French Press
- Make sure your plunger and the beaker are clean. Rinse them with hot water, and use soap if needed. Coffee sediments will impart a bad taste to your coffee.
- Fill the pot with hot water before brewing; it will help to maintain the brewing temperature during steeping. It will also prevent thermal shockand keep your coffee hot a little longer.
- In the meantime, grind your favorite coffee beans with a good quality burr grinder. The grind size should be coarse for a clear cup.
- Dump the hot water and put three tablespoons of the ground coffee into the bottom of your beaker.
- Pour hot, water, (194-200 °F) into the glass pot. Add just a quarter of the final volume, and stir the water and coffee with a wooden spoon or spatula. Metal spoons can break you glass because of the thermal shock.
- Pour the rest of the water and stir again.
- Place the plunger on top of the pot and lower it just enough to make contact with the water.
- Make sure to turn the lid covers the mouth of the French press to maintain the water temperature.
- Wrap the pot with a towel to add insulation; it helps to maintain the coffee hot.
- Let the coffee steep for about 4 minutes.
- Push the plunger down slowly, all the way to the bottom of the beaker.
- Lift the lid to open the spout, and pour.
NOTE: We recommends using 40 grams of ground coffee for every 400 grams of water. This ratio is what they call 1:10 coffee to water ratio. It’s a little inconvenient to measure it that way if you ask me. But this comes around 3 tablespoons of ground coffee to 2 cups. So, this means they like their coffee stronger.
You can play with the coffee to water ratio when brewing with a French press, altering other factors. For instance, if you grind finer, you can use fewer grounds. Water temperature plays a big role here, the hotter the water, the less grounds you need. But with very hot water the brew tends to migrate on the bitter side, being over-extracted.