yields four to five sturdy cups of cold brew after you dilute to drinking strength. If you need larger cold-brew batches for a big household or a serious caffeine habit, we’ll steer you to the larger Oxo Good Grips or the Toddy.
Best Hot-Bloom Cold Brew
Japanese-style iced coffee, aka “Flash Brew,” took the internet by storm in the waning days of the pandemic. It sounds fancy and exotic, but the mechanics are simple: Use your preferred drip device (most very-online coffee geeks agree a pour-over is the only correct option) to slowly brew coffee directly over a pot or carafe filled with ice, thus cooling the coffee in a “flash.” The magic is in the ratio of water to grounds as well as the timing, which is simple in theory but a pain in the ass in practice. Yet again the Fellow Aiden (8/10, WIRED Recommends) handles the annoying stuff for you, while doing things its own way. Aiden’s “Cold Brew” function is not flash coffee, nor quite a cold brew. The Aiden uses a hot initial bloom of water to aid full extraction, but brews the rest of the way with a slow drip of cool water. The result is a faster, brighter cold-drip coffee without the bitter character of some iced coffee.
Dial in your desired output in ounces, and the machine tells you how many grams of ground coffee you’ll need. Pop in the correct brew basket, dial in the matching brew head, then spend the next hour or so doing literally anything else. In our tests, an output setting of 16 ounces required 35 grams of grounds and a 90-minute brew time. We used our trusty Kirkland Signature Organic Ethiopia ground on a setting just a few clicks coarser than an espresso grind. After the machine beeped, the pot was filled with a rich 75-degree-Fahrenheit liquid that barely melted the ice it was poured over, eschewing any bitter notes caused by shocking the brew in ice for a smooth cup with mild grassy notes and the beans’ signature wine-y aftertaste. The machines are coming for our barista jobs, and in this case I’m totally OK with it. —Pete Cottell
Best Countertop Fixture
The WIRED Gear team has liked Oxo’s full-sized cold brew maker for years (8/10 and our WIRED Recommends). It’s a cold brew connoisseur’s dream rig that’s meant to sit proudly on your kitchen counter.
Oxo’s full-sized offers similar upsides to the Compact model, including the rainmaker pouring device and paper/mesh filter options. The difference is the larger model can produce 24 to 28 ounces of full-flavored cold brew. The trade-off for the added capacity is that the stand will require significantly more dedicated shelf space, both in height and breadth. And for me at least, counter space is always at a premium.
After letting your coffee sit on the counter or in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours, flip a switch and your brew cleanly drains into the decanter. It also comes with a measuring lid. Perhaps most important, the coffee it makes tastes just as fantastic as the Compact.
Best No-Fuss, Ready-to-Drink Pitcher
I have a perhaps irrational affection for the Kinto Capsule, both for its pleasing heft and shape and an elegant omnidirectional pouring device that doubles as a lid. I’ll be honest: I have little love for most pitcher-style devices. In theory, they’re designed to remove the mess and fuss of making cold brew. In practice, most make weak and inconsistent coffee even after a full day of steeping. This is a sad situation usually caused by simple geometry. The ratio of coffee to water is generally inflexible and too dilute. The coffee grounds can clump inside the filter basket if they’re packed too densely, and extraction is often unpredictable. It’s a lot to think about.
And yet over and over, I came back to this one-liter Kinto, which makes about five servings of satisfying, complex, ready-to-drink cold brew. The mesh filter is easy to clean and doesn’t clog like the laser-cut metal filters on some similar devices. Its thin-cylindered shape provides lots of surface-area contact between the coffee basket and the water reservoir, making for both good extraction and a snug fit in a fridge door. Plus, that little cap atop the Capsule’s coffee filter chamber, allowing you to agitate the carafe without getting grit in your cold brew? Chef’s kiss.
Best Petite Pitcher
The simplicity of the Mizudashi’s design makes it an absolute joy to use. It’s an elegant, understated device that works just as well for coffee as it does for tea. The reusable filter provides less filtration than a paper filter—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The presence of microscopic coffee particles in a cup of cold brew will leave some sediment in the bottom of the cup, but they also provide a little more body to the brew itself. A silken mouthfeel that, in my opinion, helps the cold brew stand up to the addition of milk a bit better without getting watery.
The thing I love the most about the Mizudashi is its size. The 600-milliliter version is perfect for the amount of cold brew I usually want to have on hand, and the shape and build quality of the Mizudashi just makes me want to make cold brew, and that’s an important quality.
Hario is a Japanese company with a long record of making quality glassware, and it shows in the craftsmanship of this simple carafe. Japan has a long history with cold brew, by some accounts going as far back as the 1600s. The Mizudashi is named after the cold-steeping method used for tea that was reportedly the inspiration for early Japanese coffee drinkers to first try cold-steeping coffee grounds. It’s an acknowledgment of the history of this preparation method, and it speaks to the care and thought that went into the design of this cold brew maker. —Jaina Grey
Best Slow-Drip
The Bruer is the device that truly opened our reviewers’ eyes to the magic of iced slow-drip brewing—a process that can evince lighter and brighter flavors that better showcase single-origin beans than the gentler, more muted results of cold brew. And though it’s called “slow-drip,” the process is quite a bit faster than traditional cold brew. Unlike some lesser slow-drip makers that have had mixed results for WIRED testers, the Cold Bruer Drip makes delightful, concentrated, virtually grit-free slow-drip coffee.
Instead of asking you to pour a bunch of grounds into water and let it sit, the Bruer lets water drip through the grounds using gravity. It looks a little bananas at first, but it’s simple. You fill the bottom of a glass container with coarse coffee grounds. Below the grounds is a steel mesh filter. After you dampen those grounds, put a paper filter on top, snap in the silicone seal, and place the container into the glass carafe. Fill up the top section with water and ice, then twist the knob in the center to slow or speed up the drip—you want a drop per second—as needed.
It’s not foolproof. You must follow the directions precisely, including using ice—and if your coffee grind is too fine, water may form pathways through it, like an ant colony. If what’s dripping out doesn’t look dark, or it’s coming out quickly, adjust your tactics. It also holds only 20 ounces of water, and since it’s made of glass, it’s fragile. Some buyers have complained of drip-valve issues, but I have not encountered any yet. —Jeff Van Camp
Best Instant Nitro Cold Brew
Never in our memory has a cold-brew device arrived with as much hoopla and fanfare as the Cumulus. Why? It is the promise of a unicorn: a frothing cup of nitro cold brew, made near instantaneously at home by a whizzbangy machine conceived by former Starbucks innovation czar Mesh Gelman. Look closely, and you’ll realize what the device actually does is make cold brew out of … cold brew. Cumulus brews it the old-fashioned way, in cold water, over the course of many hours, then vacuum distills the brew to condense it into a minuscule and proprietary coffee capsule that costs about $2.50 a pop.
Insert that capsule into a Cumulus Machine, and it’ll unpack that super-dense concentrate into a frigid 10-ounce glass of cold brew, or a fabulously frothy nitro version made by pressure-injecting air into the coffee. Another novelty? A bracing double-shot of cold espresso, complete with actual crema—ready for a milk mixer or service in an espresso martini.
We’re still testing the many flavors, from light to dark to decaf to capsules specially designed for espresso. But early worries are that vacuum distillation might impart a somewhat processed character to the coffee’s flavor—a rubbery tang that not everyone will be sensitive to. My mother, on a visit, raved about the abundant froth in the nitro, and preferred the result to packaged nitro cold brew. So far, I’m less convinced. But the nitro bubbles are indeed abundant and impressive. And the cold espresso feels like more than a novelty: it’s an actual treat. We don’t expect the device will win over cold brew nerds or the craft coffee crowd. But on-demand nitro cold brew at home will be an extravagant luxury for those who like to mix cold brew with milk and sugar. If you’d otherwise be shelling out $7 for the complicated cold concoctions at Gelman’s alma mater, Starbucks, you might even make back the device’s $700 entry fee.
Best for Single-Serve
Yes, you can make good cold brew in an Aeropress! All you have to do is pour some grounds in the Aeropress and top them off with cold water all the way up to the 4 on the cylinder. Give it a stir and place the plunger in the top, but don’t press down. At this point I’ve found I get my best results by putting the whole thing in the fridge overnight. Once it has steeped, put the fully loaded Aeropress on your cup of choice and press the plunger down about a third of the way. I like my cold brew small, over ice, with two to three parts milk. I find I can get three to four cold brews out of one steeping with this method, but I treat it like espresso and only use about one shot-glass-worth at a time for a full cup. If you like yours a bit stronger, you might only get about two big glasses of cold brew out of this method. —Jaina Grey
A Timeless Classic
The Toddy has been around since the 1960s. It’s similar to the Oxo brewing system, just a little more DIY. It’s basically a big bucket with grounds in it and a glass carafe to hold the coffee when it’s done brewing. The brew bucket is made of plastic, and it requires paper liners and filter pads that you’ll have to keep buying (filter pads last about 10 brews, or three months). You have to remove a rubber stopper to drain the coffee after 24 hours, which will always get your hands messy—cleanup is time-consuming.
Fortunately, it makes rich, full-bodied cold brew that tastes as robust as any other method I’ve tried, sometimes better. Those pads and paper filters are annoying, but they work. If you’re OK with a little inconvenience, the Toddy makes a damn good cold-brew concentrate. It’s similar to the Filtron Brewer, but more well constructed. There’s even a giant 2.5-gallon Toddy that’s used in coffee shops. —Jeff Van Camp
A Fantastic French Press
I used French presses as a quasi-control in my testing, and the Secura is the nicest I’ve tried. To my dismay, I haven’t been able to get any French press to produce cold-brewed coffee with flavor that’s as smooth or rich as with other methods. It’s usually a little bitter and too gritty. But it’s still quite drinkable, and if you play around enough or find the right coffee grounds, you can probably make a batch that you like.
You might already own a French press for hot coffee; if you don’t, I recommend the Secura. It’s made of stainless steel and well insulated to keep cold brew cold or hot coffee hot, and the handle doesn’t get too hot. —Jeff Van Camp
Best Cold Brew Dispenser
KitchenAid doesn’t make the absolute best cold brew I’ve had, but more care went into its design than almost any other pot I’ve listed. It’s made of steel and thick glass, with a built-in handle and a spigot for dispensing cold brew—perfect if you have a shelf to set it on, in or out of the fridge. (There’s an XL version that holds 40-ish ounces of coffee and has a stand to sit on the countertop.)
It has a stainless steel grounds tray (with a handle!) that you set in the larger glass container. Dampen your grounds, then fill it with water. It says it holds 28 ounces, but I easily fit 32. Let it sit for at least 12 hours, as usual (24 if you fridge it), and you’re good to go. The steel filter is too porous and lets a lot of sediment through, but KitchenAid smartly has a textured bottom that lets the grit settle on the sides of the bottom. It doesn’t seem to come through the spigot, so after my first gritty glass, the coffee was a lot smoother and quite rich. I haven’t had any issues, but a few users have reported the spigot leaking. —Jeff Van Camp
Coffee & Accessories
Best Reusable Filter for Aeropress Cold Brew
I like the Fellow Prismo for all my Aeropress use, and it’s great for cold brew. It comes with a reusable filter and replaces the cap that goes on the end of your Aeropress with one that’s a little thicker and has single hole. This config makes the coffee come out of the Aeropress under more pressure than with the standard Aeropress cap. That way you get a little aeration and, in my experience, a cleaner cup than from just metal filters in the traditional Aeropress cap. —Jaina Grey
Great For Reducing Cold Brew Sediment
If you prefer cold brew with as little coffee silt as possible, the Shimmy can definitely help. It’s a sieve you fill with coffee grounds, then shake to separate out more of the fine particles, or fines, from your coffee. During testing, I found it significantly reduced the silty dregs from the bottom of my cup, but a little bit remained, though not nearly enough to spoil that last sip the way too much sediment can. —Jaina Grey
Ready-to-Brew Coffee Pouches
These ready-to-brew pouches from Partners are like big tea bags full of coffee. They’re great for turning any pitcher or big jar into a cold brew maker. Given their size, I found I got the best coffee after at least 24 hours of steeping, and it was fully flavored, rich, silky, and sweet with just a hint of acidity. —Jaina Grey
Best Cold-Brew Beans
The perfect cold-brew coffee beans are in the eye of the beholder, but there are a few schools of thought. Most cold brew blends tend to reinforce the brew’s smoothness and drinkability, of course. But those who mix with milk might favor roasty and chocolatey dark beans that loudly scream “coffee” amid the dairy. For those whose hot-side tastes veer closer to pour-over, try cold brewing or slow-dripping a medium roast, fruit-intensive African.
After multiple blind taste tests over the years, I always come back to Portland’s Stumptown Coffee for sweet and balanced cold-brew flavors. Its excellent Original Cold Brew blend is sadly only seasonal, but its Homestead blend also makes for a deliciously sweet and smooth cold brew. If you blindfold me, spin me around, confuse me by shouting, and then ask me what classic cold brew tastes like? This is probably closest to the flavor I’d describe.
That said, the best and most interesting cold brew we’ve had from Stumptown comes from its single-origin Ethiopia Guji—whose seasonal bottled version wins national blind taste tests the way Englishmen win at darts. Cold brew made with the Guji is a heady mix of caramel smoothness and bright berry pop. The first time I tried it seven years ago, it changed what I look for in a cold-brew bean.
The Playlist blend from Oakland’s Blue Bottle also makes for a wildly bright and fruity take on cold brew, but it’s hardly for the budget-conscious. Otherwise, Stone Street’s Arabica Colombian Supremo dark roast and Bizzy’s organic Smooth & Sweet Blend are two favorites of former WIRED reviewer and cold-brew aficionado Jeff Van Camp. Each is also made specifically with cold brewing in mind and come coarsely ground (a coarse grind is usually best for cold brew), or as whole beans if you own a grinder.
Honorable Mentions
Below are some cold brew makers we liked but didn’t exactly love, or they had features we enjoyed but some drawbacks that kept them from making our best-of list.
