Why cold brew owns the summer
(and won't let go.)

Cold brew was supposed to be a fad. We remember reading the op-eds in 2015 — the long pieces in food magazines patiently explaining that this strange, dark, almost-syrupy drink was a summer phase, that the third wave would correct itself, that everyone would settle back into espresso once the novelty wore off. Ten years on, the data tells a different story. Cold brew is no longer a category of coffee. It's a category of beverage — one that walks into the conversation alongside iced tea, beer, and sparkling water, not espresso.

On our counter, cold brew is somewhere between a quarter and a third of every drink we make from May through September. That number has been climbing every year for five years. We are not alone in this; ask any cafe within fifty miles of the coast and you'll hear roughly the same story.

So what changed?

A few things, all at once. The product itself got better — most cafes now brew with a recipe, not a guess. The beans got better — light-roasted, fruit-forward coffees that taste extraordinary cold-extracted are everywhere now, where five years ago you mostly got dark-roast supermarket bags swimming in a Mason jar.

And the drinking culture got better. Customers know what they want. Nitro was a window into the category for many, but the straight-up still pour is what kept them. People who started drinking cold brew because it was Instagrammable kept drinking it because it tastes like the inside of a chocolate-covered plum.

The acid argument (and a quiet correction)

One of the great early selling points of cold brew was that it was "low acid" and therefore easier on the stomach. That's half-true. Cold-water extraction does pull fewer of the chlorogenic-acid breakdown products you get in hot extraction, which can make cold brew taste rounder and less sharp. But "low-acid" became a marketing shorthand that wandered a long way from the lab.

The honest version: cold brew is generally a softer, smoother experience because of how compounds extract at lower temperatures over long timescales. It is not a magic medical beverage. If your stomach hates coffee, cold brew might still hate your stomach. We say this as people who love cold brew.

What we changed for this season

A few small things. The beans, mostly — we've moved to a washed Ethiopian as our base for the season, which gives us stone-fruit notes that survive the dilution into ice and milk beautifully. We moved our brew time from 18 hours to 16, which tightened the cup and made the finish noticeably less heavy.

• 1:8 coffee-to-water ratio (concentrate, diluted to taste)
• Coarse grind, hand-shaken every 4 hours during steep
• Filtered water at room temperature; never iced
• Decanted clean off the grounds and rested overnight

The Driftwood — our cold brew float — is back on the menu from this Thursday. It's worth ordering it to-go and drinking it on the boardwalk, ideally before noon while the air is still cool. That's not a sales pitch; it's just where it tastes best.

A great cold brew tastes like the day after a long, friendly dinner. Smooth, generous, slightly sweet, and with no part of you that wants to be anywhere else.

Where it goes from here

The next frontier — already happening at a handful of cafes we follow — is single-origin cold brew sold by the pound, the way you'd buy whole beans. People are taking it home, putting it in glass bottles in the fridge, and using it as a base for everything from cocktails to oat-milk pours over breakfast oats. The category just keeps expanding.

Whatever it does next, it's not going anywhere. And on a coastline like ours, with this much sun and this many slow afternoons, that suits us fine.