Review: Takeya Cold Brew Ice Coffee Maker

I tried StarBucks cold brew once and wasn't impressed. It felt like an excuse to serve you watered down coffee by dumping lots of ice in coffee. But with the summer heat, I decided that it was a good idea to try making it myself just in case it actually was good.

The Takeya pitcher looked good, and reviewed as easy to clean, and didn't break the bank. The filter is huge, and takes up a huge amount of coffee. You then fill the carafe with water and then shove it in your refrigerator for 24 hours, remove the filter, dump the grounds, and then you have concentrated coffee to dilute with ice and/or milk for the next few days.

The instructions said to swirl the pitcher occasionally while it is steeping. The nice thing about this design is that because it fits in the door of the refrigerator, you don't even have to do that. Over a 24 hour period, people will open and close the refrigerator door often enough to do the swirling for you.

The filter is a pain to clean, mostly because the bottom of it is solid plastic, rather than filter, so you cannot backflush it to clear the filter. The taste is great: even Xiaoqin, who usually dislikes coffee, enjoyed drinking it. The hard part is metering yourself so that you're not consuming too much coffee, because it's so drinkable.

And then I tried cold brew with Vanilla ice cream. It has to be tasted to be believed. The cold brew gives the Vanilla a caramel flavor that's quite unbelievable. I introduced the decaf'd version to my kids and they wanted nothing else for an entire week.

Recommended. And be prepared for your coffee consumption to go up dramatically after a purchase.