How To Make Nitro Cold Brew At Home Like Pro Barista!

Last updated on October 26th, 2023 at 17:10

Learning how to make Nitro cold brew at home has its advantages. You can enjoy it without needing to go to your local coffee shop, save some money and, well enjoy it at any time of the day that you want to!

(Some Starbucks outlets don’t serve cold brew after 2 or 3 pm or when they run out!).

Keep reading for top instruction for making a great nitro cold brew at home!

How To Make Nitro Cold Brew At Home An Overview

Making nitro cold brew at home is very easy. The key to making this great coffee is making a world-class cold brew coffee which I’ll show you how but be patient; the brewing time is over 24 hours.

You will need a special piece of equipment, either a mini keg or a whipped cream dispenser, the same one you have seen bakers and chefs. You’ll need nitrogen canisters to infuse into your cold brew.

Read: Nitro cold brew with whipped cream dispenser

What Is Nitro Cold Brew?

A nitro cold brew is a coffee beverage sold at your local specialty coffee shop and Starbucks. Its base is the same cold brew that is used for making regular cold brew coffee with one quite brilliant and unique twist: it is infused with the colorless gas nitrogen.

The cold brew coffee, for a matter of clarity, is not iced coffee.

• Iced Coffee: Hot brewed coffee chilled with ice.
• Cold Brew Coffee: Coffee brewed with cold water to intentionally extract the low temperature compounds.
• Nitro Cold Brew: Cold brew coffee infused with nitrogen.

The result of infusing cold brew coffee with nitrogen is a sweet, tasty, creamy coffee with a cream-like coffee layer at the top like a pint of Guinness. When poured, it looks like the famous stout beer as it cascades.

It is rich, smooth, sweet and doesn’t need to have any sugar, milk or cream added. It’s not served with ice as the ice ruins the texture. It’s much stronger than a regular coffee and packs a serious caffeine boost with up to 30% more caffeine than regular coffee drinks and has 30% quicker uptake of the caffeine.

What coffee lovers enjoy the way that some flavors just pop with this drink but coffee purists, well some sit on the fence, some love it and some coffee purists are against the idea of infusing nitrogen with coffee.

But, coffee, as the Vietnamese have shown in the somewhat counter coffee culture, really has no rules! Experiment until you have found the ultimate coffee.

Nitro Cold Brew Starbucks

Nitro cold brew at Starbucks is made with the same cold brew coffee base as their regular cold brew coffee and then charged and infused with Nitrogen. You can enjoy it as it is or with any of their popular toppings of cold foam or sweet cream made with a variety of milks including oat milk, coconut milk, soy milk, almond milk.

You can also add two or three pumps of a flavored simple syrup of your choice. In my opinion, all of these additions of milk, toppings and flavorings spoil this coffee. It’s a drink that is best enjoyed as it is naturally served.

Don’t worry about drinking it as a black coffee if you are not a black coffee drinker as it tastes creamy and is very smooth.

Unfortunately Starbucks only have two drink sizes, a Tall 12 Oz (360 ml) and Grande 16 Oz (480 ml) which have 215 mg and 280 mg of caffeine respectively.

If your local Starbucks doesn’t serve it, try the larger and busier city center outlets.

Read: What is nitro cold brew?

Nitro Cold Brew Vs Cold Brew

I have been asked if there is any difference between nitro brew coffee and cold brew coffee and of course there is!

…And it’s not just the infusion of nitrogen.

The two coffee drinks made with the same cold brew coffee have a much different flavor, texture, taste and coffee experience.

Nitro cold brew preserves the flavors of coffee better than cold brew coffee while a regular cold brew lacks the same texture, creaminess and has a notably lighter mouthfeel.

The creaminess, heavy mouthfeel, and naturally sweeter nitro brew is what make it a much different coffee drink.

You can help your cold brew coffee to maintain the low, very low flavor compounds by using ice-cold water and leaving your cold brew to extract while it is in your fridge.

Can You Make Nitro Cold Brew At Home?

Yes, you absolutely can make nitro cold brew at home. I’ll get to the how-to in the next section.

Essentially it is as easy as making a batch of cold brew coffee and using either a nitro cold brew keg to infuse the nitrogen or a whipped cream dispenser and nitrogen canisters.

Patience is needed as it takes 24 hours or longer to make the cold brew coffee due to the long and slow extraction. This is why I suggest making a large batch.

How To Make Nitro Cold Brew At Home

There are several ways of making nitro coffee and many different ways of brewing up and excellent cold brew coffee. The better your cold brew coffee, the better your nitro cold brew will taste.

At Latte Love Brew we encourage the barista’s principle of using the best possible ingredients, techniques and methods and getting the best possible results.

Since coffee is 98% water, use the best possible water that you can find, something many coffee lovers overlook.

Read: Nitro cold brew at home

Making Your Cold Brew Coffee For Your Nitro Cold Brew

At the heart of nitro cold brew is the cold brew process and technique of making coffee, a coffee that I love making and happily call myself an expert at making it.

Use the best quality coffee beans that you can find; here are some suggestions:

• Ethiopian Yirgacheffe By Brandywine Coffee Roaster.
• Cold Brew Dark Roast By Stone Street Coffee Company.
• Cold Brew Lab.
• Downtown Blend By Bean & Bean.
• Neptune Cold Brew By Ovalware.

Use whole beans as you get a freshness factor benefit. Always store your coffee beans in an opaque coffee canister with an airtight lid and one-way valve. Keep your canister in your fridge for maximum freshness.

Weigh 8 ounces (240 grams) of whole coffee beans and grind to a coarse grind size with a ceramic conical burr grinder.

This type of grinder causes less heat dissipation and transfer to your coffee beans and gets a high quality even grind size.

Measure 64 ounces (1.92 Liters) of water. Use mineral water or the very minimum filtered water. Bottled water is best.

Add your coarse coffee grounds to an airtight glass container. Never use a plastic container as coffee is acidic and will leech the unhealthy chemicals into your coffee.

Side Note: Cold brew coffee is 60% less acidic than regular coffee but is still acidic.

Add your 1.92 liters (64 ounces) of ice-cold mineral water. Give it a good initial shake and put your container in your fridge and let it extract.

The sharp-eyed among you will note the coffee to water ratio is 1:8. This is the best ratio for balanced and great tasting cold brew coffee.

Leave your coffee to extract for 16 to 18 hours. Once this time has elapsed, taste test your coffee by taking a little sip. If it has not reached the perfect taste for you, leave it to extract for another 3 to 4 hours. Continue to taste test until you get the perfect flavor for you.

When you have that great tasting cold brew, filter out the coffee grounds using a metal coffee filter. If you don’t have a metal filter, use a sieve or the metal coffee basket of your drip coffee maker.

A metal filter will not filter out the coffee oils, leading to a better fuller and more tasty coffee. A cloth filter will filter out some coffee oils while a paper filter will remove all the oils and result in a clean, crisp taste.

Your choice of coffee filter will affect the flavor of the coffee.

If you fail or forget to filter out your coffee grounds, your coffee will continue to extract and eventually become overtly bitter and over brewed.

With the bits of coffee grounds that you have left over, don’t just throw them out. You can use them to revitalize your soil, to energize your compost pile, as a facial scrub or with honey to brighten, tighten and vitalize your skin.

Infusing With Nitrogen

Now that your coffee is ready and filtered, you need to turn it from cold brew into nitro cold brew coffee.

You have two choices: a whipped cream container, dispenser or a mini keg.

If you already have a whipped cream dispenser or have easy access to one by borrowing from a friend, use this method. It is much better than going to the inconvenient expense of buying a mini nitro keg and later finding out that you don’t quite enjoy nitro coffee and won’t get much use out of it.

That’s just my 2 cents worth.

Mini-Keg Vs Whipped Cream Dispenser

Let’s get to the details of both a Mini-Keg and a Whipped Cream Dispenser.

Mini-Keg

For making nitro cold brew coffee and making it regularly and in larger batches, a home mini-keg is a better option. A mini-keg is a better solution as it holds more coffee and gas. It can be stored away in any location and ready for your use.

The first time that you use it all the oxygen is purged out and replaced with nitrogen meaning your nitro cold brew is sealed in the keg until you pour it in a similar way as a can of nitro cold brew coffee is sealed and kept fresh.

There are a variety of different kegs available from a range of manufacturers and brands. It is much better than the whipped cream method and is most certainly worth investing in if you plan of making nitro cold brew regularly.

But if you are only going to make nitro cold brew occasionally or a handful of times, a whipped cream dispenser is better.

Whipped Cream Dispenser

A Whipped cream dispenser you are very familiar with when used by chefs and bakers for, well, fresh whipped cream. It’s a metal canister that makes use of nitrogen gas cartridges that turns regular cream into whipped cream.

Simply add your cold brew coffee into the metal canister, charge it with nitrogen to infuse the nitrogen and dispense into a tall glass.

Best results are achieved when you shake your whipped cream dispenser well for about a minute.

Serving Your Nitro Cold Brew Coffee

This is a coffee beverage that is best enjoyed naturally and with nothing at all added to it. It’s rich, creamy and sweet and can be enjoyed without adding sugar, milk, cream or any flavored coffee syrups.

This makes it a low calorie gourmet coffee drink that is good for keeping in shape.

Of course, you can add anything to your coffee drink that you so desire; it is entirely your choice. Adding cream or any dairy is overkill as it is a drink that is naturally creamy and will spoil your coffee.

Adding sugar and flavored syrups may make the drink too sweet for you.

Frequently Asked Questions About How To Make Nitro Cold Brew At Home

How Do You Make Nitro Cold Brew Without A Machine?

You can make nitro cold brew coffee by infusing your cold brew with nitrogen. It is not necessary or essential that you own the machine that a coffee shop has to make it. All you need is cold brew coffee and a whipped cream dispenser.

Fill your whipped cream dispenser with cold brew and charge it with a fresh nitrogen canister, shake well and when your dispenser feels cold pour your coffee at an angle into a glass and viola you have Nitrogenated (or nitrogen-infused) coffee.

What Ingredients Are In A Nitro Cold Brew?

To make homemade nitro coffee you will need:

• 1 cup of fresh coarse ground coffee.
• 8 cups of mineral water or filtered water.
• Coffee syrup for flavoring, caramel syrup, vanilla syrup is a good choice (optional).
• Nitro cold brew dispenser or a whipped cream dispenser.

Is Nitro Cold Brew Healthy?

Nitro cold brew is a healthy coffee beverage due to being lower in calories, fat and sugar than other coffee drinks.

Why Don’t Baristas Put Ice In Nitro Cold Brew?

The reason that baristas don’t put ice in nitro infused coffee is because ice will ruin the creaminess of the beverage which is created by the nitrogen bubbles. As a side note, there is no need to add sugar or milk to this drink, even though some people do, because the drink is naturally sweet and creamy without the addition of anything.

It is in my opinion that adding syrup and dairy spoils the natural texture and flavors of nitro coffee.

What Is The Difference Between Cold Brew And Nitro Brew?

 The difference between these two drinks is cold brew coffee is made with cold water steeped with fresh coarse coffee grounds for an extended period of time and when ready is served and often poured over ice.

Nitro brew coffee is cold brew coffee with nitrogen infused. It’s made in the same way as regular cold brew, the only difference is that it is infused with nitrogen and served as it is without ice.

What Are The Side Effects Of Nitro Cold Brew?

 Nitro cold brew coffee is higher in caffeine content, which means drinking more of it, getting caffeine in excess amounts, you may suffer headaches, anxiety, panic attacks, sleepless nights and elevated blood pressure.

These side effects are not from the drink per se but from the caffeine content and are what you would experience if you consumed excessive amounts of any coffee beverage.

Does Nitro Cold Brew Need CO2?

No, there is no carbon dioxide used in making nitro cold brew coffee. Pure nitrogen is what is used, not CO2.

Is Nitro Cold Brew Just Coffee?

Nitro cold brew is a special coffee. It’s cold brew coffee that is poured into a keg. There is a canister of nitrogen that is used to force nitrogen into the coffee and infuse it into the coffee. It’s not just coffee, its coffee infused with nitrogen.

Final Thoughts – How To Make Nitro Cold Brew At Home

Now that you know how to make nitro cold brew at home and just how easy it is to make, you can go ahead and make it. 

I suggested making large batches of the cold brew coffee because it has its advantages; 64 ounces (1.92 Liters) is enough for 8 x 8 ounce (240 ml) drinks. The long extraction time of typically more than a whole day means it is more convenient to make it in large batches. 

Your cold brew will stay well for 5 to 7 days when stored in your fridge. 

Join our cool coffee community and share your own experienced with making nitro cold brew coffee.