This article covers our top 7 best cold brew coffee beans one must try, they are not just highly rated but we have also done closed group research on the multiple coffee beans to arrive at our top 7 list.

Cold Brew is the latest fad in coffee creation, and it’s called that for its unique brewing method that uses time rather than temperature to extract the flavor from the beans. 

Making cold brew is an extraction drawn process over 12-24 hours in the fridge or cool temperature whereas iced coffee is made from the high-temperature hot coffee brewing process and then it’s cooled down. If you wanna know the difference between cold brew vs iced coffee you can check our guide for it.

Cold brew focuses more on dark and medium roasts with beans that emphasize bold and nutty flavors. I’ve tested seven different coffees and found Stone Street Cold Brew Reserve to be the best of the bunch. These coffees exhibit robust, bold coffee flavor, and nutty flavors rather than fruity and acidic tones and are the best cold brew coffee grounds I’ve found to date.

What cold brew coffee drinkers like can vary wildly by individual tastes, and there’s no one right way to enjoy coffee. And cold brew can be trickier than most, as to how you like your coffee hot and how you like it cold can be completely different. The best way to find your perfect sip of cold brew is to use this list as a starting point to experiment with what you enjoy in a cup of cold joe.

There’s no better bean to start with than the Stone Street Cold Brew Reserve. Stone Street is a roasting company located in Brooklyn and has been providing quality coffee to New Yorkers since 2009. They focus on sourcing the best coffee beans for the best quality coffee. The Cold Brew Reserve is a specially formulated blend explicitly for cold brewing and everyone who tries it enjoys it. It’s available in the whole bean, or if you don’t have a grinder, it’s also available as a coarse grind, perfect for cold brewing. It’s the overall best blend on this list and is the gold standard.

Coffee is a matter of personal taste, and the others on my list may sound like a better match. Several strong contenders may be better, depending on what you want. Perhaps you want to make an excellent coffee for cold brew with minimum clean-up and maximum convenience. Or maybe you want the darkest cold brew possible to bring out the dark boldness of the coffee. 

Or perhaps you’re more health-conscious and want to drink some cold brew that tastes great and is excellent for your body. Here, I list each coffee I tested and where they shine as cold brews.

Read on to learn more about cold brew and the best coffee beans for a good cup.

Best Cold Brew Coffee Beans

1. Stone Street Cold Brew Reserve – The Best Cold Brew
2. Onyx Coffee Lab Cold Brew – Best Cold Brew Coffee Subscription
3. Intelligentsia Frequency Blend – The Best All-Around Coffee
4. Lifeboost Single Origin Medium Roast – The Best Organic Coffee
5. Tiny Footprint Coffee Cold Press Elixir – The Most Environmentally Friendly Cold Brew Coffee
6. Cafe Du Monde Coffee with Chicory – Best Value Cold Brew Coffee
7. Death Wish Coffee Dark Roast – Darkest Cold Brew Coffee

Detailed Reviews: Cold Brew Coffee Beans

1: Stone Street Cold Brew Reserve – The Best Cold Brew

This coffee is the best cold brew coffee overall. It’s a dark roast specifically made for cold brewing with beans from Colombia. You only need to glance at the cold brew reviews to see that everyone loves this blend, which deserves its praise. 

Its dark roast coffee beans enhance this coffee’s bold and smooth flavor when cold brewed. Whether you’re using the immersion or slow drip method, this coffee comes out great, and it’s the best coffee to start a cold brew. Stone Street only uses “supremo” coffee beans in this blend, the highest quality bean you can get from Colombia, and it’s reflected in this fantastic blend of arabica beans.

Stone Street Cold Brew Reserve is the best coffee beans for cold brew overall, and I recommend you give it a try. They recommend coarse grinding the beans before you brew, but they also sell them in pre-ground coffee for customers without grinders. This product is excellent for people looking to try cold brew for the first time or cold brew drinkers who want a sure bet on a good cold brewed coffee

2: Onyx Coffee Lab Cold Brew – Best Cold Brew Coffee Subscription

Coffee subscriptions are a great way for coffee lovers to get those sweet beans without constant ordering and breaking the bank, and the same goes for cold brews. While most coffee roasters offer coffee subscriptions, I’ve found Onyx Coffee Lab Cold Brew to be the best.

Not only do they offer delicious cold brew coffee at a reasonable price, but their mix and match subscription method also lets you pick and choose what coffees you want to receive, and you can change it at any time.

So if you only want your cold brew for the hot summer months, you can change your subscription to reflect that. If you want your cold brew year-round, you can keep it in there. If you want to try some more of their delicious and sustainably sourced coffee, you can add them! Your subscription is entirely up to you.

Their specially formulated cold brew blend comes from Ethiopia and Colombia and focuses on low acidity and creamy texture. Its flavor profile is cocoa, dates, stone fruit, and brown sugar, and their unique blending and roasting process focuses on the best taste for the special brewing methods of cold brew.

They also include tips for infusing their blend, so I suggest you read up to get the most out of your coffee subscription. 

3: Intelligentsia Frequency Blend – The Best All-Around Coffee

Sometimes you wake up wanting a good cold brew. Sometimes you wake up wanting a good drip or pour-over coffee. And sometimes you want to get fancy with a French Press. If you want your coffee beans to have versatility and taste great, your best bet is the Intelligentsia Frequency Blend. This coffee blend is good no matter how you choose to brew it, whether with a cold brew or a more traditional brewing method.

The Intelligentsia Frequency Blend is made with beans from Brazil and El Salvador, with Bourbon and Pacas varieties making up this blend. It’s a smooth blend with chocolate and molasses overtones with golden raisin and raw sugar hints. Cold brewing this coffee results in a smooth, enhanced experience that brings out the flavor profile, and it’s also delicious when brewed in a variety of different ways.

No matter how you choose to brew this coffee, it’s a prime example of why Intelligentsia is considered the modern American roastery, as everything from the sourcing, to the roasting, to the blending is top-notch. 

If you’re looking for a versatile blend that is good cold-brewed and drip, this is the coffee for you. This blend is available to order in several different grinds, so you can pick the grind that best suits your needs, whether that’s cold brew, French Press, or for maximum versatility, whole bean.

4: Lifeboost Single Origin Medium Roast – The Best Organic Coffee

Lifeboost focuses on providing healthy, organic coffee for the health-conscious consumer. Their single-origin medium roast coffee is excellent as a cold brew and brings out the flavor of this single-origin coffee. Many experts say that drinking single-origin is one of the best ways to drink cold brew coffee because you can get the smooth, bold flavor from the dark and medium roasts better than a traditional trip, and it shows in this coffee. 

Lifeboosts advertises itself as the healthiest coffee on the market, and reviews and testimonials back up their claims. This coffee has low acidity, so it’s easy on stomachs and teeth and is tested for several toxins. So if you want a cold brew that’s good for you, easy on your stomach and teeth, or even just organic, Lifeboost is the way to go.

Their medium roast is sourced from various local growers in Central America and is grown at high elevations in the shade. Lifeboost is a fair-trade company that is also environmentally friendly, so you can feel good about buying and drinking their coffee.

In addition to the medium roast, you can also use their dark and light roasts for cold brewing, depending on your taste. They also have some probiotic cold brew coffees for you to try and enjoy. The flavor of their coffee is fantastic, all while offering an organic choice for health-conscious coffee enthusiasts.

5: Tiny Footprint Coffee Cold Press Elixir – The Most Environmentally Friendly Cold Brew Coffee

Tiny Footprint Coffee’s main selling point is its environmentally friendly policy. They market themselves as the only “carbon negative” coffee globally, and it’s easy to see why. Tiny Footprint uses compostable packaging, only sources from farmers with sustainable farming practices, and plants trees to offset their carbon footprint. Their Cold Press Elixir is no different, so this is the best cold brew for you if you want to buy with the environment in mind.

The Cold Press Elixir is a blend of light and dark roasts, a rarity in the cold brew market, and has a rich, sweet silkiness with fruity and floral undertones and a cocoa-like body. It’s a unique flavor profile among cold brew coffee, which focuses more on bold, smooth flavors. Their beans are shade-grown arabica sourced from Ethiopia, and they do not skimp on quality.

You can only buy the beans whole, so if you don’t have a grinder, I would skip on this coffee, but the unique flavor and delicious blend might be worth buying a grinder for. So if you want your coffee to be environmentally friendly in addition to delicious, this coffee is right up your alley.

6: Cafe Du Monde Coffee with Chicory – Best Value Cold Brew Coffee

All of the coffee on this list is excellent coffee. And it shows in the price tags. Unfortunately, high quality, fair-traded, environmentally friendly, well-roasted, and blended coffee is expensive. You get what you pay for, and that doesn’t ring truer than when buying a quality cup of joe. However, Cafe Du Monde sets out to break that rule, providing quality coffee at prices that don’t break the bank.

It helps that they blend their coffee with chicory, the root of the endive lettuce, and while it can be an acquired taste, enough people love it that it’s become known as a quality coffee. They only sell cans of preground coffee, and unfortunately, they do not list their sources. Hardened coffee fans may want to skip this coffee for those reasons, but I think it’s still worth a try.

Their coffee is excellent as a cold brew and offers a unique smoky flavor you won’t find anywhere else. You can also brew the coffee in a regular drip or a pour-over. However you choose to drink it, it’s a unique taste for you to experience, at a price that won’t break the bank.

7: Death Wish Coffee Dark Roast – Darkest Cold Brew Coffee

Cold brew coffee is known for its smooth, bold taste, so if you want to see just how smooth and bold it can be, use Death Wish Coffee Dark Roast. Death Wish Coffee says they have the strongest coffee in the world, so strong they come with warning labels. If you want to experience the depth of flavor offered by the world’s strongest, this is the coffee for you.

They source the highest quality arabica and robusta beans globally and roast them to perfection. While they don’t list their sources explicitly, they only source organic and fair trade beans for one mean cup of coffee that’s double the caffeine of a regular cup. Their dark roast blend is perfect for cold brewing, and its bold flavor with notes of dark chocolate and black cherries shines to the fullest with this brewing method.

If you’re looking to take your cold brewing game to the next level, these are the beans for you. You’ll experience the peak cold brew in its dark, bold, smooth body. Don’t drink if you have a heart condition or other medical complications. And this blend is not for beginner coffee drinkers.

Buying Guide for Cold Brew

Of course, these are just my suggestions for the best cold brew coffee beans. However, keep these tips in mind when searching for the perfect cold brew. If you want, you can experiment with different medium and dark roasts to find your perfect cold brew bean.

If. you are brewing for the first time you can also check on our guide on how to make cold brew coffee at home, though there are multiple cold brewing processes in our guide we have covered three simple easy cold brewing methods apart from the gold standard toddy method.

Brewing Method and Roast Type (Light Roast, Medium or Dark Roast)

First of all, you’ll want to consider the brewing method. This is typically the first thing people think of when they are shopping for new coffee beans. You might think that there is a one-size-fits-all roast for cold brew coffee bean, but you’d be wrong. Whether you enjoy light, medium, or dark roast beans can all be a matter of preference.

Though I personally prefer medium roast or light roast coffee if I am having coffee without sugar and would go for dark roast if I plan to have it with milk but then that’s just a personal preference. Or you can adjust your water to content

However, cold brews have a completely different flavor profile from other brewing methods. Since the beans never reach a high temperature, fruity and floral flavors won’t transfer into the water. So it’s usually better to skip the light roasts and go for medium roast or dark roasts to get more of that bold coffee flavor that cold brews are known for. 

Another important thing to remember is that cold brewing requires more coffee than other brewing methods. Twice as much, in fact, so if you want to make a lot of cold brew coffee, load up. 

Grind Type

Next, make sure you use a coarse grind for your cold brew, as a finer grind could make your coffee bitter, or it could get packed too tightly for the water to penetrate. You would either end up with coffee that is too bitter or not coffee at all, so always use a coarse grind for cold brewing. Or you can simply look for pre ground coffee.

Always remember to look into the coffee company you’re buying from to make sure their fair-trade and environmentally friendly to do your part to help stop deforestation and exploitative trade practices.

Another tip is to always buy directly from the roasters and make sure they roast the beans after they’re ordered to ensure the freshest coffee possible. 

Grinding Your Own Beans

Now you can buy your pre ground coffee beans, and while that might seem more convenient, it will leave you wanting more. The best thing you can do to get the most flavor out of your morning cold brew is to use a grinder at home with a burr or even a mill grinder for coffee grounds.

Conclusion

Stone Street Cold Brew Reserve is the best coffee for cold brewing overall. It’s a superior product that brings out the best of the cold brewing method. It’s great for beginners and experienced coffee connoisseurs, so it’s your safest bet on finding your favorite cold brew coffee beans.

However, any of the beans on this list would make for a great cold brew, so it all depends on what you’re looking for. Perhaps you want a lighter cold brew that fits into your busy schedule. Maybe you’re an experienced coffee drinker who wants to try the darkest cold brew possible. Or perhaps you’re none of these, and none of the beans I’ve listed resonated with you. 

Wherever you choose to drink your coffee, it’s all up to you, so don’t be afraid to experiment until you find what you like. You can use these suggestions as a starting point to find your perfect cup of cold brew, whether you choose Stone Street, Lifeboost, Death Wish, or another brand entirely. Remember to buy responsibly and follow these tips to find your ideal coffee.