Every kitchen has one of these lurking in a cupboard somewhere.
We went on a family vacation recently and the rental place we stayed at had two options for coffee: a French press, or the classic batch brew maker.
So, it's fair to say, I've been playing with this brewer a lot recently.
With the right technique and a good basic understanding of a few key things, the French Press is capable of brewing some really tasty coffee.
If you like nice rounded cups with plenty of body, high sweetness and great balance, this classic little brewer is perfect. It's easy to master and fairly forgiving (as immersion brewers are prone to be).
It's also easy to make 2 or 3 cups at a time, which is a huge win if you're making coffee for multiple people, especially before you've had coffee.
The tips below are going to assume that you're already onto the basics. i.e.
- Using freshly roasted, high quality coffee.
- Grinding your beans just before brewing, and not using pre ground coffee.
- Using scales to measure your dose and water.
Brewing great coffee in a French Press doesn't need to be overly complicated, but you are going to struggle to get good results if you're not doing those things.
Here's my 6 tips for better French Press coffee.
1. Plunge slow
We do a lot of cupping coffee here at the roastery, obviously, (and you can read more about how to cup coffee here) as we cup and QC every production roast, as well as all of our testing and profile development. And one thing I really enjoy about the French Press is how close an experience you can get to a cupping.
It's a great way to taste and fully experience a coffee.
This first tip (and the next one too), is really about reducing agitation.
And if you read our previous post with our tips on how to brew tastier Aeropress coffee, you'll have seen this tip before.
With immersion brewing, you have complete control over brew time.
Unlike percolation brewing where you're dependant on grind size and all of those other variables, with immersion brewing, your brew time can be exactly what you want it to be.
But that plunge also means you're going to add extra agitation.
Compounding on that, the French Press (unlike the Aeropress) uses a metal mesh filter.
We'll have a separate blog post coming out soon about metal Vs paper filters, but the short version that you need to know is this:
Paper filters do a better job of filtering out very fine particles Vs metal filters.
Even the finest mesh metal filter, is going to let more fine particles through than a paper filter.
With the French Press, if you plunge too fast, you'll disturb the coffee slurry more than you need to, and give even more of those very fine particles an even bigger chance of getting through the mesh filter.
Ever finish a cup of French Press and get that sludgey, gritty bit at the bottom of the cup? That's exactly the bit of the brew we're trying to minimize by plunging slower.
Why does it matter?
Those super fine particles will sit at the bottom of the cup and continue extracting as you drink your coffee.
At a certain point, they'll extract to the point where they start to add noticeable bitterness to the whole cup.
And life's way too short for bitter, over extracted coffee.
2. Swirl don't stir
Cards on the table....
I don't have much in the way of science or reasoning for this one.
It may well just be personal preference.
But I've found that a swirl over a stir gives me a better result.
Maybe I'm just a bit heavy handed with the stir, but I've always found it much easier to end up with an over extracted cup with a stir.
A short swirl seems to be a lot more forgiving.
And again, it's almost certainly more about how aggressively you swirl or stir, rather than the act of swirling or stirring.
But if you're struggling with slightly bitter or astringent cups on your French Press brews, maybe this will help you out too.
3. 10% for the press
The last bits of coffee out of the press will contain a lot more fines and sludge that will have an outsized effect on the whole rest of your cup.
Leave them in the press and enjoy a better brew.
When it's time to pour, leave the last 10% or so of your brew water in the French Press.
I know it seems like a waste, but trust us, the other 90% of your brew is going to taste 900% better without that in there.
4. Get the right ratio
You'll need a much stronger ratio for any immersion brew compared to what you'd use on a filter brewer.
Different recipes will call for different ratios.
In our French Press brewing guide (which should be dropping in the next week or so!) we use a 1:13 ratio. So if you're brewing 500g of coffee, you'll want around 38g of coarsely ground coffee.
That's quite different to the 1:16 ratio we recommend in our guide on how to make V60 coffee.
With immersion brewing methods like the French Press, all of the water remains in contact with the ground coffee for the entirety of the brew time. Whereas in filter brewing, the water is continually draining and new water is being added.
That means that immersion brewing methods like French Press can be a little more prone to over extraction, and that's the main reason why the tighter coffee to water ratio is usually recommended for French Press Vs filter brewers.
5. Unscrew the mesh filter and clean it, regularly
Yeah but.... more regularly than that ;)
Not the most fun tip in the post, I know, but proper cleaning and maintenance is absolutely essential for getting the most out of any coffee brewer. But especially the French Press.
Grounds and oils get trapped in the mesh filter after each use, and if they build up even a bit they can seriously throw off your whole cup.
After every use, unscrew the holder from the bottom of the plunger, remove the mesh and clean the whole thing with plenty of hot soapy water.
It's not enough to just wash it with the mesh still attached.
6. Decant the whole brew straight away
One of the French Press' huge wins over other brewers, is its ability to easily make larger volumes of coffee.
You can easily make 2, 3 or even 4 great cups of coffee in a single French Press brew.
Rather than pouring out 1 cup and leaving the rest in the French Press, we recommend pouring the whole brew out into a separate server as soon as you've plunged it.
This way, you'll stop the remaining coffee from continuing to extract in the grounds.
Clean it up: the paper filter trick
If you've read this far, you've definitely earnt a bonus tip.
So here it is.... the paper filter trick....
If you want to clean up that French Press brew even more, and sit down with a super clean, sweet brew, there's one more thing you can do.
Pass the finished brew through a paper filter.
Any paper filter will do, it really doesn't matter. So whatever you have laying around.
Put the paper filter into a dripper, and pour the coffee through the filter when you decant it.
What that'll do is just remove even more of the fines and some of the oils that would otherwise end up in your cup.
You'll lose a bit of that French Press style body, but you'll be left with a really clean tasting cup.
Give it a whirl next time you brew a French Press. Or better still - pour half your brew through the filter and half straight into a cup. Then you can taste them both side by side and compare to see what you like better.
