thinfully inspired: Iced Coffee Concentrate. You know you want it.

There are a few giant coffee chains out there you can get a semi-decent cup of iced coffee from. However, it hurts to spend so much money on one cup. One. Cup.

There is a local grocery chain around the Phoenix/Scottsdale area called Aj's that does a great iced coffee concentrate. The large is a 32 oz cup and the cost is about $3.00. Not bad, but still not worth the inconvenience of stopping every morning for one and more or less blowing $15 bucks into the wind.

I was talking with my former office mate about how much I adored iced coffee but didn't want to spend the money on buying it all the time. My office mate was what I referred to as Kyle-i-pedia -if he didn't know the answer he'd find it in seconds, usually with statistical data that he had stored long ago with the purpose of knowing one day he would need it as backup for another not yet known fact.

Kyle told me about a bunch of different cold brew systems but said that I would be able to make it at home pretty easily. I tried his suggestions.

It worked.

I tweaked it to my liking. The beauty of this recipe is that you can make it with whatever your little heart desires, as long as you have the basic necessities.

Remember, you are making an iced coffee CONCENTRATE. This means it will need to be diluted. Unless you want to run around like a whirling dervish all day long. If you do, then... whirl away. I will typically take a cup and fill it 3/4 with ice, half of the cup is filled with concentrate, the rest is water. I add a shot or two of sugar free syrup and a little bit of creamer for color. I've tried using coconut almond milk instead of water, using fat free milk instead, etc. The beauty is that you can find your favorite mixture and work from it.

- A (12 oz) bag of whole bean coffee (darker roasts work best)
- A large glass container (with a sealing lid) - - Glass works best to not absorb any other flavors that may be left behind in tupperware
- Two liters of water (I used bottled water and saved the bottle to pour it back into)
- A coffee grinder
- A strainer
- A large measuring cup (mine holds 4 cups and is perfect for this)
- Several coffee filters
- Optional.. a vanilla bean split down the center to flavor the coffee as it is cold brewing

Ok... this is the hard part.

Gather all your ingredients

Put the coffee beans into the grinder. You want to try to get the coffee from bean form, to ground, to being soaked in the water as quickly as possible to avoid acidity. Grind the beans until they look coarse, like fine wood chips.

Once you get the entire bag ground, you want to filter the coffee into the container. I use a piece of paper rolled up into a funnel to make it easier not to spill as much, but its inevitable.

Once you have all of the coffee ground and added to the jar, add your two liters of water and stir with a wooden or plastic spoon- metal can change the acidity in the coffee.

It should look like this.

You can see the coffee floating at the top of the water.

Now is the hard part. Wait. The minimum would be 12 hours. If you do it longer, the stronger your coffee will be.

The next morning, I got out my handy strainer, put a few coffee filters into it and started slowly pouring the coffee into it to strain out.

It takes a bit to get it all sloughed through. I usually will change out the filters after every pass through, since it gets sludgy the deeper you get into the jar.

Getting toward the bottom of the jar

Once you get it all strained out- there will be a bunch of coffee left at the bottom of the jar you aren't able to get much water out of- I pour it into the water bottle that I started with.