Tips and tricks for brewing French Press

December 17, 2020

2 pers.

40 g. medium roast coarse grind coffee

500 g. water

4 min brew time

Ready to drink

Perhaps you have a French Press at home, tucked away in the back of a cabinet? A lot of people own a French Press at home but don’t use it that often. That’s a shame.

Here we will give you 3 quick tips on making your French Press coffee taste even more delicious when brewing at home.

First, we need to talk about coffee! Like making food, a good tasting dish depends on good-tasting ingredients. The same goes for coffee. When coffee is roasted, the clock starts ticking. Over time, the roasted coffee will lose its flavors, and only a bitter substance is left. Within the first couple of months, a lot of the flavors disappear, so we recommend that you always use freshly roasted coffee.

As a rule of thumb, the longer coffee and water have to be in contact, the coarser the grind should be. In a French Press, water and coffee are in contact for around 4 minutes. So, therefore, the coffee should be fairly coarse. If the coffee is ground too fine, then the water is extracted too much from the coffee, and the cup will taste rather bitter. (Most pre-ground coffee in the supermarket is ground too fine to fit in a French Press, so that would make one bitter cup).

If you don’t have a grinder at home, ask where you buy your coffee to grind it for you.

Next up is the temperature of the water. If the water is too hot, it will burn the coffee, and then the taste will not be as flavorful as it should be. Ideally, the temperature should be 95 degrees, but who has a thermometer at home? The easier approach is to let the boiling water cool down for 1 minute before pouring it onto the coffee.

Speaking of pouring water onto the coffee. Before you go ahead and pour all the water at once, first read our last tip. We advise you to try only to pour a quarter of the water and let the coffee bloom for 30-40 seconds. When you do this, the coffee will release gasses during the first 30-40 seconds. When the gasses are gone, it becomes easier for the water to extract the coffee's desired tastes. You could say that the gasses obstruct the water to extract the taste that we want from the coffee. So let the gasses go, and enjoy a good tasting cup of coffee.

To sum up, remember coarse grind and freshly roasted coffee. Let the water cool down for about a minute, and first pour a quarter of the water before filling the entire French Press.

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