10 TIPS FOR BREWING FRENCH PRESS AWESOMELY

French Press is the most common and affordable manual brewing equipment due to it’s super simple, easy to brew, yet easily extracting a consistent and flavourful pot of coffee, not to forget a strong coffee that most of us love.

 Here are some awesome tips that flip from your good cup of coffee to a great cup of coffee every day!

  • Grind your own coffee Coarse

Everyone knows keeping your coffee fresh is very important. 1 of the best ways is to grind it yourself. Meaning by getting your coffee in whole bean, as ground coffee allows more surface for your coffee exposed to oxygen hence it speed up your coffee to become slate. Invest in a hand grinder as a start if possible, do some small workout before your morning coffee seems a good idea too! Not to mention the grind is coarse and you can adjust it according to your preference. 

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  • Preheat your French Press.

 As every barista will do for coffee or tea, to preheat our serving cup and equipment, we try to maintain the heat at the most minimal variant to allow more heat to go directly to the drinks. You won’t want hot water poured into a cold French press and which drastically causes your drink to become warm and affects the brewing.

  • Avoid boiling water

 A lot of brewers have a misconception that coffee must serve as hot as possible, hence they use boiling water. We want hot water which is 92 – 96 degrees Celsius. Leave your boiled water for around 3 minutes before pouring for brewing. 

  • Use a timer. 

 This is super super important ! If you can’t get a timer, there is 1 in your phone. Don’t estimate the time. As your coffee will get bitter from over extraction. Try 3.5minutes then increase or decrease the time based on your preference. Consistent timing brews consistent coffee. 

  • Use a scale

 Also, this is a super important tip ! Coffee brewing ratio is 1 : 15. Which means 1g of coffee with 15ml of water. You will never be able to judge correctly by how many tablespoons is 20g beside using a scale. A difference of 2g in your brew can be heaven or hell, because it might be a difference of 30ml of water which means 10% in your 300ml brew. Same goes to measurement of water. A scale can be used to measure water by its weight, 1g = 1ml of water. 
Order your high precision coffee scale here.

  • Use filtered water

 99% of a cup of coffee is water. Therefore using good quality filtered water plays a very important role! Unfiltered water might contain unwanted chlorine or metal taste which will jeopardize all your hardwork of brewing a great cup of coffee. 

  • Bloom your coffee / Wet your ground 

 Once you pour ground coffee into the French Press, pour 2 times of its weight to wet it and let it sit for 30 – 45 seconds. This allows the water to force the carbon dioxide out from the ground to avoid sour taste for your coffee. Pour the rest of the water in after the bloom. 

  • Plunge gently

 After the time up! Plunge gently to avoid fine ground retain in the coffee and have a cleaner cup of coffee. 

  • Decant your coffee. 

 After plunging the coffee, decant it to a server or mug. Do not let the coffee sit in the French press to avoid over extraction.

  • Finer grind ? Shorter time

 If you happen to get a finer grind of your coffee? No problem, so long it’s able to be filtered by the plunger, just shortens your brew time accordingly. 

We hope these tips can help you brew a cup of great coffee every morning. Do check out our store as well if you need to have a different brewing kit of selection of beans !