How to Make French Press Coffee
Full immersion and a metal filter, so the oils and some of the fines stay in the cup. That is where the body comes from, and the silt too, unless you handle the last minute properly.
At a glance
- Coffee : water
- 1:14
- Active time
- 2 min
- Total time
- 11 min
- Makes
- 3 cups
- Serve
- Hot, decanted
- Kit
- French press
Ingredients
Note: Coarse is not optional here. The mesh is the only filter, so anything fine enough to pass through ends up in your mouth.
Method
-
Add everything at once
Coffee in the bottom, then pour all 420 g of water straight in. Make sure every ground is wet; a dry patch floating on top is coffee you paid for and did not brew.
-
Leave it alone for four minutes
Put the lid on with the plunger raised to keep the heat in. Do not stir and do not plunge.
A crust of grounds will float to the top and sit there.
Steep 4 minutes -
Break the crust and skim
At four minutes, stir the crust gently with a spoon so it sinks. Then skim off the foam and the few grounds still floating and throw them away.
Those floaters are the lightest, most over-extracted particles and the main source of bitterness. Taking thirty seconds over this is the single biggest improvement to press coffee.
-
Wait, then plunge slowly
Leave it another five minutes with the plunger up. The grounds settle to the bottom on their own, which is the part most people skip.
Then press the plunger down slowly, and stop as soon as it reaches the surface of the grounds rather than ramming it to the base. Pushing hard forces fines back up through the mesh.
Settle 5 minutes -
Decant immediately
Pour the lot into a carafe or into cups. Coffee left sitting on the grounds keeps extracting and will be noticeably bitter by the second cup.
Why this works
A press has no paper, so nothing removes the coffee oils. Those oils carry a lot of aroma and all of the weight, which is why press coffee feels thicker in the mouth than anything that passes through a filter. It is also why it tastes muddier when it goes wrong.
The crust forms because carbon dioxide lifts the grounds. Breaking it at four minutes drops most of them to the bottom, and skimming removes the rest. Those floating particles are the smallest and the most extracted in the brew, so they contribute bitterness out of all proportion to their weight.
The five minute wait is the part that separates a clean press from a silty one. Given time, fines sink on their own. Plunge straight away and you are forcing liquid through a dense bed, which pushes those same fines through the mesh and into the cup. Slow and early beats fast and hard.
Decanting matters because immersion does not stop when you press. The grounds are still sitting in hot water, still giving up the harsh compounds that come out last. Ten minutes in the press and the remaining coffee is a different, worse drink.
Variations
- Cold brew in a press: 1:8, coarse, 16 hours in the fridge, then plunge.
- Stronger: go to 1:12 and keep the timings.
- No scale: two level tablespoons of coffee per 200 ml of water is close enough to start.
Made it?
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Questions
Why is there mud in the bottom of my cup?
Too fine a grind, plunging too hard, or both. Go coarser, let it settle for five minutes before plunging, and stop the plunger when it meets the grounds rather than pushing to the base.
Can I leave coffee in the press?
No. It keeps extracting and turns bitter within minutes. Decant everything as soon as you plunge.
Is French press coffee bad for cholesterol?
Unfiltered coffee contains cafestol and kahweol, diterpenes that paper filters remove and a metal mesh does not. They have been shown to raise LDL cholesterol. For most people drinking a cup or two it is not a concern, but if you are managing cholesterol it is worth knowing and worth asking a doctor rather than a coffee site.
What grind setting exactly?
Coarse, around 1000 microns, like sea salt. On most hand grinders that is near the open end of the range. If the plunger takes real effort, you are too fine.