The products and services mentioned below were selected independent of sales and advertising. However, Don't Waste Your Money may receive a small commission from the purchase of any products or services through an affiliate link to the retailer's website.
If you’re a fan of cold brew coffee but don’t care for the price of a daily trip to your local coffee shop, there’s a new way to make your favorite cold brew at home in less time than it would take you to swing through a drive-thru.
The new Dash Rapid Cold Brew Maker makes cold brew in around 9 minutes by using patented VacuPress Technology, which the company says uses pressurized brewing to “extract maximum flavor in minimum time.”
Because the coffee is brewed without heat, the cold brew is ready to drink as soon as it’s finished. The machine comes with a recipe book if you want to try your hand at fancier coffees. It also uses a replaceable filter so you don’t have the added costs of buying paper filters each time you make a batch.
The cold brew maker is available on the brand’s website or Amazon. Regularly priced at $149.99, it is on sale through both sites for $129.99 right now.
Dash sent me the Rapid Cold Brew Maker to test out. As someone who has gone from not liking coffee to being up for an iced coffee at all times of the day, I definitely put it to work.
While I have never used a machine quite like this one before, I do make my own cold brew coffee. I have an iced coffee setting on my Keurig. I’ve made it using Jot coffee concentrate and then added my own flavors. I also own the Takeya Cold Brew Coffee Maker, which I have been using to make cold brew for about a year.
While all three of the methods have worked fine, the Keurig coffees aren’t as strong as I’d like, the Jot is pretty pricey and the Takeya maker — while it makes great coffee — takes 24 hours to brew each time you refill it. So, the idea of making cold brew in just minutes for the price of the machine and a bag of ground coffee was immediately pretty intriguing.
The instructions and setup were clear and easy and the machine was ready to go after running one cycle with just water. From there, I filled the carafe to the top line and added my favorite ground coffee to the container. That was it!
I brewed it on “mild” the first time and found it not strong enough, “regular” the second time and found it pretty much just right, but out of curiosity tried “bold” on my third try. That was plenty strong.
Because I filled the carafe all the way to the 40-ounce mark the first time, it took about 12 minutes to brew. For a 35-ounce amount, brewing lasted 10-11 minutes. A 27-ounce mount took around 9 minutes.
Not only did it brew exactly as it said it would, but to my surprise, the coffee was actually quite cold. I expected it to be at least slightly warm — or maybe just room temperature — but when I removed the carafe, I realized it was cold enough that it didn’t even need ice.
I tried it without adding anything first, but the bold brew was too much for me, so I then added almond milk creamer. It was, honestly, a perfect cold brew coffee. There was enough for multiple cups, so I put the rest in the fridge and drank it over the course of three days.
If you typically purchase an iced coffee daily or even weekly, the machine will quickly pay for itself. As every coffee drinker knows, a bag of ground coffee is just about the cheapest way to enjoy a cup of joe.
Because I’m a huge cold brew fan but don’t love spending money at coffee shops, the Rapid Cold Brew Maker is well worth the $150 price tag. It’s obviously even better if you catch it on sale. It would also make a great gift for a coffee fan in your life — and we are approaching wedding and graduation season.
While there don’t appear to be any other machines exactly like this on the market, Amazon does offer a handful of other cold brew makers. Some come at a lower price point, if you are just starting out with making your own cold brew and want to experiment a bit first.
The product that seems to be the most similar to the Dash brewer is the Instant Pot brewer priced at $59.95. It claims to brew coffee in 20 minutes using a proprietary FlashExtract technology … but it’s currently out of stock.
If you want something simpler, however, this Bodum Bean Cold Brew Coffee Maker is about as easy as it gets. Priced at $14.79, the Bodum maker holds 51 ounces of cold brew. It comes with two separate lids: one for when it’s brewing overnight and another with a plunger to press the coffee grounds in the morning before you pour yourself a cup.
If you’re looking to keep your cold brew habit at home, one of these options should save you money while making sure you can have quality coffee every day.
Kaitlin is a freelance multimedia journalist with a degree in journalism and psychology. Along with Don't Waste Your Money, she also writes for Simplemost, where she covers new product and food launches and overall general news. You can email her at kaitlingateswrites@gmail.com or find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/KaitlinGatesWrites. More.
