OXO Brew Compact Cold Brew Coffee Maker

There is an issue with Cold Brew nowadays. Namely - there is a quickly closing gap in between the taste & value of homemade versus store bought. See back in the long long ago, the only place you could get cold brew was that hipster coffee shop near downtown (the one with the good music and the tip jar with the funny sign). Other than that, you had no choice but to make it yourself, and because of its lack of prevalence, you basically wound up making some super janky Toddy Style system with a Home Depot bucket and some cheesecloth because you didn't know what you were doing. Now, all of that is different. Cold brew has entered the general population and has surged in popularity (with good reason!) There does lie a problem though. People assume, just like traditionally brewed coffee, that its much much cheaper to make it at home. While this is true to an extent, its not nearly the cost benefit that you would see from making a pot at home versus a $3.50 macchiato from the green and white mermaid lady. The other issue is that hot coffee at home is dead simple; add water, add a filter, add grounds, push a button. Cold brew is simple, but not that simple. This leads to the biggest issue with cold brew - making it at home is kinda a hassle, no matter what fancy infusion system you've got, and the big boys at the supermarket selling gallons of clear, filtered, smooth cold brew right next to the cream cheese and orange juice do a pretty good job of it. Lets do some math. This cold brew system costs $30, which is pretty negligible assuming you use it for more than a few weeks. The real cost comes in the form of grounds. This system takes 6oz of ground coffee, and 24 oz of water at a time to make "5 to 7 servings". I have NEVER once drawn seven full servings out of it. Maybe if you're sensitive to caffeine or the size of a house cat you'll get the full seven, but I almost always get five, sometimes four if I'm being greedy. I buy mid-tier plebeian level coffee in 12 oz bags for $6.50. That means each brew with this system uses $3.25 worth of ground coffee, and generates five servings - meaning each serving is 65 cents a piece (not counting cream and sugar or whatever other shenanigans you add to your drink). Thats not bad. 65 cents is cheap and over the course of a year having two cups a day would mean you only spend $474.50 in grounds. You can spend that much at Starbucks in about 130 days on just one drink alone, or about 1.5 college mid terms worth (1.1 if you're a STEM Major) Now if you just say "eh" to it all, and buy pre-made cold brew, a reputable brand sells 32 oz of concentrate for $8.99 (lets say $9). Both the OXO and this pre-made brand recommend diluting 1 part concentrate to 2 parts milk or water, so their strength is about equal. If 24oz from the OXO is 5 servings, 32oz is 6.6 servings. Meaning the pre-made is $1.30 per serving. If you had the exact same amount of coffee from the pre-made, you would spend $949 over the course of the year. Now a difference of $470 or so over the course of a year sounds significant, and to many it is, but consider you'll spend $30 the first year on the OXO as well. Is $440 over an entire year worth it to you? Maybe. Is the amount of time wrangling grounds, waiting for steeping, filtering, and then enjoying worth that amount of time? It really depends on you, but it is something to consider. My review of the OXO is this: if you have a very SPECIFIC coffee in mind that you want to turn into cold brew, get it. Buying pre-made means you're at the mercy of whatever beans that company chooses, whereas when you make it yourself you get total control. That total control does come at a cost though. Grinding your own beans, waiting for infusion, and filtering all takes a certain amount of time. In my case, the built in metal mesh filter does not do a perfect job of removing sediment, and I often find myself running the concentrate through a paper filter afterwards in order to get it all. Every pre-made concentrate will be basically 100% sediment free. As well, using the wrong grounds, or grinding the coffee too fine will make the draining process slow to a crawl, as the filter gets completely clogged. Making sure your grounds are nice and chunky will help this, but if you buy pre-ground get ready to get sludgy. Do I love this product? Yes. Would I buy it again if it broke? No. Its got a good Aesthetic (TM) and that's about it. The big Toddy filters that places like Starbucks and whatnot use are ugly as sin, but work wonders. The traditional cold brew infusion bottles and jars (the ones with the mesh filters that sit in a big bottle of water) do alllllright, but are big and leave sediment all over the place. This is somewhere in between the two, and doesn't have the full pros of either, but doesn't sacrifice everything for design. I want you to be happy. I want you to drink great coffee that energizes and invigorates you. If having a neat little bottle with a cork top in your fridge makes you happy, go for it. If you just have to make cold brew yourself - I would recommend a Toddy system. If you just enjoy the taste of cold brew, buy it pre-made from one of those big corporate overlord brands.

I have been using this for over a year and cannot imagine going back to any other way of brewing. It is simple, inexpensive, compact, and produces fabulous coffee. The coffee is so great that I take a flask of it with me when I go to restaurants for breakfast. I then order hot water for tea and pour my concentrate in with milk and stevia. I cannot go back to any other brewed coffee as that is bitter and acrid and acidic. This produces clean bright coffee that allows you to enjoy instead of puckering your lips. Using this device is simple and I would watch any of the videos to learn how easy it is to brew. I find for me the metal filter is great and I do not use the paper filters. The idea is to get out the particles that invade other coffee brewers and cause the acid taste. I think that it uses a lot of grinds and felt this could be cost prohibiting, but then I am not an aficionado and went with my regular grocery store generic brand (I use Maxwel House) and the result is great. I am sure that using beter coffee or grinding my own, or getting coarse grind coffee would produce an even greater coffee but for me and my daily 2-4 cups this is fabulous. I did see that there is a newer version that is larger and more expensive, but it has more features that would be nice (like a handle, a top that give you some idea of how much coffee to pour per cup, a marked carafe that shows how much water you should add, etc. I am toying with getting another carafe as it would be nice to brew before the carafe is empty as I let mine brew for a minimum of 24 hours and sometimes more than 48 hours. However just knowing how much water to add will do the same as the brewer only needs the carafe to empty. I am playing with that now and just use a measuring cup and it produces the same great tasting product, not weaker. I recommend playing around with the amount of water you use to brew. One last thing, If you are in a restaurant or coffee shop and you see a guy with a flask pouring something into his coffee cup please do not think it is some alcoholic. It is just me enjoying the delicious fruits of this coffee maker!

I’ve had this little cold brew maker for four years and love it. It’s so easy. Put coarsely ground coffee (I like the Bizzy brand here on Amazon) into the brewer up to the little coffee bean picture, put the “raindrop” top on, pour 24 ounces of water around the raindrop lid so it soaks the coffee evenly, then let it sit on the counter or in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours. (I leave mine on the counter for 24 hours.). Put the brewer on top of the glass carafe and let the coffee drain into the carafe, which takes only a few minutes. Then lift the brewer off the carafe, dump the grounds into the trash (or the garden), give the inside of the brewer a quick wipe with a dishcloth, paper towel, or your hand to get the last few grounds out, then hand wash. The bottom, which holds the filter, screws off, but I don’t clean the filter every time. Easy! Store the carafe in the refrigerator. When you want iced coffee, remember that this is coffee concentrate, so you need to dilute it with water before drinking unless you’re really hardcore. Oxo suggests 2 to 3 parts water to 1 part coffee concentrate, but you do you. Now about those extra carafes, which are not available and probably never will be — the system is made so that the coffee drains out of the brewer only when the brewer sits on top of the carafe. The carafe is glass, which is nice, but if you break it the whole brewing system is useless. (Maybe you could find some other container with the right circumference to fit under the brewer, but nothing comes to mind.). I would actually like another carafe so I could brew a batch of decaf in addition to my usual high test. I can scrounge up some other container, transfer the coffee concentrate into it, then use the carafe for my next batch, but did I mention I’m lazy? The other part that should have replacements available is the metal filter that sits at the bottom of the brewer. It seems durable, but it’s small and easy to lose. Mine slipped out of the bottom of my dish drainer and disappeared. I found it, after a while, but if I hadn’t I’d be shopping for another cold brew maker and might be annoyed enough to chose one that didn’t come with crucial parts that were subject to loss or breakage. (That’s a subtle threat to Oxo, not that they’ll ever see it, but chances are I would buy another Oxo. I’d just grumble about it really loudly.). Off to start my batch of decaf!

Very nifty. Easy to use and clean. I work for a large coffee company where we wear green aprons, and had to brew decaf cold brew to cut back on my caffeine. Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew is available to me all day and my heart was racing! If you want to replicate the buck of stars use Decaf Sumatra, have them grind it on French Press and follow the directions on the Oxo for the longer seep time 20 to 24 hours. It’s better to have it too strong and have to cut it with water than too weak (when we make it in the store we brew 5lbs of coffee to 14 liters of water for 20 hours then cut it 50/50 with water…you do the math for something that makes 16oz LOL). You can buy a bottle of vanilla syrup and some half and half and start saving some serious money. Beware of vanilla flavored creamers they taste weird, but Sumatra or Decaf Sumatra tastes just like Starbucks. Sure there’s an initial setup cost, but you’ll save money in the long run and it doesn’t take long at all to make, clean up, or get feel for how strong it is. One star off because I wish it made more than 16 oz. (or 32 oz depending on how strong you like it).

I love how easy to use this is and it makes fantastic cold brew coffee. However, after the first couple of times using it, the unit leaks around where the bottom screws onto the top part whether the white lines are lined up or not. It is really frustrating to have to continuously empty the bowl it is sat in back into the unit. Still works, but I wish it did not leak. UPDATED 7/17/2020: I figured out that the red band which was around the top of the part that screws into the base closest to the reservoir needs to be at the bottom of the screw in part farthest from the reservoir. It fits in the top notch perfectly and is hard to get out of there, so it just looks like it belongs there. Ever since I moved it down, it no longer leaks AT ALL. It is easy for the red band to move during cleaning so be careful not to or move it back down. I absolutely love this product now. I reuse the grounds 3 or 4 times (be careful to add a little less water after the first time as the grounds won't absorb as much which can lead to the glass bottle overflowing when emptying the reservoir). Easy to clean, easy to store, and very easy to use. I love having my iced cold brew every morning at home, especially during the pandemic where I work from home.

Bad description. Only produces around 12 ounces. Just got it and used 4 times. What it does make is good and no grounds. Easy to use.

Along with my hand grinder, this makes cold brew easy. Just set it on top of the jar to drain and drink

Below the *** is my original review. At the beginning of the second paragraph of that, I said that the moving parts could fail, and indeed they have. The coffee leaks, and yet no longer drains, and this has happened several times, leaving me with a big mess of concentrated coffee and wet grounds. Of course it’s well past the return window. What a waste, both of expensive coffee and of the money spent on this maker. *********** First, know that cold brew coffee is not the same as iced coffee! Using this, you end up with a coffee concentrate, to which you can add hot or cold water and creamer or milk if desired. I’d used the Toddy system for many years, and liked it very much, but it was just getting too much for me to handle the large size and volume of the system. With this brewer, I use the same ratio of coffee to water that I did with my Toddy, which is a little different that what Oxo recommends. This brewer, with how the coffee grounds and water are arranged, is far superior to brewers with narrow mesh baskets. You need the increased surface-to-volume ratio that this brewer provides to make the best concentrate. The coffee concentrate dispenses easily into the carafe. There are some moving parts, which could eventually break, but I’ve used it at least ten times now and the dispensing mechanism still works. I’m certainly hoping it will last several years. I’ve seen from other reviews that Oxo doesn’t sell replacement parts, and I anticipate that I may well break the glass carafe. It may be difficult to find another glass container whose neck is the same size as the neck of the carafe, which is necessary to dispense the concentrate. Invest the time up front to figure out what combination of grind coarseness, ratio of grounds to water, and how much you want to dilute the concentrate to get your perfect brew, and then it’s very easy going forward from there.