Asobu Cold Brew Coffee Maker Review

Offering a simple way to make cold-brew coffee and keep it for longer, the well-priced Asobu Cold Brew Coffee Maker is flexible and great for the hot weather. And, when outside temperatures drop, it’s a decent pour-over coffee maker, too.

Introduction

Cold-brew coffee isn’t particularly difficult to make, but it can be fiddly and a little messy to prepare. If you’re a fan and make this drink regularly, the Asobu Cold Brew Coffee Maker could be for you. With its vacuum insulated carafe and pour-over top, this set includes everything you need to make cold-brew coffee – and you don’t even need a fridge.

Design and features

• Clever brewing system
• Carafe keeps drinks hot or cold
• Quite tall

The Asobu Cold Brew Coffee Maker is a device of two parts. At the top you have the coffee-brewing unit, which contains a filter that you pour water through; at the bottom is the carafe in which you keep your cold coffee once it’s been brewed. Sturdily made with tough components, the Cold Brew Coffee Maker feels like a premium product.

Making coffee in it is simple. First, you need around 85g of coffee and 750ml of cold water. Put in a third of the coffee and pour over a third of the water; let it seep through the coffee and filter. Then repeat twice more until all the coffee and water have been used.

You then just stick the lid on and close the air vent at the top. Cold-brew coffee takes 12 to 24 hours to brew, so you just need to leave it to do its job. You can do this out in the open, but if you want to chill your coffee then the brew unit simply unscrews from the carafe so you can store it in the fridge more easily.

Once the coffee is fully infused, you’re ready to go. To get it into the carafe, you just attach the brewing part to the carafe, open the air vent and then press the button at the front. This pushes up a steel ball inside the unit, allowing the liquid out. It works brilliantly, creating a perfect seal for brewing but allowing your cold coffee out quickly when it’s done.

If you don’t keep the Asobu Cold Brew Coffee Maker in the fridge, you can now add ice to the carafe before screwing on the provided metal lid. Kept this way, your cold brew coffee will last up to two weeks in the fridge. Out of the fridge, the carafe will keep it cold for up to 24 hours.

While you can pour directly from the carafe, Asobu also sells a pouring handle (around £10) that screws onto the top, which also provides a spout for more controlled pouring.

In particular, this attachment makes sense if you plan to make hot coffee in the Asobu, since it’s also a regular pour-over coffee maker, too – it makes sense to use it with the excellent Dualit Pour Over Kettle. Once brewed, the carafe can keep the coffee hot for hours.

Everything needs to be hand-washed, but the Asobu Cold Brew Coffee Maker is easy to take apart for cleaning.

Coffee quality

• Easy to get your desired strength
• Excellent coffee

Much of the taste of the final drink will come down to the beans you use, but unlike iced coffee, which uses heat to brew normal coffee, you get a bit more choice here. Using cold brew extracts the full flavour from the coffee over a long period of time. As a result, cold-brew coffee tends to be sweeter, with less acidity and bitterness than traditionally brewed coffee.

It’s also far stronger, so you’ll need to water it down to make it drinkable. A 50:50 ratio is a good starting point, giving you around six servings from the Asobu Cold Brew Coffee Maker, assuming you’re using 250ml mugs. It’s worth adding ice, too.

Pouring it out, I got a cup full of dark coffee. While too strong to drink like this, a sip test showed that the cold-brewed coffee was rich and full of flavour. Adding water into the mix, I got a perfect cup of cold brew: lighter and sweeter than iced coffee, and a great drink to have on a hot day.

If you want to go further, then the cold-brew coffee here even works well in the Nespresso Barista, making a top iced nitro: a shot of cold brew, water and ice cubes blended together (I add a shot of flavoured syrup just for something a bit different).

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Final thoughts

A simple device to use, the Asobu Cold Brew Coffee Maker is exceptionally well designed and makes a fiddly job easy. With its vacuum insulated carafe, you can even make cold-brew coffee without going near a fridge, or you can turn your hand to pour-over coffee if you prefer your drinks hot.

The unit is quite tall when fully assembled, but the excellent ball valve at the bottom won’t leak, so you brew coffee in just the top unit, and store the coffee maker in its two halves. If you’re after different types of coffee, check out my guide to the best coffee machine.