# French Press Technique



## Fran (Dec 27, 2010)

Hello team,

I've got some good news. I'm back together with the french press. Sure, I fell pretty badly for the Aeropress, but I should have known better. I was always going to go back to my one true love.

And I've only got one person to thank - Nick Cho. His G+ post on how to brew french press really opened my eyes. I'm now getting really great brews!

https://plus.google.com/106600757771848447744/posts/TxoVir91SoF

It's still a pain to clean, though!


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## garydyke1 (Mar 9, 2011)

Fran said:


> Hello team,
> 
> I've got some good news. I'm back together with the french press. Sure, I fell pretty badly for the Aeropress, but I should have known better. I was always going to go back to my one true love.
> 
> ...


Can you summarise your technique?


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## Fran (Dec 27, 2010)

It's really very simple.

1) Grind 60g/l of coffee so that mean particle size isabout 1.5mm in diameter.

2) Pour over just-off boiling Volvic water over coffee, ensuring that all grounds get saturated.

3) Gently submerge floating grounds.

4) Wait 6-8 minutes.

5) Pluge very slowly.

6) Enjoy.

The thing that I most enjoy with this technique is the ability to assess how coarse my grind is. I have length intuition at the millimetre scale, but not really below. Also, when at this large diameter, you need to really prolong the brew time. Doing this with this grind helps extract more good stuff relative to bad stuff. Cho explains further in his article. Also, I received advice at a coffee course to use Volvic, since it has the right TDS for brewing.

Try it!


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## garydyke1 (Mar 9, 2011)

1.5mm isn't that course , much finer than I've done in the past.

Need to have a play


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## marbeaux (Oct 2, 2010)

The brewing time surprised me so tomorrow I need to re-attack te French Press.


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## marbeaux (Oct 2, 2010)

Well, I dusted off the French Press, increased the grind size to what I thought was about right, used 12 grams to 200 ml of filtered water and brewed for 6 minutes.

Result. A better brew than I used to make, a slightly fuller taste and some crap at the bottom of my cup suggesting I need to increase the grind size even more.

And Fran please explain your comparison with the AeroPress because everyone else reckons that they are great and as a result I had decided to buy one.


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## tribs (Feb 21, 2012)

I tried this method this morning. It's difficult to get a consistent grind with my blade grinder, and I went a little too fine and inevitably there was a fair bit of fine powder mixed in there too. Fortunately the Costa beans I'm using seem quite forgiving in this respect.

I'll try a little coarser next time, but I'm quite happy with the results compared to a finer grind with a shorter brew time. Nice one

Cheers

tribs


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## tribs (Feb 21, 2012)

Managed to get a coarser grind with the blade. In doing so it surprisingly produced virtually no powder. There were plenty great big chunks though.

Brewed for 8 mins at the listed ratio. Results were good, although will up the dose a little as it was smooth with low bitterness, but just a tad too weak.


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## stavros (May 4, 2011)

This week I am going to master the French press. I will report my progress. I foresee breakages!


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## Earlepap (Jan 8, 2012)

I use this technique with good results - http://www.coffeereal.co.uk/undefinedpress-pot-cms-28.html

Fairly coarse grind and 60g/L ratio.


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