These days I’ve been loving coconut water. It’s so refreshing during these hot Atlanta summer days. One day while sipping on this glorious liquid, I thought to myself, “Hmm…what if I combine coconut water and coffee in some way?” Here we are, my friends. Coffee cold-brewed in coconut water.

My intuition tells me this will be disastrous, but it is worth a fair shot. I like to do cold brews at double the concentration of standard hot drip. I do pour overs at 19g of coffee per 300g of water, so for this I’ll do 38g of coffee for 600g of coconut water. One bottle of coconut water yielded merely 518g of coconut water for me. Oh no! But no worries, it was time to finally put my mathematics degree to good use.

I used some fairly old beans from Toby’s Estate based in Brooklyn. I bought their single-origin Panama back in November, but cold-brewing with old beans has given me solid results in the past. Let’s see!

I gave this a nice mix and let it steep in my fridge for 21 hours. Then filter through Chemex.

What a lovely reddish color! Coconut water is naturally translucent, so this is an interesting consequence. But it’s time, the taste test!

DISASTER. My intuition served me well here. Oh boy, this tastes just awful. It is harshly acidic on the tip of the tongue, and the finish leaves such an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I didn’t expect the interaction to turn out quite this badly. But, at least now I know this is not a good idea. Back to the drawing board.