Coffee 101: How To Brew a French Press

ByFederica
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You know, when you brew a French Press, and you end up with an absurdly strong coffee and all those little bits in your mouth?

Well, I have got news for you: you can avoid that. Yep, you heard me right kids.

Brewing a Cafetière or French Press

So, for my third instalment of these brew guides galore I want to touch on some simple tricks and tips. I normally don’t brew with French Press, but before writing this post I have tried a few methods.

As you can see below I am giving you not one, but two “How To’s”. One is the more “traditional” method and the other is one that has been tried by many coffee professionals and work similar to what we call a “cupping”. We will talk more about this later on in the blog.

Get you kettles ready, and let’s delve in it.

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First here is the Traditional French Press Method:

Materials

  • Filtered Water
  • A Kettle, preferably with temperature control
  • A French Press (or Cafetière)
  • A cup or Decanter
  • 65g of freshly ground coffee, ground to the coarsest setting
  • A good quality scale, that possibly weights to 0.1 of a gram
  • A timer, if your scale doesn’t offer the option.

Instructions

  1. If you haven’t ground your coffee, grind it now and place it on the side.
  2. Put the filtered water – roughly 1 ltire- in the kettle, and heat the water up to roughly 92C. (1)
  3. There are no filters needed in the French Press, so just rinse the glass with hot water to bring it up to temperature.
  4. Empy the water in the decanter, and place it again with the brewer on top of your scale.

And here is the “not so traditional method”:

Materials

  • Filtered Water
  • A kettle, preferably with temperature control
  • A French Press (or Cafetière)
  • A decanter or mug
  • 65g of freshly ground coffee, ground coarsely
  • A good quality scale, possibly that weights to 0.1 of a gram
  • A timer, if your scale don’t offer the option

Instructions

  1. If you haven’t ground your coffee, grind it now and place it on the side.
  2. Put the filtered water – roughly 1 ltire- in the kettle, and heat the water up to roughly 92C.
  3. are no filters needed in the French Press, so just rinse the glass with hot water to bring it up to temperature.
  4. Empy the water in the decanter, and place it again with the brewer on top of your scale.

Weigh the coffee in, to max .1 of a gram and get ready to brew!

Pour all the water inside the French Press, while weighting out your water. Try to be as precise as possible and cover all the coffee grounds. Do not cover with the plunger yet, leave it aside for now.

Let steep for 4 to 6 minutes, and with 2 soup spoons, scoop the foam and residue sediments on the top.

Levae to steep for another 6 minutes, and then cover with the plunger and slowly plunge in.

Decant the coffee into a preheated mug or vessel, to avoid oversteeping.

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Annotations and explanations…

Before you brew, read these annotations and explanations. They are quite geeky, I know. But it will make sense of the brewing process.

  1. Water Temperature: as I said, the ideal water temperature is 92C. Without getting too geeky on this, this is because this is the optimal temperature for water to grab all the nice compounds that make our coffee taste so nice. If you were to use boiling water, so straight out from the kettle, it would also grab very bitter compounds, and make your coffee taste over extracted. In the chance of not having a temperature control kettle, just boil the water and leave it to sit for a couple of minutes. That will do the trick!
  2. Grind Size: again, I could be here forever talking about this. When grinding for pour overs, you want an almost coarse size for your ground coffee. Sort of like salt flakes. If your brew tastes very acidic at the end, just fine your grind a little to balance it out. Simultaneously, if it tastes to bitter, coarsen it up a little. Don’t go too far out with changing your grind size, it could be trouble and frustrating!

If you have missed the other brew guides, you can find them here.

As always, if you guys have any questions, please let me know on the below. I am always happy to help you all!

The items on this post are subject to availability and all prices are correct at the time of publication. All prices shown in this post are also subject to delivery charges – please check out the item you intend to purchase for more details on delivery costs.

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french press 5

Fred is the mastermind for all things design of this blog, and around the web, she can be found on Not a Skilful Sailor and dotting.away. She is the person that has pushed Simona after she lost my job to give this blog thing a shot again, and subsequently found herself tangled in it, one way or another.

She is the extrovert of the group, the person who’s struggling the most with the being home situation. She thrives around people, but was not like this growing up, let us tell you that. She is the coffee guru of the family, loves our cat TJ more than Cristina and Simona (doesn’t even try to hide it a bit), and has got a new-found love for baking thanks to lockdown.

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45 Comments

  3. I’ll have to show this article to my hubby–I’m not a coffee drinker, but he uses the French press so I’ll let him take a closer look at this. I definitely know coffee is a big deal, so thank you for sharing your knowledge.

    Reply

  4. I love a good coffee! It’s the perfect thing to have first thing Monday morning! I’ve always wanted to learn how to brew a proper cup so thank you for sharing!

    Reply

  6. Thanks for this post! I am actually already a long time thinking about buying French Press but I haven’t done it yet… French press coffee often tastes better than a coffee from a coffee machine and that’s one of the main reasons to buy it!

    Reply

  8. This is such a handy guide! I love doing coffee in French Press but I’ll have to give the new technique a go for sure! Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

  11. We often get the Cafetière out on a weekend but we are guilty of putting boiling water in it! Thanks for the reminder, we’ll see if we can taste the difference after leaving it to cool a bit!

    Corinne x

    Reply

  12. I’m not a huge coffee lover but these tips will definitely help when I do treat myself. I think the bits and strong after taste has always put me off before now.

    Reply

  14. I can’t tell you how badly I needed this in my life. Mostly because I have a single-serve French press that I use for my photos, but I often want to actually drink that coffee when the photo shoots are done haha! Thanks for all of this fantastic information!

    Reply

  16. I am not a fan of coffee so I don’t personally drink it, but I do make it for my mum and boyfriend as they do drink it. I have never tried a French press before though, but it looks cool. Thank you for sharing x

    Reply

  17. I don’t drink coffee but the whole process of brewing your own coffee has always been interesting to me. I don’t think I’ve ever tried a french press so I might try and see if this type of coffee suits me.

    Antonia || Sweet Passions

    Reply

  18. French press coffee just tastes better. And it’s so easy to make too. It’s well-worth the effort of buying a french press and learning how to use it.

    Reply

  22. I used to make french press coffee every day at my previous job, it was absolutely wonderful! Definitely my favorite brewing method, and these tips will make it even better. Great post x

    Reply

  23. Since I was a barrista, I’ve been such a coffee snob. I won’t make it unless I properly MAKE IT!! This sounds absolutely wonderful, it’s giving me coffee cravings!

    Rosie

    Reply

  24. This year I decided to save and buy my own coffee brewer or maybe French Press! I usually make my coffee with a kettle (so traditional) and as a coffee lover, I need more than it lol Thanks for sharing this x

    Reply

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