Can You Really Make Cold Brew in Minutes? Colperk Says Yes!
Cold brew usually requires one thing that coffee people don't always have enough of: time.
You mix coffee and water, let it sit for 12, 18, sometimes 24 hours, then filter it and hope you made enough to get through the day.
That's the familiar way of doing it.
The ColdPerk Café 2 takes a different approach - and the first thing worth clearing up is that it isn't really making traditional cold brew.
It produces espresso-grade coffee concentrate through a cold extraction process, using controlled gravity to move water through the coffee rather than leaving the grounds immersed for hours.
No electricity. No pump. No overnight brew.
That distinction is what makes the machine interesting.
A different way of extracting coffee
Traditional cold brew is an immersion process. The grounds sit in water, and extraction happens gradually over a long period of time.
The Café 2 changes the movement of the water.
Water enters the system from above and passes through a bed of coffee using gravity. ColdPerk's DWIP Manifold™ distributes the water across the coffee, helping create more consistent contact with the grounds as the water moves through them.
The result is a concentrated coffee extract with the strength and character needed for espresso-style applications - produced without using heat or an espresso machine. (coldperk.com)
There are several variables you can adjust along the way, including grind size, water temperature, flow and contact time. In other words, this isn't a case of loading coffee into a machine and accepting whatever comes out.
You still get to make coffee. You just have a different set of tools to work with.
See it in action
ColdPerk's own walkthrough is probably the easiest way to understand the process. You can see how the Café 2 is loaded, how the extraction happens, and what comes out the other end.
It looks simple because, mechanically, it is. There's no complicated electrical system hiding inside the machine. Gravity is doing most of the heavy lifting.
But what exactly comes out?
This is probably the part that can be confusing if you're coming to the Café 2 looking specifically for a cold brew machine.
The finished coffee is espresso-grade concentrate, rather than a ready-to-drink cold brew.
The concentrate is designed to be used as a building block. You can dilute it and serve it as a cold coffee, add milk for an iced latte, use it in a cocktail, or build it into another drink.
It's closer to having a very strong coffee ingredient ready to go than having a finished beverage waiting in a pitcher.
That also means the Café 2 isn't limited to one particular drink.
The same concentrate can find its way into iced coffees, lattes, espresso-style drinks, nitro beverages, coffee cocktails, mocktails, milkshakes and whatever else your menu team decides to try.
A little less waiting around
For a café, the appeal isn't simply that something happens faster. It's what the shorter extraction cycle changes about your workflow.
Traditional cold brew needs to be planned ahead. If you need cold brew tomorrow, you need to start making it today. If demand is higher than expected, you're generally out of luck until the next batch is ready.
With the Café 2, you can produce espresso-grade concentrate much closer to the time you actually need it. This gives you another option when you're managing production around actual demand.
The Café 2 also doesn't need to be connected to electricity or plumbing, and its relatively small footprint means it can sit on a working bar without requiring a major equipment rearrangement. It can accommodate between 0.5 and 2 lb (0.23–0.91 kg) of coffee per batch. (coldperk.com)
The coffee is still the fun part
The coffee you choose, the grind, the water temperature, the ratio and the flow all influence the result. ColdPerk provides starting recipes for different styles of extraction, but there is plenty of room to adjust from there. (coldperk.com)
That's where we'd expect coffee people to have some fun with it. A brighter coffee might behave differently from a chocolatey, heavier roast. One recipe might make a great iced latte while another works better diluted over ice.
You can experiment with the concentrate itself, too.
Maybe it becomes the base of a signature drink. Maybe it becomes an espresso martini ingredient. Maybe it simply gives your bar a faster way to make a really good iced coffee. The experimentation is the exciting part!
Is it a cold brew machine?
Technically, we'd describe it a little differently.
The Café 2 uses cold extraction to produce espresso-grade coffee concentrate. That concentrate can then be used to make cold coffee drinks, including cold brew-style beverages.
It's a small distinction in wording, but an important one when you're deciding whether the equipment fits what you actually need.
If you're looking for a traditional immersion cold brew setup, this isn't that. If you're looking for a way to produce concentrated coffee without heat, electricity, or a long overnight extraction, that's exactly where the Café 2 starts to make sense.
For the café that likes having options
The ColdPerk Café 2 won't replace every piece of coffee equipment behind a bar.
It doesn't need to.
What it does is give you another way to extract coffee — one that is compact, doesn't require power or plumbing, and can produce espresso-grade concentrate in minutes.
For a home coffee drinker, that may be more equipment than necessary.
For a café, restaurant, bar, hotel, or beverage program looking for more flexibility in how it produces and uses coffee, it may be a useful addition to the bar.
And sometimes that's the most useful kind of equipment: not the thing that completely changes how you work, but the thing that gives you one more option when you need it.
Buying for a café or business? We offer wholesale pricing for orders of 3 units or more. Contact us for a quote.
Want to see what you can make with it? Start with the ColdPerk recipe guide, then change one variable at a time and see what your coffee does.