French Press Brew Guide

Requirements:

Plunger
Kettle
Stirrer
Scales
Fresh coffee beans
Adjustable burr grinder (or pre-ground coffee)
Filtered water

Ratio: 60g coffee / 1000mL water

Grind: Medium-coarse grind

Method:

Boil water, weigh and grind your coffee. A general guide is 30g of coffee to 500mL of water, but you can adjust this to taste if you’d like it stronger or weaker. If you don’t have a scale on hand, 30g is roughly four tablespoons of coarsely ground coffee. Don’t grind the coffee too fine or else it will escape the filter of the French Press and make your coffee silty and give it a burnt taste.
Pour boiling water over coffee grounds. If you have a gooseneck kettle that you can use to pour, that’s great – but if not, try to pour the water in a slow circular motion over the grinds. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but all of the grinds should be immersed with water so there are no dry spots.

Wait five minutes. During this time, the water will steep with the coffee and all those lovely flavours will be released. Take some time to stop and enjoy the aroma!

After five minutes, a crust will form on the top – this is normal! Stir the grounds gently to break up the crust that forms and give all the coffee a chance to steep.

If you have a glass carafe, try not to stir too hard or hit the glass – in some rare cases, the heat and pressure can cause the glass to crack if it’s knocked too hard. Stir gently away from the edges.

Scoop the foam, grounds and the floating bits off the top. You don’t need to get everything but try to get the bigger chunks.

Wait another five minutes. During this time, the rest of the grounds will settle to the bottom of the pot (and the coffee is probably too hot to drink yet, anyway).

Plunge the filter down only until it touches the top of the liquid (NOT all the way down to the bottom of the carafe, as is the popular belief). The reason you only go this far down is so that you don’t stir up what’s been settling at the bottom of the carafe for the last five minutes. This will ensure you have a crisp, silt free French Press experience.