French press
French press for two
Sixty grams, a litre of water, four minutes and the trick that makes it clean: skim the crust instead of plunging through it.
At a glance
- Total
- 10 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Yield
- 2 cups
- Ratio
- 1:16.7
- Dose
- 60 g
- In cup
- 1000 g
The build
- Coffee60 g
- Water1000 g
Equipment
- French press, 1 litre
- Scales
- Kettle
- Two spoons
- Timer
Ingredients
- Coffee, coarse grind
- 60 g
- Water at 95 °C
- 1000 g
Method
Warm the press with hot water and discard it. A cold glass jug costs five degrees in the first minute.
20sAdd 60 g of coarsely ground coffee, then pour all 1000 g of water at 95 °C in one go.
30sLeave it completely alone for four minutes. Do not stir: stirring now drags fines to the bottom.
240sBreak the crust with a spoon, stirring twice, gently. Most of the grounds will sink.
15sSkim the foam and the floating grounds off the surface with two spoons and discard them.
30sWait five more minutes. The remaining fines settle, and the coffee drops to a drinkable temperature.
300sLower the plunger just to the surface, without pressing through, and pour slowly. Leave the last centimetre in the jug.
Why this method suits a press
A French press is a full immersion brewer with a metal filter, so the oils and some of the fines reach the cup. That is the texture people buy it for, and it is also why a careless press tastes like mud.
Everything in this recipe is aimed at the same thing: get the extraction you want, then keep the fines out of the cup.
The two rules that matter
Grind coarse. Coarser than you think, close to sea salt. Fines pass the mesh and carry on extracting in the jug.
Do not plunge. The skim and settle method above costs five minutes of patience and removes most of the sediment.
Scaling it
The ratio holds at any size: 60 g per litre, 30 g per half litre. Water at 95 °C suits a medium roast, 96 a light one, and 92 a dark one that would otherwise turn ashy.
Questions about this recipe
- Why not press the plunger all the way down?
- Pressing forces the bed against the mesh and pushes fines into the cup, and it stirs the grounds at exactly the wrong moment. Skimming and settling gives a cleaner cup from the same coffee.
- Can I use a French press for a light roast?
- Yes, with water at 96 °C and five minutes rather than four. Light roasts are denser and less soluble, and a press is gentle enough that over extraction is unlikely.