Cold-Brew Coffee Is So Last Month

We've drunk cold brew and experimented with nitro brewing. Our mornings begin with our trusty Chemex. Our local coffee shops offer iced coffee on tap. And now, the Nashville-based Matchless Coffee Soda aims to popularize flash chilling.

Cold-brew coffee is pretty well named; coarse-ground beans are left to soak in cold water overnight. Obviously, this requires some planning. In flash brewing, on the other hand, baristas brew the coffee hot and then quickly chill it. The end result, advocates say, is a more flavorful coffee.

This is not the original iced coffee, for which coffee shops simply take their hot drip coffee and throw it over ice. No one is happy about that. The ice melts instantly. The coffee is diluted. And the resulting mixture is just lukewarm disappointment.

The flash-brew process originated in Japan and has been spreading across the States over the last couple of years. The simple-to-replicate process uses materials most coffee geeks already own: a scale, a filtering brewing device, ice, and — obviously — coffee. Best of all? The five-minute process can be shoehorned into nearly anyone's morning routine.

Watch Matchless Coffee Soda founder Nathanael Mehrens explain the process in this short video: