Good day! 🙌 Welcome to yet another issue of Uncoffee!
This issue goes a day later because I failed to properly plan my time during the weekend. I apologize for that and I promise to stay loyal to the idea to deliver the following articles during the weekends.
I would like to start this issue with a comment on a small issue for most of us, but a huge one for the producers of coffee all over the world. Coffee is good business because it has high net profit margins. That comes primarily from the fact that raw coffee production in the world is a highly exploited industry. Many people in Africa and Brazil are on the plantations for most of the time because of cheap pay, low wages for the farmers and inhumane working conditions. There are many charity initiatives around that give the promise of supporting the producers of coffee in the developing countries and you can easily find just by Googling. This is my call to you: if you enjoy coffee and care for the people that work on the coffee plantations, try to find a charity and support it. Or a roastery that assures ethical and humane working conditions for the producers in Ethiopia, Honduras, Minas, etc. It might change a life somewhere in the world. Thank you!
Let’s go! 🚀
Previously mentioned as essential equipment, I have the French press just like a trip to Paris. Does not happen often but when it does it’s often full of surprises. The warmth, the pushback, the aroma and taste. Every time I do it, I pay my full attention to the process. Whenever it comes for brewing in the French press, for me it means a small field of mistake and huge opportunity to learn about coffee. It’s like an experiment every time I do it. The French press is unforgivable.
During the 20th century there has been real innovation competition when it came to brewing techniques and many of the techniques we have nowadays were introduced at that time. When the French press was invented, it tried to overtake the market that the previously established filter coffee already had. It’s an interesting story of entrepreneurship that might have been overwhelming for people being involved back then, but for us today is just a day of the week. We call it “today is a pour-over day” or “today is a mokka espresso day”. And for me the “french press day” is almost always a weekend day. I like the taste of French press coffee over homemade waffles or banana pancakes during lazy Sunday mornings.
The French press was originally invented by Italian inventors back in 1929. Maybe that is why a friend from Toulouse calls it the Italian Press, oui? The model that was originally patented has little to do with what we have in our homes today. The ones we use now is a design of a Swiss designer named Faliero Bondanini from 1958 that made few additions to the way the coffee was filtered. The device evolved during the years between the many commercial products.
French press is an extraordinarily simple device whose main focus is on the filtering plunger. A heated water is added at the bottom of a large glass (the beaker), over ground coffee and the filtering happens through the filter at the end of the plunger, pushed elegantly over the coffee at the bottom. A notorious fact for the filter of the French press is that amongst the aromas and oils from the coffee often it lets parts of the bad cholesterol to pass through and by that positioning the French press coffee on the unhealthy spectrum of the nutrition. At this point, without checking anything further, I have not found any information that justifies a daily usage of the French press, unfortunately. But I also believe in a good balance of the diet. So if you want to enjoy the French press coffee continuously, you can just lower the frequency. Don’t do it daily, do it weekly. Or another simple solution to this problem that comes from the community suggests using a coffee filter paper (not the cone one, but rather the classical drip coffee filter paper) which is wrapped over the plunger’s filter. Something like this:
Thus, when the coffee is poured, it does not go only through the native filter of the press but also through the paper. Doing that, the bad cholesterol components stay at the bottom, but also, the taste and the quality of the coffee is impaired. If I had to choose, again, it’d be 2 times a month French press coffee as-is, rather than daily filter-paper modified version of it.
Let’s see how the basic variables change for the french press: temperature, grind size and time.
We have to be really mindful on the first variable, the temperature whenever we use the press. It is a very fragile as a variable, as we are talking about a larger area of the beaker, where temperature can easily be lost on fill-in, and that can take the coffee to a completely different level of taste. Temperature loss also might come from the fact that there is no opportunity for the cups to be pre-heat with hot water, just as it’s the case in pour-over filter’s blooming step. As a solution for this I’d suggest you put the serving cups in the oven on low temperature during the preparation of the coffee. Try not to completely bake and damage them. Also, before doing the actual blooming, you can use some of the hot water (again, the hotter the better), to wash the beaker and by that pre-heat it. I’ve read others also would put the beaker shortly into the oven before using it. Whatever works, as long as it’s not a flamethrower.
Talking about the grind size - I like to experiment a bit and do a combination of finer and coarser grind. I’ve never measured that but if I were asked I’d say 10% filter coffee grind, the rest at a french-press level (meaning, coarser). This is my optimal French press grind:
I can see some of the more experienced brewers raising eyebrows from here, but this fact came as an experimentation I was doing getting to know the French press and trying to tweak the taste. I dig, it’s contrarian, but it’s ok to break the rules every once in a while as long as the taste is achieved.
The ratio for French press is a bit different than for the pour-over filter, but just a tiny bit. I do 18gr with 250ml. The reason why I use less coffee is because the French press extracts subtler aromas and taste lines, making the coffee stronger in taste. I guess it has to do with the filtering and sediments passed through the filter. No idea. For me, using more coffee means over-exctraction. So I balance it out with less coffee. If you don’t mind that stronger taste, increase the coffee amount.
Do not forget or neglect the blooming phase. It will change the ways you perceive coffee and it’s not meta or psychological at all. It’s chemical.
If you don’t do the blooming carefully, lots of the trapped gases will stay inside the brew itself. By that, when you drink it they will react with your taste receptors and even your brain and dramatically change the way the aromas and tastes are perceived by you. “Ohh, I made it sour this time..” it could be that the coffee really is sour because you shortened the extraction time for some reason - but also it could mean that the coffee is not sour, yet your brain perceives it as such due to the chemicals it contains. Talking in absolute, none of the reasons is important because for you the final result will be poor taste. And to avoid that, do the blooming right. French press blooming means putting the coffee at the bottom of the beaker and pouring some of the water slowly to mix the mixture and let give about 1 minute time for it to settle.
Don’t overdo the blooming as that will impact both the temperature (of the water that awaits and the beaker itself) as well as the extraction. After the blooming add the rest of the water and put the cover with the plunger on top. Don’t push the plunger completely yet. Just bring it at the very same top of the coffee. Leave it there for 3-4 minutes. Right after remove the plunger, and collect everything you can collect from the top of the liquid. Whatever is floating, needs to go. And that means chunks of coffee, foam and even some (small) amount of the brew itself. If you do this part with a spoon, make sure you don’t modify the temperature by keeping the press open too long or washing the spoon (or whatever you use) with cold water. If you wash it while doing it, wash it with hot water. The tricky part is removing the foam, as it’s really nasty. But do your best - whatever you can catch in 2mins, remove it. The rest can stay. The whole thing from start of the blooming until now should not take longer than 5mins. Put that in perspective.
Close the plunger and push down to the bottom. If the plunger goes very slowly and pushes back strongly, it means that your grind is too fine so it creates lots of sediment that is hard to push. If it goes really fast then it could be that you’ve gone too coarse. However it is - don’t try to change or influence that, just try to accommodate for the next time. But try to always push the plunger down slowly as that has a lot to do with how the essential oils interact in your brew. French press brews are known for their characteristic aromas based on essential oils.
Overall they say you should not brew longer than 5mins in French press. But hold your horses before you set the timers on. Instead, do this: once you push the plunger down, leave it there for 3-4 additional minutes. Let’s go radical and brew for 8-10 minutes total. But not longer.
Serve the coffee. The first thing I always notice is the color of the brew. It’s deeper, stronger and fairer. You can see the blonde blend smiling through the cup. Also, if you observe the surface of the coffee, you will notice oily areas. It’s just how French brew is, a combo of oils, sediment and sometimes the quality of the beans.
Remember that moment of observation as it will give you clues on what might need to be tweaked the next time. Also, it’s the moment between the coffee being ready and your sip.
Enjoy.