While I have been a huge proponent of minimizing screentime on devices in general, I must give it to the algorithmic masters at Instagram and other social media platforms. Ever since I showed interest in coffee makers, I have been bombarded non-stop with ads, account recommendations, and videos from every conceivable brand out there. So I decided to finish my journey and continue down the rabbit hole of my coffee obsession – why turn back now? There has been a bushel of new coffee maker brands entering the market of late, several of which stand out from the crowd with sleek designs and so many configurable settings that engineers and data nerds would be in coffee heaven. For me, though, I'll take a great-looking product with minimal design and few settings that make some of the best-tasting coffee out there, and the Cumulus Coffee Company seems to have done just that for cold brew coffee aficionados. Priced at $695, the Howard Schultz-backed company has raised more than $20 million from various investors (including One Republic's Ryan Tedder), showing the seriousness of their mission and the evidence of their coffee quality.
Cold Brew is hot right now (er, popular, I mean) as it accounts for nearly 30% of all coffee orders according to a 2024 study by drive research – up 300% since 2016. This is particularly true for Gen Z and Millennial coffee enthusiasts. The problem is that there isn’t really a good cold brew machine out there to buy, and the ones that are out there still depend on the consumer adding cold water, ice, or what I would call “fake” measures to make the cold brew somewhat cold (or just giving up and making iced coffee instead — and yes, there's a difference). In fact, until I tried the Cumulus Cold Brew maker, I would just recommend to folks that they add their coffee to a pitcher and set it in a fridge overnight. It's non-decadent, for sure, but it gets the job done.
All about the Cumulus Cold Brew machine