Start your count-up timer as soon as you add hot water. Fill it up halfway to the top saturating all the grounds, making sure that there are no dry spots. At , use a wooden spoon or spatula to break the top layer we call the crust.
Give it a good stir. Now, fill it all the way to the top with water. Put the top on and allow the coffee to brew without pressing it down. At , you are ready to press. Firmly push the press all the way down. To start, gently pour twice the amount of water than you have coffee onto your grounds.
Give the grounds a gentle stir with a bamboo paddle or chopstick. Allow the coffee to bloom for 30 seconds. Pour the remaining water and place the lid gently on top of the grounds. Let the coffee steep for four minutes. Gently remove your French press from the scale and place it on your counter. Press the filter down. The sweet spot, pressure-wise, is 15—20 pounds.
Not sure what this feels like? Try it out on your bathroom scale. We source great coffees, roast them to perfection, and get them to you fresh. Try your first coffee bag on us. Shop Expand Arrow Collapse Arrow. None of these variables affects the others. This doesn't mean that the resulting brew will taste great no matter what, but this bit of freedom means you can approach a French press a bit differently.
In fact, maybe you should really call it a "Freedom press! As you may recall from our discussion of the pourover method , I like to talk about coffee brewing as having three general phases: wetting, dissolution, and diffusion. Wetting is the process of fully saturating the coffee grounds. Coffee grounds are made up of cells, and each of those cells holds some of the coffee solids that we want to extract.
In fresh coffee, carbon dioxide gas is also trapped in those cells, and wetting releases that gas in a moment we call a "bloom. The second step, dissolution, is all about dissolving the solids that will make up the coffee-part of our beverage with our solvent, hot water. The final stage is diffusion: the movement of that coffee-water concentrate out of the grounds into the surrounding liquid. Dissolution and diffusion are typically grouped together by the more common term "extraction," but I think it's helpful to look at those as separate processes.
In drip and pourover brewing, the liquid surrounding the coffee grounds is continually replenished with fresh hot water. This is an important factor because the purer the surrounding water, the stronger osmotic pressure drives coffee concentrate out of our grounds, and the more efficient our extraction.
On the other hand, the constant flow of clean and hot water over the surface of our coffee grounds extracts those outer surfaces more aggressively, which means we have less time to brew before those outer surfaces are so extracted that they add less-tasty, 'overextracted' flavors to our brew. The best coffee brewing is about dialing in our many variables just right to get the best balance of maximizing good flavors and minimizing the less-delicious stuff.
The French press is a pretty different environment for coffee brewing. Drip or pourover brewing is a lot like a convection oven, where the convective heat in the form of flowing water speeds up the energy transfer in our little coffee chemistry set.
In our low-and-slow French press, you're not adding more water in as you go, so the energy driving diffusion is decreased, resulting in slower, more gradual brewing. There's less of the surface-overextraction effect, and the brewing is ultimately a more gentle proposition. Put it all together, and French press brewing is less finicky than most other methods and can result in a more full-flavored brew with a deeper sweetness and syrupy body.
French presses have mesh filters that do a good job of holding back the grounds, but there will be a small quantity of powder-like coffee grounds, called fines, that will make it through the filter and remain suspended in your brew. Don't let those distract you too much. The fines can give the sensation of more viscosity and richness. Here's my basic technique for making great French press coffee.
As with all methods of coffee brewing, you'll need to experiment and tweak the variables a bit, tasting your results before you settle on your ideal settings. The good news is that French press is a good bit more forgiving than the faster brew methods. Have a watch or stopwatch handy to time your brew. Your smartphone probably has one hidden in its 'Clock' app. Start with a very coarse grind, maybe at the coarsest setting on your grinder.
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