While the Hario Cold Brew Pircher is an excellent tool for making most types of cold brew coffee, it's not especially well-suited for making the New Orleans-style Iced Coffee.
For making New Orleans-style Iced Coffee at home, we recommend using
- the Toddy Brew System, or;
- the kitchen equipment, mentioned on the New Orleans recipe card that is included in each shipment of our regular and decaf Decaf New Orleans–Style Coffee and Chicory kits, as well as on our website.
Long story, short:
Because you're making a concentrate, while the amount of coffee used in the New Orleans-style Iced Coffee recipe is similar to the amount used when making most other styles of cold brew, the amount of water used when making New Orleans-style Iced Coffee is much, much smaller.
That smaller amount of water presents some significant challenges in making a delicious batch of New Orleans-style Iced Coffee in the Hario Cold Brew Pitcher.
Here's more detail:
When making the New Orleans-style iced coffee, your goal is to make a very heavy-bodied, dense coffee concentrate. The Hario Bottle is designed to make a light-bodied, ready-to-drink iced coffee. So the ratio of coffee to water is much greater when making iced coffee in the Hario bottle.
The Hario Cold Brew Pitcher recommended cold brew ratio:
70g coffee to 900g water (1 to 13)
New Orleans ratio:
12oz (340g) coffee to 64oz (1814g) water (1 to 5.33)
That means that if you put the 70g of coffee the pitcher's filter accommodates into the Hario Pitcher to make a batch of New Orleans, you'd use only 373g water.
That small amount of water used to make that delicious concentrate (that works so well with dairy and non-dairy milks) may only just barely reach the bottom of the filter.
If you're determined (and we love determination!) to use the Hario Pitcher for New Orleans, you can try some workarounds like not attaching the filter full of coffee and chicory to the cap and just having the filter sit in the bottom of the bottle with the water.
But for best results, we highly recommend the Toddy Brew System, or the kitchen equipment, mentioned on the New Orleans recipe card and website.