[oldshatterhand]

I sent this idea in to Starbucks, they laughed at me. I discovered that you can make coffee by soaking it in cold water for a few hours. What it does is that the taste is okay, but not gourmet. However, the liquid is full of coffeine, much more than perked, cooked, or dripped coffee. It hits you like a ton of bricks, if you use the same amount of coffee grinds as in real coffee at home. This is both bad and good. Good because you can have your favourite beverage; bad because coffeine constricts arteries, both small and big; thus it increases blood pressure, and if you climb or walk uphill, this puts a lot of pressure on your cardiovascular system. You could use the discovery better at home or at the cottage, or at camping, when there is a black-out or there is no electricity etc. to begin with. Or when you need to stay awake for crunching for a calculus exam.

[mike]

You just "discovered" what some people have been doing for many years. e.g. in Ecuador they call this tinto and serve it in small pitchers. The idea is to pour a bit of this ink into your taza and add hot water and sugar. Gringos who like their coffee black (unlike the locals) tend to snork down the tinto and get nasty looks from the kitchen. Not to be mistaken for tinto in other countries which is cheap red wine.

[Ziploc]

Makes sense that the longer the coffee is soaked the higher the caffeine content. One of the ways coffee is decaffeinated is by a water rinsing process (the other is by chemicals). If you look closely at a coffee bean in the green state and pull it apart theres a fine tissue paper like substance. That is where most of the caffeine is located (but not all). This is disolved away in decaffeination processing.

[oldshatterhand]

Mike: What's tinto? Coffee grind soaked in cold water and filtered? If you add hot water, how is it same as plain grinds soaked in cold water? Cold is same as hot? If you have no electricity in the wild or in a storm, would it be easy to produce hot water? Or would be easier just to take cold water and not heat it up? But the basic part that you haven't explained is what's tinto. Ink? (In Hungarian "tinta" means pen-ink.)

[mike]

tinto in latin America is usually a red table wine. However in Columbia they call coffee tinto. In Ecuador tinto is the same stuff you describe making. Very strong coffee brewed overnight in cold water. Kinda like condensed coffee. Since most people don't drink it that strong they add hot water and sugar.

[Luc]

Sounds like you have described "toddy," which we've been drinking inour house for years. In fact, it turned us into real life coffee snobs. I like it because it keeps (we make it in large batches), has a higher caffiene content (you dilute it w water), is faster to prepare and has next to zero acidity compared to hot/fast brew. I also think the taste is much better or at least I can tell a burnt or crappy bean from a quality, even roast now. Try it!

[induster]

Toddy. Put coarse grounds (important) into a filter, or nylon, and let it soak overnight. You have toddy, which has a less bitter taste than pulled shots because it's much less acidic. 50% of espresso stands offer this. My wife makes this for when we go camping and it makes excellent iced drinks.

[meandering Wa]

I just spent 2 weeks in a field station in Peru The cook fixed us some "tinto" when the freeze dried ran out. She got beans from a "neighboring" farm. The beans were wild coffee the woman roasted herself. She made the concentrate and we brought it up to our liking. I had a cup of this with some Bunuelos ( pumpkin fritters) after rising at 330am to do a 10K observation transect. It was so good and so welcome at 11am that I took a picture of it.

sh4 just the ticket~ buñuelos and coffee

sh4 just the ticket~ buñuelos and coffee by Upupa4me, on Flickr I also took Via with me as I love coffee and didnt want to hog the limited resources of the remote camp. The Via in no way came close to Chef Rosies tinto, but that might have been the fresh wild beans and the effect of the heat and bunelos talking. Everything she made was done with love. Taking a canoe upriver to find coffee was a small example of her gift.

[Altitude Junkie]

[meandering Wa]

you are right the consistencey is slightly syrupy. It would make a great add in for other cooking and would probably make any chocolate recipie ( frostings cakes) knockout.

[Bandanabraids]

After reading this thread I got to poking around on youtube. There are a few videos on the Toddy system, the Hourglass and the other cold brew system that's available (starts with an "F" but I don't remember what it's called). Anyway, seems pretty easy to do without some fancy system so long as you have some cheese cloth, water, and some sort of large jug. I think I might try it. I like the idea of less acidity.