The cold brew coffee (CBC) trend is increasing globally; nevertheless, there is limited literature on this popular beverage. Many studies have focused on the health benefits of green coffee beans and coffee brewed by conventional hot water methods. Thus, whether cold brew conveys similar benefits is still unclear. This study aimed to investigate the influences of brewing conditions on physicochemical properties using response surface methodology in order to optimize the brewing parameters and compare the resulting CBC with the coffee from the French Press method. Central Composite Design was used to evaluate the effects and optimize the brewing parameters (i.e., water temperature, coffee-to-water ratio (C2WR), coffee mesh size, and extraction time) on total dissolved solids (TDS). Physicochemical properties, antioxidant activity, volatile compounds, and organic acids were compared between CBC and its French Press counterpart. Our results showed that water temperature, C2WR, and coffee mesh size significantly influenced the TDS of CBC. The optimized brewing conditions were water temperature (4 °C), C2WR (1:14), coffee mesh size (0.71 mm), and 24-h extraction time. At similar TDS, caffeine content, volatile compounds, and organic acids were higher in CBC, while other properties showed no significant difference. In conclusion, this study showed that at similar TDS, CBC has characteristics generally similar to hot brew coffee, except for the caffeine and sensory-related compound content. The model for the prediction of TDS from this study may benefit food services or industries for the optimization of brewing conditions to obtain different characteristics of CBC.
Keywords: antioxidant activity; caffeine content; cold extraction; organic acid; response surface methodology.