The complete guide
Whole roasted cacao beans, ground coarse and brewed with water—much the way you brew coffee. What you get is closer to a cacao tea: dark, aromatic, barely sweet, and low in caffeine.
It is not hot chocolate, and it does not behave like coffee. We have been roasting, grinding, and brewing it for years, so this page is the whole of what we know: a ratio and timer to start with, the methods that work, and the reasons behind them.
Quick start
Put the grounds in a French press and pour boiling water over them. Stir once, wait four to five minutes, then press and pour. That is it. If you leave it longer, it starts to get astringent.
Watch it brewed
John brews a pot in a French press: what a good bed of grounds looks like, how it behaves when boiling water hits it, when to stir, and what the finished cup should look like in the glass. If you have only ever made hot chocolate, this is the fastest way to see the difference.
Brewing a cup takes about as long as watching him do it.
Methods
Use whatever you already own. A French press is easiest, but pour-over and most drip brewers work too. Cold brew takes a day or two and gives you a different drink.
Start here
This is the easiest way to do it and the method in the video. Add the cacao, pour in boiling water, stir once, and press after four to five minutes. Pour it all out when it is done. If you leave it sitting on the grounds, it keeps brewing.
Pour-over works really well. Drip mostly works—the catch is capacity: you need more cacao than you would coffee, so a small basket simply cannot hold a pot’s worth. A machine with a large basket and a good filter, like the Brazen Plus, is the one to reach for. Pour boiling water over the grounds and let it drain through.
Worth the wait
About half to three-quarters of a cup of cacao per quart of water is a great place to start. Set the container out in the sun, exactly like sun tea, and let it brew for 24 to 48 hours. Filter and enjoy. It is really awesome chilled—and it is the one preparation we would push you towards if you think you do not like brewed cacao.
Some people like to experiment with mixing brewing cacao and coffee. We like our coffee to taste like our coffee, and our cacao to taste like our cacao—but you should experiment and figure out what you enjoy.
What to brew
Everything here is roasted and ground for brewing. Pick one that sounds good and use the directions above.
The primer
Brewed cacao is more like a cacao tea than hot chocolate. It is made from whole roasted beans, ground coarse with the husk included, then brewed in hot or cold water. It has much less caffeine than coffee. Cacao also contains theobromine, so it does not feel quite the same as coffee. Drink it hot or cold, plain or with milk and sugar.
We have already decided the roast and grind. What is left for you is how much cacao to use, how hot the water is, and how long you brew it.
What it is and what it isn’t
A short explanation of where brewed cacao sits beside coffee, tea, and hot chocolate.
Beside hot chocolate
Eight things worth knowing, in the order they happen.
Roast
Beans destined for brewing are roasted a good deal hotter than beans destined for chocolate—around 50–100°F hotter, much like coffee. That gives them real character even though they would make terrible chocolate.
Grind size
Grind size matters more than anything else in the bag, which is exactly why we set it and you never have to. We grind it to a consistency close to coarse kosher salt, or a shade larger. Coarser than that under-extracts and the cup comes out weak; finer over-extracts and turns bitter or astringent. Finer grinds do not equal finer drinks—this is the clearest place where cacao parts ways with coffee.
Consistency & fines
An uneven grind—what you get from a blade grinder—may not noticeably affect the taste. What matters is avoiding a grind that is too fine, because fines pull undesirable flavours out of the husk.
Why we grind it
Brewing cacao is sold ground because a kitchen grinder is the wrong tool for it. Burr grinders clog with cocoa butter very fast, and blade grinders throw off too many fines—and fines lead to off flavours. It is a job we handle before the bag reaches you.
Freshness
Unlike coffee, brewing cacao does not go stale quickly, and it actually benefits from a two- to three-week rest after grinding. We find flavour usually peaks four to six weeks after grinding, then changes slowly over the following six to eight weeks. A bag that has been in your cupboard a while is not a problem.
Husk
The husk stays in. Whole ground beans give more colour and flavour than husk or nibs alone. The husk is also why brew time and grind size have teeth: it is the part that turns astringent when you push extraction too far.
Extraction
Everything in the cup is a balance of how much cacao, how hot the water is, and how long the two stay together. Four to five minutes is the window; over-brewing gives astringent, unpleasant flavours. Some people use more cacao and boil it—we do not care for the results, but you might.
Not coffee
We get asked constantly whether it is like coffee. It is brewed like coffee and that is where the resemblance stops. It is not coffee, it is not like coffee, and it really should not be compared to coffee. Enjoy it for what it is, not for what it is not.
Questions
Nope, it is a totally different animal. Brewing cacao is best thought of as a cacao tea. Hot chocolate is thinned-down sweetened chocolate with a full, thick mouthfeel. Brewing cacao is ground whole cacao beans extracted with hot or cold water, so it is more like a tea or coffee.
Brewing cacao is whole roasted cacao beans, coarsely ground and ready for brewing. Cocoa powder is what is left over after cacao nibs are pressed and the cocoa butter is removed.
Oh my—what does a blue sky look like? It is more like a tea or a coffee than hot chocolate, and it changes with the bean, the origin, and the roast.
Generally speaking, yes. Pour-over, check. French press, check. Coffee maker, mostly—you need more cacao than coffee, so some machines are too small. Espresso, sadly not.
Start with 2–4 heaping tablespoons for one cup of water. Some brewing cacaos are stronger than others, so adjust the amount to taste.
As safe as tea or coffee, and some think more so. It has much less caffeine than coffee, although it isn’t completely caffeine-free.
Brewed cacao has much less caffeine than coffee, although it isn’t completely caffeine-free. Cacao also contains theobromine, which is part of why it feels different from coffee.
Neither. They are the same thing. People will tell you all sorts to make it sound fancier or more complicated, but cocoa is the English word and cacao is generally the Spanish one. Brewing Cocoa = Brewed Cacao.
Further reading
The long-form background piece—origins, varieties, and what we have learned selling it.
Read the article →02What to do with brewing cacao once you have a bag open. A recipe, not a brew.
Read the recipe →03Why an espresso machine cannot brew cacao, in more detail than the FAQ allows.
Read the answer →