Cold brew and ready-to-drink coffee

The fastest-growing ready-to-drink category and the one with the least obvious hazard.

A different microbial problem

Most of this property relies on acid as the primary hurdle. Coffee does not have it.

Brewed coffee sits around pH 5, which is above 4.6, and cold brew is often higher still because the cold extraction pulls fewer acids.

Which puts it in a different category from every other drink in this property.

Why cold brew is a low-acid food

Above 4.6, the organism the whole acidified foods framework exists to control is not suppressed by acidity.

And cold brew compounds it: no heat step at any point, a long wet extraction at ambient temperature, and frequently packaged in a sealed container with little oxygen, which is the environment an anaerobic organism prefers.

This is not theoretical. It is why the ready-to-drink coffee category treats its products the way it does.

What that means

A cold brew intended to be shelf stable needs a validated process: retort, aseptic processing, or acidification to below 4.6 with a validated scheduled process.

Nitrogen infusion does not make it safe. Filtration does not make it safe. Refrigeration slows it and is not a process.

Refrigerated with a short, tested shelf life and an unbroken cold chain is a legitimate small-producer route, and it depends on the cold chain actually holding.

Take this one to a process authority rather than reasoning it through, because the consequence of being wrong is the worst in this property.

Formats

Concentrate, which the customer dilutes, and which ships and keeps far better.

Refrigerated ready-to-drink, short life, local.

Shelf-stable ready-to-drink, which needs the processing above and is generally a co-packer's job.

And nitro, which is a dispensing format rather than a preservation one and should not be confused for one.

References