Coffee style review: French Press

I usually write about alcohol, not because I'm an alcoholic, but because I'm obsessed with flavour, and soda's tend to be boring when it comes to flavour. However, there is another style of beverage I'm heavily into: coffee. The different types of beans and roasts etc, are important to the taste of the final product, but the method used to brew the coffee is amazingly important as well.

Below I will give you the pro's and con's of what I believe is the most flavourful style: French Press

For a French Press coffee, you need to ground up whole coffee beans, but grind them very coarsely. If you grind them finely, you will end up with a mouth full of coffeegrounds, and it is not necessary to grind it fine in order to get a good flavour.

Put these ground coffee beans in a French Press (fairly cheap usually, the one I use cost me about 20$, way cheaper than an espresso machine, and if you are used to drip coffee, well, there's no need for filters anymore)

You will have to experiment with how much coffee to use, since it depends on how strong you like it, but also on how much the coffee has been roasted (the really good stuff is actually not roasted all that much. Crap coffee is roasted until almost burnt, and thus it will give off a lot of "burnt" flavour, meaning that you only require a little coffee in order to make your hot water taste like "coffee". The good stuff is not burnt at all, but you will require way more in order to get a tasty cup. Rule of thumb: if the beans are glistening on the outside, they are worthless)

Pour boiled water on the ground coffee, and than give it a vigorous stir.

put the lid on, and keep the plunger up.

Now wait for 5 minutes. (In my experience, you can wait longer as well, it does not have any effect on the flavour. (if you wait too long, ofcourse it will start to cool down)).

After 5 minutes, gently push the plunger down. (if you wait longer, the coffee grounds will sink to the bottom themselves.)

Now pour the coffee, keeping the lid in place with the plunger down (the lid contains a filtration system, which will make sure that only the liquid will pour out, and the grounds will remain in the French press).

This style of coffee making extracts the full flavour profile of the coffee beans. It will be like nothing you ever tasted before. It will taste, the way the pack of beans smelled, if you put your nose into the freshly opened pack. (again, if it s crap coffee, that just means "burnt" but if it is good coffee,...)

So I've written an entire post about how great, and how delicious this coffee style is, but I promised to also write the issues with this style of coffee preparation...

If you are into coffee, you've probably already heard that espresso doesn't contain much caffein, and you probably also know that this is because for espresso, the steam is pressed through the ground coffee at high pressure, and it flows through so quickly that the caffein does not have time to leach out.

Now guess what happens when you leave coffee grounds to simply steep in boiled water for 5 minutes. (and now remember that, in order to get a tasty cup, you should use MORE coffee than you usually us).

The result is that this style of coffee is a caffein bomb. It will extract way more caffein than is present in other preparation styles (asides from other styles which rely on steeping ground coffee in "stagnant" hot water). Do not be surprised to find out that you get WAY more of a kick from this style than from other styles, that might be to your liking, but this is not a style to have with desert after dinner in the evening.

The second issue with this style of coffee is the fat. This is probably also related to the long steeping time. I've tried to make a picture which shows, this, but you can actually see the oils floating on the coffee. This does not affect the flavour (unless if it's positive), and it might even contribute to a good robust feeling in your mouth, but this style of coffee is actually known to be associated with higher levels of cholesterol. So if you are worried about your cholesterol levels, this might not be the best style of coffee for you.

Cheers