Iced Coffee - [cold brew coffee]

So, I'm very into trying new things. And I'm also a Starbucks addict. I love it and I go there way to often... I may have some "friends" at Starbucks who know my name... That being said, I spend way too much money there, and should probably just buy stock in the company (is that how that works? I know nothing about this), and I just need to find a more economical solution.

So, last year, when I was saving for a trip abroad, I had to cut WAY back, but wanted a good solution. This has become a part of my day, my routine, so I needed a replacement of sorts. So, I had a friend with an espresso machine who gave/sold it to me for free or some very reasonable price. I bought some coffee and got it ground finely, bought a bottle of my favorite syrup - cinnamon dulce - and decided to try making my own espressos. I even have a Starbucks barista friend who walked me through how to use the machine and everything. This solution was ok, but was not the real thing, and the machine would get clogged, so I need to rethink that and see if I can figure out how to give that another go...

But for now, it's SPRING! and it feels like spring, so we're in the season for iced coffee. I have been seeing things about this for a while. I've been looking up how to make your own coffee concentrate, and whatnot, and I have finally tried it. I used the Pioneer Woman's instructions to make my own. This is what resulted:

This lovely-looking drink is the start of something that could be very good. I need to perfect it, and I have some ideas on how to do that... but I think it's definitely a good start. And, I have 2 GALLONS of cold brew coffee now to experiment with. Yikes! My refrigerator is not huge. I think I'm going to just use half of a bag of coffee and one gallon of water next time... The first time I made it, I used:

*a medium roast coffee
*coconut milk (it's what I have at he moment - I get my drinks at Starbucks with soy milk now, thank you lactose intolerance, so I'm thinking about getting a vanilla soy or almond milk to try...)
*SF cinnamon dulce syrup

Again, I say it was pretty good. My friend liked it. I'm just trying to decide what to try next to see if I can really make this something that I can replace at least some of my Starbucks runs with... Because they are taking all of my money. No, I give it to them. But I shouldn't. As I work through this 2 GALLONS of coffee, and try some different things, I'll let you know if I come up with any better solutions too...

Happy drinking!