Elsewhat

I love coffee, but in the summer I don’t want a hot drink, even in the morning. I looked into buying a cold brew coffee brewer for $30+ dollars, but realized I could just make my own pretty much for free. I came up with this simple design which takes about 5 minutes to make. It’s so simple I almost didn’t think to share it here.

Making the Brewer

I start with 4 litre (aka 1 gallon) spring water bottles sold at almost any corner store or pharmacy. I’ve used both round and square ones. Both work, but the round ones feel a bit more stable.

I cut off the bottom of one, and the top of the other, like so:

Then I use a nail to poke a hole in the lid of the bottle, like so:

Then, on the bottle which still has its top, you put a coffee filter on the top. I usually wet it to smooth out the next step. I also remove the handle.

Then I screw on the lid with the hole in it on top. Take is slow so not to tear the filter. We’re pretty much ready to make some cold brew.

Brewing

We take the bottle half with the filter lid, and put it upside down inside the bottle bottom. See the top photo on this post.

We then put about a cup of ground coffee in the top, and then fill it with cold fresh water. Don’t stir! I find it somehow clogs the filter and stops the brew process. I don’t understand why, but I’ve had much better luck when not stirring.

The water should drip drip drip, very slowly, from the top bottle to the bottom one. You may need to experiment with the size of the punctured hole, and the thickness of the filter (two or three layers might be needed), until you have a very slow drip.

Brewing cold brew is a slow-drip process that takes a few hours. Be sure to put it somewhere safe, as having the contraption fall over would be a huge disaster. I usually leave it overnight, then (carefully) transfer to a glass storage bottle to keep in the fridge.

From Information is Beautiful, via Kottke, comes a pretty amazing set of infographics showing a scene-by-scene analysis of how close “based on a true story” films match the historical record. Blue represents a good match, which red are embellishments or fabrications.

You can even click on an individual scene to read more details about it. This is a huge amount of information packed into easy-to-read graphs.

Visit →

I stumbled across this 7 year old video about making an audio visualizer out of some very basic parts. So cool and deceptively simple.

My favourite blog post every year is friend of Elsewhat Sean Michaels’ list of best songs of the year. I always find a ton of new music I didn’t know about, and usually have it as a playlist I listen to for months.

See the list here →

Randall has a way of making me think about things I never considered before. Now when I turn on the tap that provides near-infinite clean drinkable water I’ll think about how crazy it is that it just works.

I’m a bit late, but Jay Smooth has returned to Youtube after a near 6 year absence to cover the beef between Kendrick and Drake of all things.

My own take on the feud is that Drake was never in the same league as Kendrick, so the “win” doesn’t carry too much weight with me.

Here’s a joke you need to work to get. Tons of respect to Randy for taking this bit as far as possible. Buy all his books.

I am terrible at chess, but I also love it. I also love these kind of intense deep-dives into esoteric subjects.

A fun little diversion: here is a great old list of words you can spell on a calculator, from bee to Zoe.

See the whole list →

Via Present and Correct