About Our Nitro Cold Brew
Our journey to cold brew began over a decade ago when we started brewing cold brew coffee in our cafes using Kyoto style drip towers. These beautiful artifices of glass and wood slowly drip ice water over a coffee grounds over a course of 12 hours. The result is syrupy, rich, sweet, and intense.
A few years later we began experimenting with putting our Kyoto style cold brew coffee on nitrogen draft. Our Kyoto brewers only brew 2 gallons/ 24 hours. So we visited the annual specialty coffee association conference on the hunt for a comparable large format cold brewing solution. What we found was the Brew Bomb! Fast forward a few months and we received our BrewBombx45 brewer, and installed it directly in our walk-in cooler. Now we could brew up to 50 gallons at a time all at temperatures below 40 degrees. Now that we had access to large volumes (up to 50 gallons at a time!) we moved on to storing it in kegs and serving it with nitrogen infusion and the era of Nitro Cold brew was upon us. In fact, out café was he first café in Ithaca to offer Nitro cold brew!
What is Nitro Cold Brew?
Nitro cold brew is coffee that has been cold brewed and is served infused with pure nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gas infusion does a couple things for the coffee.
Benefits of nitrogen: by blanketing the cold brew coffee with pure nitrogen, we remove the oxygen, the source of oxidization. This allows our Nitrogen cold brew to maintain peak quality for 2 months.
But most importantly, Nitrogen infusion gives the cold brew a rich, silky mouthfeel. As it is poured it gives the cold brew a gorgeous cascading surge and settle, reminiscent of a well poured pint of Guinness. The infused nitrogen adds a slightly sweet note to the cold brew. So much so that we encourage people to try it unsweetened before adding anything, as it is often sweet enough straight from the tap.
Equipment Requirements
What is required to serve Nitro Cold brew in your café, bar, hotel, office, event space?
Your minimum requirements:
- stout tap (not your regular everyday draft spout. Stout taps slow down the pour and include a sparkler in the nozzle. This is what starts off the nitrogen cascading in your drink)
-ball lock gas and product connectors (we keg in 5Gallon Ball lock Corny kegs)
-Pure N2 gas cylinder (pure food grade nitrogen, not beer gas which is a blend of co2 and n2) available from your local gas / welding supply vendor
-Nitrogen regulator (as nitro cold brew requires different pressures than a typical draft system this should really have a dedicated regulator.)
-a way to keep your keg of cold brew cold (kegerator, walk in cooler, ice bath (for catering. Used with a jockey box, or keg connected stout tap)
Many Bars, restaurant, and cafes will have much of this already available. If you don’t, or are unsure we would be happy to help you with a facility evaluation.