Disclaimer: If you don’t like coffee, you probably won’t like this post. 

Since I’m a total coffee snob, I spend copious amounts of money per week on my daily cup of joe. It wasn’t until I looked at my bank statement a few weeks ago that I had a realization about my spending habits…there’s a lot of better places that my coffee allowance could go to that isn’t the  instant satisfaction my daily coffee brings me. As much as I look forward to my daily coffee shop walk, my spending is getting out of control. During my attempt to find a coffee brand that lives up to Starbucks, Alfred’s, Panther Coffee…I found Civilized Coffee. One of the reasons that people spend so much money on coffee is because people love the idea of going out for their morning coffee shop run. Similar to me, I could spend hours in a coffee shop. Rainy or snowy day? I could spend multiple nights in that coffee shop! Whether you’re single, have kids, have a stressful job, or work from home, simply getting coffee wakes you up and makes you feel like a human. (My best friend) Gabe tells me I’m dependent on coffee because I always force him to try new coffee shops with me, when actually, I simply enjoy going out and spending money on something that makes me happy. Do I get headaches when I don’t drink coffee? Potentially. But don’t tell Gabe. Us coffee drinkers are part of a totally different universe, ya know?

If you find your kids or your family complaining about running out of Keurig cups, or needing more money for their Starbucks app, tell them it’s time to look in a new direction for coffee. What if I told you that you could make coffee at home, or in your dorm, for 1/4 of the cost and 99% better taste? As you’ll see above, I ordered a massive jug of Starbucks iced coffee for my little experiment this week. I wanted to see what the difference between iced coffee (that you can buy at the grocery store) is compared to homemade joe. Since I’ve never made iced coffee before, I had no clue what to expect. This type of coffee is specifically cold-brewed coffee, which starts at around $4 for a tall cup at Starbucks and goes upwards of $8 at “speciality” coffee stores for nitrogen coffee. All that came in my box from Civilized Coffee was a bag of roasted/ground coffee beans, three filters, and a massive mason jar. Since mason jars are so in, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to test this coffee out. I didn’t receive any directions in the package, so I googled “how to make cold-brewed coffee” and up came 100s of YouTube videos.

The steps are simple:

Decide how much coffee you want to make (the entire mason jar or half of it) and choose the large or small bag. Fill the bag with coffee until it’s fill, and place it inside the mason jar. From there, fill the mason jar with water and cover the lid. Place the jar in the fridge for 24 hours (that’s the amount of time that gave the coffee the perfect flavor) and you’re ready to enjoy!

Leave the coffee in the fridge for as long as you need, until you have to make more! I’d say one bag of the fresh coffee they send you would last for probably 10+ cups of coffee.

Tomorrow on This is Life Unfiltered: America’s Next Top Model member Mame! 

Xo,

Alexa