Let's brew with the French press
- basics ·
- french press
How is this week treating you, coffee lover? I hope some coffee gives you hope and energizes you. This issue is for you if you are a beginner or are someone who is looking to dive into the coffee brewing paradise.
Understanding French Press
French press is one of the easiest ways to brew coffee. For most, including me, it’s the gateway to brewing coffee at home.
French Press
When Vikra asked me what is the least effort way to get into making coffee, I suggested him French Press. And within no time he started experimenting and creating his own recipes. He had no coffee experience before; that's how easy French press is.
Here is what you need to do to get started - get a french press, and some ground coffee from Amazon. Then,
2 spoons of coffee into the French press
Get water to boil and set it aside for 30 seconds
Add it to the French press
Wait for 5 minutes
Plunge and pour into a cup and drink.
It’s that simple.
But because we like to understand the nuances, let’s dive a bit deeper.
Preparing to brew with French Press
As this is how most people start their coffee-brewing journey, I want to talk about some basics that apply to french press and also coffee brewing in general.
Use clean water. Tap water isn't suggested as it already has good amount of salts which leaves less room for the coffee chemicals to bind to the water. So mineral water or RO purified should be good.
Consistency is key. Figure out a way to measure the temperature of water. If you don't have a temperature-controlled kettle, use some of the methods we talked about earlier and stick to them.
While a kitchen scale would be a great addition to measure how much coffee you are taking and how much water, use a consistent spoon and cup to measure water if you don't have a scale.
Write down all the metrics, weight of coffee, water, temperature, etc. Make up the units with whatever you have, something like 2 spoons of coffee and 1 and half cup water should be good to go. In the future when you get tools like a scale and kettle, you can calibrate by measuring how much the 2 spoons of coffee weighs and so on.
These things help you make decisions based on results. If you like a cup of coffee, it will be very easy to replicate that.
Brewing the best cup
There are two major types of brewing methods to make coffee. Immersion and drip. As the name suggests French press falls under immersion. So does Aeropress. Other methods like pour over with V60, Kalita, etc come under drip method.
The main difference is that in immersion we brew with time, as we put the coffee grounds in water and let it extract the coffee over a period of 2-5 minutes. Where as with drip, we use the pressure with the flow of water, to extract.
With this established, the main ingredient to make a delicious cup is patience.
From my experiments, I enjoy it when I grind it finer than the recommended size. And then use a tighter/stronger ratio. Something around 1 parts of coffee to 15 parts water. I let it steep for around 6 minutes. This worked best for light roasts with almost boiling water.
I want to leave you with 2 of my favourite recipe videos to help you experiment and decide what works best for you.
From the coffee-verse
https://x.com/AlpacaAurelius/status/1854763117752074570 - Don’t worry about microplastics when you drink coffee from a plastic cup.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/pac-2024-0210/html - We now have research that tells which compounds are concentrated in specific areas of the coffee bean. Pretty cool, right?
Whats brewing this week
As I got back from Mussoorie, I got a bag of coffee from the roaster I discovered there. It’s a nice medium roast which gives me a balanced cup with the V60 each time. The espressos from the moka pot are also delicious.
Camel’s Back from Landour Coffee
That’s all I have. Have a caffeinated weekend.
See you.
Keep on brewing!