How to Make Cold-Brewed Coffee, 1850

Coffee Plant, c. 1823

Take four ounces of good coffee, properly roasted and ground. Dilute it in two glasses of cold water with a spoon. Let it steep all night, covering the vessel which contains it. Next day, pour the pap with care on fine linen placed in a glass funnel in a bottle… One part of this infusion, and two parts of pure water… gives a coffee of a superb colour and perfect taste… How can cold water draw from coffee all that can be obtained from it? I answer, yes! approved by experience… I am astonished that so simple a process has not been adopted.

P. L. Simmons, Coffee as it is, and as it ought to be

The artisanal, cold-steeped, linen-filtered coffee of your dreams has been around since 1850? I answer, yes!