I knew the coffee was going to be good even before I took a sip. Why? Because the fish tacos were the best I’ve ever had (and as I tell everyone, I’ve had fish tacos by the roadside in Mexico).
Rockaway Taco is a taco shack tucked away on Beach 96th Street in Rockaway Beach in New York City. It opened last summer and this year on my first visit I noticed that it had added iced coffee to its menu. So after putting away four fish tacos, I ordered an iced coffee for the road.
Just as I suspected, it was great. No, better than great. It was the best coffee I’d ever tasted. Andrew, the main man behind the counter, explained that he cold brewed his coffee, something that was new to me.
Simply put, cold brewing coffee involves soaking grounds in coffee, a bit like cowboy coffee except that no heat is ever introduced into the process. The result is a cleaner taste, something that I can only describe as tasting like coffee ought to taste.
So I had to try it at home. There are plenty of how-to’s online, many with different coffee-to-water ratios.
My first effort was a failure, though I wasn’t sure why. It was too strong. Back to Rockaway Taco (hey, I was hungry too after surfing for three hours).
Andrew gave me a new ratio: one pound of coffee grounds, nine cups of filtered water and let sit for 24 hours. Then run that through a coffee filter.
That leaves you with a concentrate that you treat much like espresso. Pour a bit into a cup and fill it the rest of the way with water. Throw in a bit of half and half or milk if you like.
This result was much better, not as good as Andrew’s but really tasty.
One drawback I’ve found is that this process seems to require more coffee than regular brewing. So my coffee vanishes faster than if I was using my coffee maker each day.
But I’ll take that tradeoff for the taste difference.