The Best Cold Brew Coffee Maker This Year

Cold brew might have started out as something of a cafe fad, but there’s no denying it’s now here to stay. The robust brew is not only available in Starbucks (a sign that a drink has hit the mainstream), but it’s also available in the drinks aisle of any supermarket.

It’s still a drink that most people buy ready-made. Yet, it’s easier to make it at home than you might think. We’ll get you started on your way with a look at some of the best cold brew coffee makers on the market.

What to Look for When Buying a Cold Brew Coffee Maker

Even if you know your way around an espresso maker or a classic drip machine, you’ll need to think differently when it comes to cold brew. The unique way that the coffee is extracted means you’ll need different features from your machine. Here’s what you should know.

Immersion or drip

Cold drip can be made in two different ways, but immersion is the most common. Immersion brewing is when the coffee grounds are fully submerged in water for steeping, as we see with a French press. Making cold brew by immersion is actually very simple, it’s time that’s doing all the work of extraction. Technically you could make cold brew in almost any container. But just as we use a French press for hot water immersion brewing, making cold brew is much easier and less of a mess with the right coffee maker.

Cold brew coffee makers that use a drip method of extraction are less common, but they are pretty cool. They’re most often found in cafes, where they can provide a bit of an attraction as well as making a good coffee. As we ascertained, without any heat to help extraction, cold water needs more time in contact with the coffee grounds. So for a drip cold brewer to work, the rate of water flow has to be incredibly slow, usually around one drop every 2-3 seconds.

Capacity

As well as the taste, one of the things that’s amazing about cold brew is how long it lasts. While hot-brewed coffee ideally should be drunk while it’s still warm, cold brew can last up to two weeks in the fridge if stored correctly. This is why the capacity of your coffee maker is particularly important. Get the right brewer and you can make a week’s worth at a time so it will be available whenever you need it. If your coffee maker is on the smaller side, you can also make a cold brew concentrate that you dilute with cold water for serving.

Filtration

Although cold brew takes around 12 hours to brew, it’s still possible to overextract your coffee. So when buying one of these coffee makers, check how the filter works. With a drip style brewer, the grounds are left behind in the filter and the coffee collects below. In this case you can leave the whole thing in the fridge without over brewing. For immersion style brewers, you want a filter basket that can be easily removed at the end of the extraction process, without the need to pour the brewed coffee into a separate container.

The Best Cold Brew Coffee Makers

Let’s take a closer look at our top picks.

The OXO Good Grips Cold Brew Coffee Maker is one of the best brewers on the market, and many people swear by the robust, aromatic coffee it produces.

This OXO coffee maker has a unique rainmaker lid which ensures that the water wets the coffee grounds uniformly to ensure efficient extraction. It also uses a metal mesh filter to separate the brewed coffee from the grounds, which gives the brew its unique, full-bodied flavor.

Just set it to “on,” and the cold brew will drip into the included borosilicate glass carafe. No more messing about with fiddly rubber stoppers.

This coffee maker can brew 24-28 oz of cold brew concentrate and has markings on the carafe for measuring it out while serving. It’s also designed to be stowed away in compact form when not in use, thus keeping your kitchen clutter-free. If you like a mess-free, no-nonsense cold brew coffee maker, then you’ll love this OXO brewer.

Cold brew is all the rage these days, so a variety of cold brewing equipment has flooded the market. We believe the following are some of the best ones you can buy.

Hario is a well-known manufacturer of manual brewing coffee equipment. It’s no surprise then that they decided to make the Mizudashi Coffee Pot, a cold brew coffee maker.

The Hario cold brew coffee maker is very similar to the Takeya above and uses the same principle. Add ground coffee to the nylon filter basket and put it into the glass pitcher. Then pour water over the grounds until the pitcher is almost full. Leave it to steep for 12 to 24 hours, and you end up with delicious cold-brewed coffee.

The Mizudashi, though, requires a little more hands-on approach to fill up with coffee and water. The reusable nylon mesh will probably get clogged if you try to pour water over a basket full of coffee grounds, leading to spillage. Hario recommends that you alternate between adding a small amount of coffee grounds and pouring a little bit of water over it until you’ve added all your coffee and water. On the flip side, the nylon material makes this coffee maker easier to clean.

Most user reviews have commented on the fact that the brew that you get from the Hario Mizudashi isn’t as concentrated as from other cold brew coffee makers.

In our books, that’s not necessarily a negative. It’s one less step before you can drink your chilled caffeine beverage. We love the fact that it has a glass pitcher and all its components are dishwasher-safe. It might not be as portable as the Takeya, but it will fit just as easily into your fridge door. It’s available in 2 sizes, 600 ml, and 1,000 ml.

This Takeya coffee brewer could easily be the best cold brew coffee maker for your money. Just add coarsely ground coffee into the fine mesh filter basket, fill the BPA-free plastic pitcher with water, and put the filter basket into the pitcher. That’s it. Leave the pitcher out on your counter or in the refrigerator overnight, and you’ll have a nice, cold pitcher of cold brew ready.

Takeya recommends unscrewing the airtight lid and swirling the mixture around a few times during the brewing process. After brewing, remove the filter basket, dump the coffee grounds, and rinse the filter. You can store the cold brew in your refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Remember to let your drink stand for a couple of minutes before drinking, though. Since it uses a reusable mesh filter, it does permit some sediment to pass through into the concentrate.

The Takeya cold brew coffee maker is available in 2 sizes, 1 quart and 2 quarts. We love the fact that the pitchers can fit easily into the refrigerator doors, and are good for traveling too. The best part is the unbelievably low price. Taking all those factors into consideration, this is is one coffee maker that delivers total bang for your buck.

Todd Simpson, a chemical engineering graduate of Cornell University, created this patented cold brew system in 1964. Since then, it has been one of the most popular cold brew coffee makers among enthusiasts and baristas.

The design is pretty much unchanged since the time it was conceptualized. It consists of a plastic brewing container with a removable handle, a felt filter pad, and a rubber stopper.

This US-made brewer quite simple to use too. Plug the hole at the bottom of the container with the stopper, affix the filter pad into its place and mix the coffee grounds with cold water in the container. After the mixture has steeped for 12-24 hours, carefully remove the rubber stopper and let your cold brew drip down into the glass decanter. You can put a lid on the decanter and store the brew in your refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

The Toddy coffee maker has a few drawbacks, though. For example, the flimsy handle for the container just doesn’t cut it when you have to lift it; there’s no lid for the plastic container; the felt filter needs to be stored carefully and might need replacing after some time.

However, those are minor niggles. The Toddy Cold Brew System produces 32 oz of strong, smooth, cold brew concentrate. It’s the best choice for a regular cold brew drinker who loves the unabashed, bold coffee flavor in their brew.

If you don’t have any specific cold brew equipment, the usual suggestion is to make your coffee in a regular mason jar. But there are some issues with this – mainly that it’s a messy process. Once your coffee is ready, you need to filter out the grounds, usually by pouring into a second container and possibly spilling your drink over the counter.

But there are some great things about the humble mason jar. As it’s designed for the pressure produced during fermentation, it’s made from heavy-duty borosilicate glass. Glass also has the benefits of not absorbing flavors or leaching chemicals into your drink.

With the County Line Kitchen Cold Brew Mason Jar, you get the best of both worlds. The sturdy glass jar has been equipped with a stainless steel mesh filter that you simply remove once the coffee is ready. That way you can store the cold brew in the same jar without any fear of overextraction.

Pouring is also easier with the BPA-free flip-cap lid. It’s air tight to prevent leakage and to protect your delicious cold brew from absorbing smells in the fridge. If you already have a mason jar or two, you can save money by buying just the filter and cap separately.

If there’s one thing Kitchenaid knows how to do is to make fantastically convenient and user-friendly kitchen appliances. And they have done that again with their Cold Brew Coffee Maker.

This stainless steel and glass brewer is an elegant piece of equipment. It also makes dispensing the cold brew concentrate easy with its built-in tap. It is capable of producing 12-14 servings of concentrate, so you won’t have a problem even when you have a lot of guests over.

This Kitchenaid cold brew coffee maker isn’t just good-looking either. It comes with a broad laser-cut stainless steel filter basket that fits neatly into its squat body, and slips right out, which makes it easy to clean.

It might be a little expensive for a cold brew coffee maker, but the best-in-class build-quality, smart design, and Kitchenaid’s customer support make it totally worth it.

One look at the Yama Cold Brew Drip Tower and you know it’s something special. This coffee maker is not only unique in the way it looks, but it also brews coffee very differently.

The top chamber is where you add the cold water and ice mixture. The middle chamber holds the coffee grounds and the paper filter (which is placed on top of grounds, as opposed to other cold brewers). You can watch your brew drip down through the twisty pipes and into the 32 oz glass pot on the bottom.

You also have control over the total brew time by adjusting the water to ice ratio in the top chamber and manipulating the drip-rate. This lets you experiment and perfect your cold brew according to your taste.

The Yama, however, is best viewed cold brew enthusiast’s machine. It needs to be handled carefully, cleanup and brewing is a chore, and you need a place in your kitchen where no one will knock it over by mistake. Not to mention, it is an expensive cold brew maker. But if you’re a cold brew loving coffee nerd and want to proclaim it to the world, the Yama will probably take the place of pride in your home.

The Verdict

Your choice of a cold brew maker will depend on a variety of factors. So you have to figure out your specific needs and personal taste before making a decision.

Our top pick for this year is definitely the OXO Cold Brew Coffee Maker as it produces the most aromatic and robust coffee. But that’s just us. Each of the coffee brewers we covered in this post could easily be the best cold brew coffee maker for you. We hope you get one of these brewers soon and relish the joys of smooth, bold cold-brewed coffee.