Brewing Guide: Cafetiere (French Press) Coffee
Your Essential Brew Guide To Perfecting A Cafetiere Coffee
Probably the most common method of converting your ground coffee into a delicious coffee brew, the cafetiere - or French Press - is an inexpensive cylinder with a simple filtering plunger. More precisely known as an 'infusion brewer', the cafetière allows ground coffee particles to infuse with water and in doing so creates a consistent taste. Despite it's simple design and method, such a coffee brewing method can actually yield an excellent cup of coffee if done well.
The plunger's mesh - typically metal - has holes tactically sized to allow some of the coffee grind to find passage into your cup to give a richer taste, a fuller body and plenty of texture. It's simple design, however, will lead to a sludge residue developing at the bottom of the cafetiere, which if not careful whilst pouring, can escape into your coffee to created added bitterness. To brew your coffee with a cafetiere, wholebeans and pre-ground coffee are both available from all our roasters via GUSTATORY subscriptions, in which we recommend our Selected Mix coffee subscription or our Single Origin / Light coffees.
Use Coarse Ground Coffee
Depending on the volume of your cafetiere, you can typically serve multiple coffees from one cafetiere brewing process. We recommend using around 55g of coarse ground coffee per 1000ml of water, in which with a brew ratio of 1g of coffee for every ~17ml of water, will result in using 14g per 250ml coffee cup or 19g for a 350ml coffee cup. You may use wholebeans and your own grinder (recommended) or pre-ground for filter coffee. If wholebeans, to achieve a coarse grind, you should use a high setting on your grinder's dashboard, with the resulting coffee grinds visibly coarse
1 What You Need
To make your cafetiere (French Press) coffee, you will need: 1x cafetiere, cup(s), 1x digital scales, boiling water (using filtered water is also recommended) and coarse ground coffee
2 Rinse Your Cafetiere
Begin by cleaning your cafetiere with boiling water. Once poured, allow the water to sit for a little while to pre-heat the the cafetiere's glass, an often overlooked recommendation
3 Discard Water, Load Coffee & Tare Scales
Discard the now excess water from the cafetiere, load your amount of ground coffee inside, and place onto a set of digitial scales. Next, tare the scales so that it states zero (required if you prefer greater brewing control or if your cafetiere does not have a measurement scale line)
4 Pour Water Into Your Cafetiere
Next, pour water into your cafetiere until it is around 95% full, observing your scales until it shows the weight at which your intended brew ratio allows. Upon completion, start a timer and give the water a stir until there is no coffee resting at the top surface or sitting at the bottom
5 Place Your Plunger, Wait, Then Plunge
Once nicely mixed together and swirling around, place the plunger on top of the cafetiere and use your timer to wait four minutes whilst the coffee steeps. Once this time period has been met, finish by slowly pushing the plunger down
6 Serve & Enjoy
Upon being plunged, simply serve and enjoy. We recommend keeping the plunger at the bottom irrespective of how many cups you're serving in one serve, with the plunger there to prevent the brewing process from continuing, in which would create additional bitternessGUSTATORY (adjective): curating excellence in taste.