The Best Cold Brew Coffee Makers

Cold brew asks one thing of you that morning coffee doesn't: a little planning the night before. Get that part right and the payoff is real. Coarse grounds sit in cold water for most of a day, and what comes out is sweeter, rounder and much gentler on a touchy stomach than hot coffee poured over ice. The maker itself is doing simple work. It holds the grounds, keeps them soaked, and then gets them out of your coffee without making a mess of the counter.

Here's the honest part. Nearly every one of these is a jar with a filter in it, and none of them fully solve the two problems owners keep running into. Fine particles slip past mesh filters and settle at the bottom of the cup, no matter whose name is on the carafe. And seals leak. Owners of several models here describe drips around the base ring or the release valve after months of daily use. Cold brew is forgiving. The hardware is fussier than the marketing suggests.

So the choice really comes down to how much you drink, how much sediment bothers you, and whether you'd rather store the concentrate in the same thing you brewed it in. The rest is packaging. We think that the OXO Good Grips Cold Brew Coffee Maker 32 oz is the best cold brew coffee maker for most people, and that the County Line Kitchen Glass Cold Brew Coffee Maker 64 oz is the one to buy if you're brewing for a whole household.

Buy one of these if you're drinking cold brew often enough that bottled concentrate has started to feel silly, or if hot coffee bothers your stomach and you want a gentler option at home. You don't need special equipment beyond a coarse grind. If you drink cold brew twice a summer, a mason jar and a strainer will do fine, and you won't miss the flip caps and release valves.

This guide covers home brewers for cold water extraction — immersion pitchers, one slow-drip tower and one electric rapid brewer. It doesn't cover commercial batch systems, iced-coffee machines that brew hot and chill, or the beans themselves. And a note on scale: everything here tops out at two quarts. If you're brewing for an office, you're looking at a different class of equipment.

Even extraction: we favored designs that soak every ground at once, since dry pockets are the usual cause of a bitter first batch. Filtration: we compared filter types and read owner feedback for mentions of silt, since every mesh-only brewer passes some fines. Sealing and storage: concentrate keeps about two weeks sealed and much less otherwise, so airtight lids earned credit and leak complaints counted against. Cleaning: wide mouths, removable baskets and dishwasher-safe parts beat narrow chambers you need a bottle brush to reach. Capacity: we matched listed concentrate volume to how much people actually drink, which is roughly double the number on the box.

If you want the rainmaker lid in a smaller package: The OXO Brew Compact Cold Brew Coffee Maker ($39.95) — The OXO Brew Compact uses the same even-saturation top as our top pick, and draining starts on its own when you set the brewer on the carafe. The brewing chamber holds 24 oz and yields about 16 oz of concentrate, or seven drinks — right for one person, tight for two. What you give up is batch size and the manual release switch, and owners report the same occasional seepage around the base ring. What you gain is a footprint small enough to steep on a refrigerator shelf, which the full-size OXO can't do.

If you can't plan a day ahead: The DASH Rapid Cold Brew Maker with VacuPress™ ($116.99) — The DASH Rapid is the only maker here that skips the overnight wait entirely. Its VacuPress system pushes cold water through the grounds and fills a 40 oz glass carafe in under nine minutes, with mild, regular and bold settings to adjust strength without touching your grind. It's also the most expensive thing in this guide by a wide margin, it needs counter space and an outlet, and pressure extraction won't give you quite the depth of a long steep. If your mornings never include yesterday's planning, that trade might be worth it.

If brewing is the hobby, not the chore: The Nispira Iced Coffee Cold Brew Drip Tower ($104.99) — The Nispira tower drips cold water through a bed of grounds one drop at a time over three to eight hours, and the result is a more layered, noticeably sweeter cup than immersion brewing produces. An adjustable stainless valve sets the drip rate, and the wooden frame and glassware look the part on a counter. But you have to dial that valve in, and dialing takes a few batches to get right. It's also not set-and-forget — you're checking on it during the brew, not sleeping through it.

This is what our research surfaced in a crowded category, not a map of everything you can buy. Cold brew makers turn over constantly, and plenty of decent jars-with-filters never make a shortlist. The two below are worth knowing about — one lost on complexity, the other on size.

The KitchenAid 28 oz Cold Brew Coffee Maker ($99.95) — The KitchenAid KCM4212 is the best-looking brewer here, with thick glass, a reusable stainless steeper and fill-level marks that take the guesswork out of your first few batches. Owners praise how solid it feels and how fine the filter is. It lost on fuss: there are more parts than anything else in this guide, disassembly for cleaning is awkward, and a small washer in the plug has to be seated correctly or the whole thing leaks in the refrigerator — which several owners discovered the hard way after taking it apart to wash. At 28 oz it's also on the small side. Choose it if you want a permanent stainless steeper and no consumables, and you don't mind a careful cleaning routine.

The Hario "Mizudashi" Cold Brew Coffee Pot ($16.40) — The Hario Mizudashi is a lovely piece of borosilicate glass — slim, dishwasher safe including the filter, and narrow enough to stand in a refrigerator door. For one person who wants two days of coffee at a time, it works nicely. But 600 ml is small, and the filter basket limits how much coffee you can pack in, so owners who want a true concentrate rather than a ready-to-drink brew often find their batches come out weak. It also ships with Japanese instructions, which sends some buyers hunting online. Get it if you value the glass and the footprint over volume.

Grind coarse — think raw sugar, not table salt. Fine grounds over-extract in cold water and turn harsh no matter how you adjust the steep, and they're the number one reason a first batch tastes wrong. Rinse the filter basket as soon as you dump the grounds, because coffee oils get sticky within hours and mesh is miserable to scrub once they set. Anything dishwasher safe should go in the dishwasher regularly; a rinse alone leaves residue that dulls the next batch. Keep an eye on gaskets and washers, since they're small, easy to lose during cleaning, and the difference between a sealed lid and a puddle in the refrigerator. Store concentrate sealed and it'll hold up around two weeks. Once diluted, drink it within a few days.

For this guide:

• We read the manufacturer specifications and listing details for every brewer here, comparing filter types, brewing volumes, materials and how each one seals.
• We reviewed published coverage of cold brew methods to understand why filtration and even saturation drive most of the difference between batches.
• We read through owner feedback for each model, looking for repeated failure modes — leaking base rings, lost gaskets, sediment and awkward cleaning — rather than one-off complaints.
• We read owner reviews on every listing, weighted toward the critical ones, because that is where the recurring failures show up.
• We have a systematic way of automatically fetching the latest prices, so the numbers on this page stay current.
• This is a research-focused guide, so the team may not own every product listed — though we often do own the top winners, which gives us extra context for the recommendations.
• We don't accept free products, and the retailer commission never changes which product we recommend.