This isn’t to say all chilled coffee is bad. Cold brew is made by mixing coffee grounds and water, letting them mingle at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours and running the resulting concentrate through a filter.
Iced coffee, meanwhile, is made using normal hot coffee brewing methods and chilled using something like a Coldwave. The two are entirely different products.
He describes the flavors of cold brew, which are developed over a longer brew process without the use of hot water, as oxidized or “off.”
To coffee professionals like Howell and Hoffmann, cold brew doesn’t do good beans justice.
It leeches them of lighter aromatic flavors and results in what Howells calls a “one-noted, samey” beverage.
At home, people can cut back on the brew time — from 24 to, say, eight hours — for a lighter and slightly more acidic cold brew.