Who Makes the Best Coldbrew?

Cold brew’s origins date back to a time long before Brooklyn coffee shops installed floating shelves, hung pothos plants, and employed a generation of tattooed baristas. The first mention of cold brew appears in 17th century Japan, where tea was cold-brewed in a technique called mizudashi. As the story goes, when the Dutch arrived in Japan in 1600, they applied that method to coffee, and cold brew was born.

Four centuries later, cold brew exploded in popularity in the US during the third-wave coffee movement of the 2010s, when highlighting coffee beans’ origins and tasting subtle notes like “unripe berry” and “burnt caramel” became important to more drinkers. Coffee nerdery became cool. People loved cold brew for its smooth, less acidic flavor—and also for its high caffeine content. Soon there was nitro cold brew, coffee infused with nitrogen for a creamier texture, and it wasn’t long before major retailers began stocking cold brew on their shelves.

In grocery stores now, cold brew options stretch as far as the eye can see. Most of them have the same two ingredients—water and coffee—but there’s still a lot of flavor variations between brands. This one might be all bitterness; that one might have some kind of alien sweetness. That’s why we put eight nationally available cold brews through a blind taste test to find the absolute best.

Four were ready to drink and the rest were concentrates that we diluted according to their package instructions. We tried them black, with no creamer or sweetener, over ice. We wanted a cold brew that had a bright acidity that didn’t overpower the fruity, roasty, toasty notes. We also wanted to make sure our cold brew wasn’t too watery and that it had a tannic, wake-you-up aroma.

It was a jittery 35 minutes, but in the end, one cold brew reigned supreme.

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