I love coffee. Hot or iced, I can drink coffee all day. I have a Keurig at home and one in my office, ensuring that I’m never more than a few yards away from my caffeine lifeline. I know it’s sad, but I just love it so.
Iced is my favorite way to enjoy coffee, but unless you brew it and then chill it before pouring over ice, you’re often left with a watery brew. Ewww.
There’s a better way! Cold brew coffee. It’s exactly what it sounds like. You coarse grind your beans and cover with filtered water and refrigerate for about 2 days until you have a rich brew.
Starbucks rolled out their Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew a couple of months ago and it’s pretty darn good. I have no idea what their recipe is for their vanilla sweet cream, but my version tastes pretty similar.
Here is what you will need for the cold brew:
- 2 sterilized mason jars
- 1 cup ground coffee beans- a dark roast works best
- Filtered water
Split your coffe beans so that you have about 1/2 cup in the bottom of each mason jar. Fill each jar to the top with cool filtered water. Place lid on jar and give everything a good shake. This is what it will look like:
Next, place the jars in the fridge and forget about them for at least 48 hours.
When you pull them out a few days later everything should be well mixed and your brew should be pretty dark. Before you drink your delicious, rich coffee you do need to filter it. I used a simple set up where I placed my flour sifter over a mason jar and lined the sifter with a coffee filter. That worked pretty well, but if your grind is coarse enough you may be able to omit the coffee filter and just use the sifter. Mine was not, and so I had to use the filter. 
Anywho, once you’ve got your filtered cold brew, you need to sweeten it up. To make the vanilla sweet cream, you will need the following:
- 3-4 tbsp heavy cream
- 1/2 cup of 2% milk
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Combine all ingredients for the sweet cream in a measuring cup or jar and give everything a good stir, until the sugar dissolves.
Mix about 12 oz of your cold brew over ice with 2 tbsp of sweet cream, and enjoy. This recipe should make about 4, 12 oz vanilla sweet cream cold brews.
Making A Maven 