How To
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Fuller Bodied Coffee • Enjoying with Milk • Darker Roasts
The French Press is a timeless classic – in fact it was the first way to make coffee I’d ever seen growing up. This brewing method doesn’t make use of paper filters, relying instead of a metal mesh, so you get micro particles and essential oils that have dissolved into the brew, giving you a deeper, more full-bodied coffee. The essential oils from the bean best accentuate the qualities of a good, dark roast.
French Press
Spoon or stirrer
Kettle
Weighing scale
1 litre of water (filtered or bottled)
67g of coarsely ground coffee
NOTE Please make sure to weight and measure everything accurately!
Whether you have a glass or metal French Press, it’s likely going to be fairly cool to the touch when not in use. That means that, when you’re brewing, you’re losing heat that should be used for extraction and it’s going to heat up your French Press instead! To avoid this, you’re going to want to pre-heat your French Press by pouring hot water into it. It will take about 30 seconds for the press to heat up so, in the meantime, you can grind your beans.
Before you continue, empty out the water.
Whichever method you use to get your beans to the right size, make sure they're chunky/coarse, because now is the time to throw them in. I’ve said this before on our blog but it’s important to weigh your grinds as opposed to measuring using a spoon. This ensures a proper coffee to water ratio. For this recipe you’re going to want 15ml of water for each gram of coffee grinds (1 litre of water for 67g of grinds).
The next step is to get the gases out of the grinds and get the extraction going on all the grinds at about the same time. To do this, you’ve going to want to start pouring boiling over your beans, enough to submerge them all but not to fill the carafe, and start stirring. You should see the mixture start bubbling in a process called Blooming which I’ve discussed in our blog. You want to take a few seconds stirring away those bubbles, then let it rest for about 30 seconds and let the water push out the rest of the gases. This to ensure all the grinds’ surfaces are in contact with water and not blocked by any CO2 bubbles.
Now that the grinds have released all the CO2, it’s time to fill the carafe the rest of the way with boiling water, and stir gently to make sure that any grinds floating on top of your water are incorporated into the brew properly. Careful not to be too vigorous with your stirring as this will speed up extraction and leave a bitter taste once brewed.
Next, place the lid on top of the French Press and, if needed, press the plunger just enough so that the mesh is touching the top of the water. Do not press all the way down though (I know it’s tempting).
You will need to let it continue brewing for about another 3 minutes. At this point, press the plunger down until the coffee grinds are packed at the bottom, but not so tight that you start squeezing them, otherwise you’ll force out some extra-bitter flavours.
Then pour into a mug and enjoy! Be careful not to leave your coffee in the French Press for too long after brewing as the grind will continue steeping and you’ll end up with a bitter coffee. If you’re planning on drinking your coffee slowly over a few hours, then I’d recommend you pouring your coffee into a travel mug to keep it warm.
