Worlds colliding: cold brew and spritzer.
Both are refreshing drinks with a huge following. And although the spritzer may have a longer history than cold brew, they are both on equal footing when it comes to popularity.
At some point, a genius amongst us thought that these two drinks would go great together, as in combined into one perfect drink. It would have all the refreshingness of the spritz plus all of the flavor and depth of coffee. It would be a cold brew spritzer.
What is Cold Brew Spritzer?
A spritzer, in essence, isn’t much else than white wine and sparkling water. There are however so many variations of this drink that a lot of people don’t think of the spritzer as such a basic drink, but know it as one of its variations (with fruit juice, coconut, garnish, etc).
So it’s better that we start off with a clear view of what spritzer is so that we can better understand the recipe. To make it doubly clear: a spritzer is a white wine with tonic/sparkling water. That’s about it.
This drink is famously popular in summer when the heat is at its peak because it is just very refreshing and thirst-quenching. It’s also a very popular fun drink because it isn’t fully alcoholic, it’s still very tasty to drink, but you can still get a buzz on it.
Similarly, cold brew has become the most popular coffee drink in the summer because usually, coffee is hot and, come summer, it is intolerably hot. So cold brew and spritzer do have that in common.
How to Make Cold Brew Spritzer?
The idea is quite simple: take a cold brew and add a little bit of refreshing tonic to it. Then add a few ingredients in order to get a nicer flavor going, and that’s it! Let’s take a look at the recipe:
Ingredients
- 100ml Cold brew concentrate. You can get this at stores and coffee shops; it’s like a very concentrated cold brew that works similarly to espresso.
- 100ml sparkling water or tonic. Tonic has a slightly bitter flavor; choose according to your tastes.
- Orange zest
- Ice cubes
- Vanilla extract
Instructions
- Using a vegetable peeler or a zester, get the zest from one small orange. It can also be just half of a regular-sized orange.
- Fill a tall glass with ice
- Pour cold brew concentrate.
- Pour the sparkling water very slowly so as to not lose the sparkliness.
- Add the vanilla extract and stir.
- Taste test and add sweetener if it needs any.
- Add orange zest.
- Enjoy!
The nice thing here is that this recipe can serve as the base recipe for many other drinks. For example, you can add different other ingredients as “toppings” that would really enhance the drink without taking away from the original flavor. For example:
- Shredded coconut: Shredded coconut in iced drinks is an absolute win and adds a lot of flavor even if you use just a dash. The coconut has a really good synergy with both coffee and orange, so it’s kind of the perfect ingredient.
- Heavy cream: This is perfect for those who just can’t enjoy coffee without some sort of dairy. Milk isn’t an option because it’s already quite a large drink but only a few tablespoons of heavy cream will add body and texture to this drink. Plus, the fat in this cream takes the flavor to a new level!
- Ginger: Try adding a few slices of ginger on top of this drink—it will enhance the natural flavor of the fruit and coffee. Ginger has been used in coffee beverages since forever starting in the Middle East in the 16th century. And orange and ginger have a similar citrusy flavor, so it’s a good ingredient because it combines with both flavors in this drink.
And that’s an example of three ingredients that you can add to this already very good-tasting recipe.
FAQs
Is this an alcoholic beverage?
No. We talked at the beginning of the article about the spritzer, which is a traditional alcoholic beverage made using white wine.
But there exists also a non-alcoholic spritzer, which is most likely what this recipe is based on. But if you are into it, you can definitely add alcohol to this recipe to create an even tastier cold brew spritzer.
Although white wine isn’t really a good choice for this recipe, you can use brandy, which goes great with most coffee cocktails and you can also use coffee liqueur, which is a concentrated coffee-based liqueur. It tastes like brandy with coffee, basically
Can I use store-bought cold brew?
Yes—that’s actually the idea behind the recipe. It would be a little tedious if you had to fabricate the coffee from scratch yourself. Ideally, you would have a bottle of cold brew concentrate ready to go whenever the itch appears.
But there’s a lot of merit to making the cold brew yourself. If you’re thinking of making cold brew concentrate yourself, keep in mind that it’s not like making cold brew in the usual sense: you have to use a water-coffee ratio of 1:1.
That might seem like too little water at first, but it’s the only way of making cold brew concentrate properly. And you might want to let it brew for the whole 24 hours.
Can I add milk?
No, you can’t. It’s not really the kind of drink that welcomes it.
What you can do, however, is add cream. Like with heavy cream, you can also use coconut cream which is basically coconut milk with much less water so the fat is more concentrated, therefore it’s creamier and thicker. It is a great ingredient to go with this.
Likewise, there’s condensed milk, which is milk that has been boiled to get most of the water out of it. It’s very sweet, creamy, and a very common ingredient that goes with cold brew and cold coffee beverages in general because of how creamy and refreshing it is. You can find it reduced in calories and even vegan.