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Coffee
In The Cup: Best Cold Brew Coffee 2025
Spring has sprung—is your cold brew ready? For some, it’s always cold brew season; for others, the start of spring officially kicks it off! Regardless of which camp you fall into, we’re here to help you select the right coffee beans to achieve your ideal cold brew flavor profile.
We’ve done the hard work for you by testing our current offerings to provide you with a curated list of our favorite beans for cold brew. Keep on reading below for all the info on our cold brew coffee tasting notes!
What is cold brew coffee?
First, for those who don’t know, cold brewing is a method of extracting coffee into cold water rather than hot. For coffee, it is typically brewed using a 1:5–1:10 grams to mL ratio of coarsely ground coffee to water over a 12–20 hour period in a refrigerated environment. The cold-water extraction allows for a different set of compounds to be extracted from the coffee than those from hot brewing. One of these compounds is, you guessed it: caffeine!
When you select coffee beans to use for your cold brew, you should consider three important factors: acidity, brew ratio, and flavor profile. So, let’s learn how these factors impact your cold brew coffee.
Cold Brew Coffee: Acidity
Cold brew inherently has lower acidity than hot brewed coffee. A study done by Jefferson University in 2020 measured the pH levels of coffees brewed hot and cold. This study found that traditionally, cold brewed coffee does have a higher pH level across the board, meaning acidity was consistently lower in each test. Acids are huge contributors to your coffee’s overall flavor profile. Plus, they are often rewarded with higher scores on the SCA scorecard. Knowing how your brew method interacts with these acids is helpful when choosing coffee beans.
Cold Brew Coffee: Brew Ratio
Next up is brew ratio. For the purposes of this article, we’re exclusively referring to traditional cold brew methods. These methods involve steeping coffee for 8–10 hours in room temp or cold water.
A significant part of the reason that cold brew is less acidic than hot coffee is that cold water is less efficient at dissolving the compounds that make up your coffee than hot water is. Therefore, your coffee to water ratio is going to look a lot different in hot vs. cold brewed coffee. Hot coffee is typically brewed using a 1:17 ratio, coffee : water. Cold brewed coffee, however, is typically between 1:5 and 1:10 depending on how strong you want the final product to be.
Many roasters and coffee shops brew cold brew concentrate to mix with water to reduce costs. However, it’s important that you know your brew strength and projected usage prior to picking out a bean so you can decide on how costly your final product will be.
Cold Brew Coffee: Flavor Profiles
Lastly, we’re going to talk about a few different types of flavor profiles you can achieve with cold brewed coffee. Like hot coffee, there are a million and a half different approaches to profiling your cold brew. Now, this is far from a complete list. However, out of all the coffees we tested, the following were our favorites. For your reference, each coffee was brewed in 40-45 degree temperatures for 8 hours using a 1:8 brew ratio.
RNY Recommendations for Best Cold Brew Coffee 2025
RNY # 58089 Brazil Natural Legender “Sitio Taquara”
This single estate lot comes to us from Sitio Taquara in Sul de Minas, Brazil. It is rich and chocolatey with notes of sweet cherries that give it a soft acidity and make it perfect for an approachable cold brew with a fruity undercurrent.
RNY # 58142 Organic Honduras COMSA Marcala SHG Fair Trade USA
This lot comes to us from a cooperative called COMSA in La Paz, Honduras. It features notes of rich milk chocolate and juicy apples with a sugary finish, best used to produce a brighter, but not sharp, batch of cold brew.
RNY # 59063 Organic Nicaraguan SHG – FAIR TRADE
This lot comes to us from smallholder farmers in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. It is heavy bodied with notes of semi-sweet chocolate, making it a great choice for those looking for a low acid coffee to cold brew.
RNY # 57579 Uganda AA Bugisu (GP)
This lot comes to us from the Mt. Elgon region of Uganda. It is sweet and syrupy with a big earthy body for those looking to make a robust cold brew that cuts through milk or cream easily in specialty drinks.
Want to learn more about cold brew?
Then check out some of our most popular cold brew blogs!
Does cold brew have more caffeine?
