Making pumpkin cold brew coffee
When fall rolls round, it’s time for pumpkin everything — and that includes coffee. If it needs to be well below freezing before you’ll even entertain drinking hot coffee, you might be wondering how to make pumpkin cold brew.
While you can make pumpkin coffee in many ways, there are two particularly popular options: pumpkin spice cold brew and pumpkin cream cold brew. Both are great in their own way, with the pumpkin spice offering subtle flavors and the pumpkin cream being sweetly delicious.
How to make pumpkin spice cold brew
This recipe produces a black cold brew delicately melded with pumpkin spice flavors.
Grind coffee
You need a coarse grind to make cold brew coffee, so you’ll need a coffee grinder to grind your own beans. If you don’t have one and don’t intend to buy one, you can always buy your beans from a specialty shop that will grind them for you and ask for a coarse grind for cold brew.
Grind your beans on the coarsest setting. You’ll need 1 cup of ground coffee beans.
Prepare spices
You’ll need around 2 teaspoons of ground pumpkin spices. While you can use a pumpkin spice mix, you’re better off coarsely grinding or grating whole spices for a smoother coffee. Pre-ground spices are fine enough to get through the cheesecloth used for straining.
If you prepare your own spices, you’ll need roughly 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/2 a teaspoon of nutmeg, 1/2 a teaspoon of grated fresh ginger and a pinch of cloves.
Add water
Mix the spices, 1 cup of ground coffee and 4 cups of cold or room-temperature water in a large mason jar or split it between two smaller jars.
Refrigerate
Cover the mixture and put it in the fridge for 12-24 hours. Around 18 hours is the sweet spot for cold brew that has a good kick to it, but isn’t excessively strong.
Strain
Strain your coffee through a cheesecloth-lined fine mesh strainer. You can drink it straight out of the fridge if you want a standard black cold brew with a subtle pumpkin spice flavor, or you can add milk and sweetener of your choice.
How to make pumpkin cream cold brew
This recipe produces black cold brew topped with a pumpkin cream for a sweet and velvety drink.
Grind coffee
As with the recipe above, you’ll need to grind your own coffee beans on the coarsest setting your coffee grinder offers. You’ll need 1 cup of coarsely-ground coffee for this recipe.
Steep
Mix this ground coffee with 4 cups of cold or room-temperature water in one or more mason jars. Cover the jars and refrigerate for 12-24 hours. A longer steeping time gives you stronger coffee, but if you leave it too long, it can become bitter.
Mix pumpkin cream ingredients
While your coffee is steeping, you can prepare the pumpkin cream ingredients. It’s fine to prepare the cream in advance and refrigerate it overnight. Alternatively, you can prepare it around an hour before you want to make your coffee and chill it for at least 45 minutes. You’ll need the following to make your pumpkin cream:
1 cup of oat milk
2 tablespoons of canned pumpkin puree
2 tablespoons of maple syrup
1 teaspoon of ground pumpkin spice
1 teaspoon of quality vanilla extract
Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan and heat gently for a few minutes, but don’t bring to a boil. When cooled, transfer to a container and refrigerate. This makes enough cream to top four coffees.
Strain coffee
Once 12-24 hours have passed, you can strain your cold brew coffee using a fine mesh grater lined with cheesecloth. Then, set it aside until you’re ready to make your drinks.
Froth pumpkin cream
Remove the chilled pumpkin cream mixture from the fridge and use a milk frother to whip it up into a foam.
Assemble your drink
Now it’s time to assemble your pumpkin cream cold brew. Fill a glass with a handful of ice before pouring over a cup of black cold brew. Top it with a quarter of the pumpkin cream mixture. Drink as is or mix it up!
What you need to buy for making pumpkin cold brew
You can’t make cold brew coffee without coffee beans and choosing a quality blend makes all the difference to the finished drink. These beans have a rich dark roast and aren’t as highly caffeinated as lighter roasts, which is ideal given the long steeping time.
With 12 adjustable grind settings, it’s easy to get the coarse grind size you need to make cold brew coffee. The flat burrs grind coffee effectively and uniformly.
Thanks to their 32-ounce capacity, these mason jars are perfect for steeping your cold brew in. They have wide mouths, which makes it easy to transfer coffee and water without spilling and come with lids for covering the contents in the fridge.
This powerful milk frother is capable of making the cold foam that you want for a pumpkin cream cold brew. It can also make hot steamed milk, so it’s versatile enough to make all kinds of other specialty drinks.
You get two mesh strainers in this set: one measuring 3 inches in diameter and the other 4 inches in diameter. They’re ideal for straining your cold brew coffee.
With a fine weave, this unbleached food-grade cheesecloth is a great choice for straining coffee through. It’s highly durable, so you can use it many times.
Blending cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg, this classic pumpkin spice mix is ideal for imparting that rich, spiced flavor to your cold brew coffee. What’s more, it’s organic and non-GMO.
Want to shop the best products at the best prices? Check out Daily Deals from BestReviews.
Sign up here to receive the BestReviews weekly newsletter for useful advice on new products and noteworthy deals.
Lauren Corona writes for BestReviews. BestReviews has helped millions of consumers simplify their purchasing decisions, saving them time and money.
BestReviews spends thousands of hours researching, analyzing and testing products to recommend the best picks for most consumers. BestReviews and its newspaper partners may earn a commission if you purchase a product through one of our links.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
