Pumpkin Spice Cold Brew, Trail Version
Cold-soak coffee grounds overnight, sweeten with spiced sugar, finish with milk powder.
- calories
- 150
- weight
- 1.6 oz
- cal / oz
- 94
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 3 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 3 min
- water
- 400 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Drink
- Breakfast
- Cold soak
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Bikepacking
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Coarse ground coffee | 1/3 cup | coarse, or you will be chewing it |
|---|---|---|
| Brown sugar | 2 tbsp | |
| Pumpkin pie spice | 1/2 tsp | cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove |
| Whole milk powder | 3 tbsp | coconut milk powder works the same way |
| Salt | a pinch |
Method
- At camp in the evening, put the coffee grounds in a wide-mouth bottle with 400 ml of cold water. Cap it and shake once.
- Leave it overnight, at least eight hours. Cold water pulls slowly, so there is no shortcut here.
- In the morning, strain the grounds out through a bandana or a coffee filter into your mug. Pack the wet grounds out.
- Stir the sugar, spice, salt, and milk powder into the strained coffee until no lumps are left. Shaking it in a capped bottle works better than a spoon.
- Drink it cold. In hot weather, sink the bottle in a creek overnight and it gets close to iced.
The coffee shop version depends on a syrup, ice, and a fridge. None of that travels. What does travel is the cold soak itself, which is just what cold brew already is: grounds sitting in cold water for hours. A wide-mouth bottle in your pack does the same job as the jug on the counter.
The syrup gets rebuilt as dry brown sugar plus pumpkin pie spice, and the milk becomes milk powder. Powder dissolves better in cold liquid if you shake it rather than stir, and the pinch of salt cuts the sourness cold brew picks up from a long soak. Straining matters more than it sounds like it should. Grounds left in the bottle keep extracting all morning and turn bitter.
Packing
Grounds go in their own bag. Sugar, spice, salt, and milk powder get premixed into one small bag so morning is two pours, not four.
Variations
- Swap the milk powder for coconut milk powder to make it dairy-free.
- Leave out the sugar and carry the spice alone if you want it black.
- Instant coffee and 250 ml of cold water skips the overnight soak, at some cost in flavor.
https://cornercoffeestore.com/pumpkin-spice-cold-brew-recipe