How to Make Cold-Brewed Coffee, 1850

naturalistic watercolor of coffee beans growing 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!