The health benefits of cold brew coffee

Cold coffee? It may not be the first drink you think of when you're out in the sun in the summer. Yet there are many cold coffee drinks that are particularly tasty. The most famous is perhaps the iced coffee. The shelves are full of them and the iced coffee market continues to grow. Iced coffees consist only for the most part of dairy, so that little coffee remains. The alternative? Cold Brew coffee!

What is cold brew coffee?

Cold brew coffee, as the name might suggest, is distinguished from other coffee drinks by the way the coffee is brewed. With a traditional coffee, extraction with hot water is used (think of a filter or Nespresso machine) and with iced coffee, an instant coffee variant is often used. Cold Brew is made with cold water and a slow extraction process.

How do you make cold brew coffee?

The ground coffee is mixed with cold water and often left to stand for 12-24 hours. Because you leave this for a long time you get a very strong coffee mixture. By filtering this coffee mixture, you are left with a very strong cold coffee, as it were. This strong coffee mixture is often diluted with water to get the right taste. The result? A delicious mild and slightly sweet coffee drink!

What are the health benefits of Cold Brew?

Due to the way Cold Brew is made, the end product has different properties than normal coffee. We have listed the most important advantages for you:

1) Good for your focus

Cold brew is often made with a higher concentration of coffee (less water compared to the ground coffee itself), so that the caffeine content in cold brew is often higher than in a normal cup of coffee. In addition, cold brew is often served in a larger quantity than, for example, an espresso. For example, you quickly get more caffeine per consumption than with a normal cup of coffee. According to various studies, this caffeine content has a positive effect on your brain and helps you to focus better. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j .1600-0773.1995.tb00111.x)

2) Better for your stomach

Because Cold Brew is prepared with cold water instead of hot water, fewer fats and acids are released from the ground coffee. Fats and acids can have a negative effect on your stomach, so Cold Brew can fall better on your stomach. Especially if you often have stomach problems after drinking coffee, a Cold Brew is definitely worth a try!

3) More antioxidants

There are many blogs that claim that cold brew also contains more antioxidants. Nevertheless, a recent study (https://phys.org/news /2020-04-chemistry-difference-cold-hot-brew-coffee.html) that this mainly has to do with the roasting of the coffee and not so much the process by which the coffee is brewed. For example, a cold brew made with dark roast coffee would contain slightly less antioxidants than a cold brew made from medium roast or even lighter. The claim that cold brew automatically contains more antioxidants therefore does not seem entirely correct.

Conclusion

Looking for a nice fresh alternative to your daily cup of coffee? Then Cold Brew is definitely worth a try. In addition, you also have a good chance that this coffee drink will be easier on your stomach and the caffeine content is often also higher. Whether there are actually more antioxidants in a cold brew as many people claim is debatable. Compare it with a healthy alternative to energy drinks full of sugars. But a lot tastier!