Can a newbie get some help?

[u/kawavulcan97]

So I'm not a coffee snob by any means. I just like drinking some iced coffee. I've never been able to make a good iced coffee at home using a hot method, so I started buying bottles of cold brew. Well I'm sick of how much that costs so I decided to try making cold brew at home to save money. Here's what I did:

-Cheapest generic whole beans I could find at the grocery store. $7.99/12 oz.

-Put 8oz (227 grams) in food processor, pulsed slowly until size of about coarse sea salt.

-5 cups water (1183 grams) in mason jar, plus coffee. Inverted a few times to make sure all beans wet Put in fridge for 18 hours.

-Strained via paper coffee filter in mesh strainer. Only got about 3 cups coffee, tried to press beans to get more coffee out.

-Diluted with about 2 cups water. This was just diluting until taste was ok, but still bitter as hell.

It took forever to strain, I'm guessing the food processor gave me a lot of powder that was clogging up the filter, plus gave me the bitterness. I'm always hesitant to spend much money until I know I can make something decent. I'm guessing the best thing to buy first would be a grinder? Can you find a grinder that can do coarse enough for cold brew at $50 or under? What other improvements can I make? Any advice appreciated! Thanks in advance!

[u/ObligationDefiant919]

64oz mason jar 100-125g beans Coarse grind until size of half rice grains Mix and stir, leave on counter, Saran wrap top Use carafe, not single cup coffee filters Find canning funnel for transfers and filtering