Nearly 500 years of tradition makes for a great tasting coffee

If you come to the Coffee Company regularly, you might well have seen a strange sort of contraption sitting off to the right of the pastry case. If you don’t know it, it seems a bit like something one might expect to find ensconced in some sort of super secret sci-fi lab. It’s a kind of crazy-looking contraption, an array of glass beakers and pipes all set into a wooden frame that’s about four and a half feet high. In fact, it’s what we use to make our Kyoto Cold Brew.

Kyoto Cold Brew is a method that dates to the early years of coffee making outside of its Ethiopian homeland. While the name would understandably lead to the conclusion that it was created in Japan, it was likely developed by 17th-century Dutch sailors! They needed a way to prepare coffee on months-long voyages. As the most common creation story goes, someone figured out that pouring cold water slowly over ground coffee beans would do the trick.

The Kyoto brewer comes with three sections: a bigger water chamber up at the top, a tube that holds coffee grounds and a filter in the middle, and last but not least, the carafe at the base where the finished coffee is collected. The brew is indeed made using cold water that’s allowed to fall, one drip at a time, over ground coffee. The low temperature and super slow extraction mean that there’s almost no oxidation of the coffee during the brewing, making for a super smooth cup that enhances a coffee’s natural fruit, takes out a lot of the bean’s bitterness, and leaves in lots of lovely caramelly notes. I drink it straight as it is, but you can add milks, syrups, and sweeteners as you do to any coffee!

Place an order for pick-up at the Coffee Company.

P.S. The Coffee Company’s decaf done in the Kyoto Cold Brew is remarkably tasty, too!

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Our Cold Brewed Coffee is having a moment. It was recently featured in the New York Times, where it was described as “smooth, strong, full-bodied.” The same article deemed it perfect for drinking all year ’round, a big compliment for a beverage that most people associate with warm weather.

That’s some pretty good buzz, but as of this month, we’re taking it up a notch. Enter: Nitro Cold Brew. A fairly new phenomenon in the coffee industry, nitrogen infusion really transforms cold brew. The process, which pressurizes coffee under the gas, helps to expand body and texture, creating a smoother, creamier finish.

Zingerman’s Coffee Company Managing Partner Steve Mangigian is enthusiastic about the new offering. “I’m really excited about our nitro, because first of all, I believe that our cold brew is just delicious in and of itself, and the nitro only enhances its body and its texture, leaving a longer finish,” he says. “It’s bigger, it’s bolder—it’s like a Guinness stout. And that’s what I really like about it.”

While Steve has been interested in nitro for a while, it was an email from an Ann Arbor local that really got the project going. “He said he’d been playing with nitro for a while. He tested some out, and Zingerman’s cold brew worked the best,” explains Steve. A deal was struck, and now the Coffee Company has its very own shiny taps.

Steve admits that he’s not sure if nitro will remain a “thing”, but the initial response has been strong. “We’ve been sampling a lot, and it’s going well,” he says, pointing out that industry-wide, cold brew coffee in general has surpassed expectations, growing by over 300% in the past five years.

Is our Nitro Cold Brew worthy of the buzz? Come find out—we’ve got a sample for you.

Zingerman’s Coffee Company is located at 3723 Plaza Drive, Ann Arbor. And if you’re not local, you can order our non-nitro cold brew (you know, the one the New York Times loves) online through Mail Order. It has a shelf-life of a year (without the use of artificial stabilizers), which is unprecedented in the industry.