3 Tips to Level Up your French Press Game
Brewing with a French press at home is one of the simplest, easy to access brew methods for coffee lovers regardless of skill level. But for beginner coffee brewers, some things can get away from you.
Instructions on the coffee bag could steer you wrong, or maybe you have not quite buttoned down your French Press workflow. If you're trying to break out of the level you are in, here are three tips that will help you elevate your French press game.
Tip 1: Preheat the French press beaker
The French press brew method is on the longer side of durations for hot brewing. The standard "4-minute" timing is most well-known, but if you explore recipes online, there are longer brew times that yield different outcomes. In all that time, your coffee is getting colder as the heat dissipates.
The brew temperature drops faster when pouring hot water into a cold beaker (carafe). This heat transfer from the brewing water to the glass affects the efficiency of the extraction. The extraction slows down, and flavours may not be fully extracted by the time you're ready to serve.
So, find a way of including some time at the start of your workflow to include preheating steps. And preheat your serving cups while you're at it.
Tip 2: Bloom the coffee
Blooming is a levelling-up concept. I've used it successfully to get consistently better brews from my French press process. That would sound more impressive if you knew how bad I was before I applied better techniques to my brewing.
Blooming for the French press was a new concept to me. I had seen blooming applied to pour-overs on YouTube, and I thought it was a pour-over-specific requirement.
When trying to level up my brewing skills, I researched a recipe, and the recipe steps included 30 seconds of bloom time.
Blooming is a short period at the start of the brew, where the coffee grounds are immersed in hot water to warm up the grinds and start the dissolving process. Stirring during blooming ensures that all the exposure of all the coffee grounds to the water.
My approach is 30 seconds of bloom, with stirring, followed by 4 minutes of brewing. I adjust the bloom time based on the extraction of that brew. I reduce the blooming and stirring if I find it a little over-extracted.
Overall, I have found that adding the blooming step has consistently prevented under-extraction and allowed me to control the extraction to a point where I am getting the taste and strength I'm looking for out of my brew.
Tip 3: Measure the coffee, water, and time
Your recipe needs to be consistent to repeat the results. The only way to be consistent is by measuring your recipe ingredients, sticking to the recipe steps and timings, and by ensuring that you keep track of it all for the next brew.
Ensure that you weigh the coffee and water, and use a timer for the blooming and brew time every time you brew. If you don't have a scale yet, at least find a way of accurately measuring out the coffee and water by volume. Levelling up is in the details.
Those are my three tips - Preheat, Bloom, and Measure. I have been getting great results with these steps in my French press brewing. I also now confidently brew for guests, knowing that it won't be another disappointing cup and having no idea why. It's time for you to take your brewing to the next level.
If you have any other French press tips or recipes you'd like to recommend, we'd love it if you'd add it to the comments.