How to use a French Press

How to use a french press is a matter of what you have on hand to use and how lazy you want to be about it.

Generally I'm the lazy variety but here's some options for us to sort through.

Regardless of the variety of your french coffee press what we're going to need despite any other factors is boiled water.

You can use a pot on the electric or gas stove, or just a kettle on the electric or gas stove.

What I personally enjoy using the most which is very fast is an electric 1200watt kettle. Less than a minute later the water is boiling.

That's pretty fast, and I have gas heat! So you know it's really fast.

Depending on your gear aside from the french coffee press, it's realistic to say that using a french coffee press is even quicker than using a standard every day common drip based coffee machine.

Then we get into the coffee bean arena. With some french coffee presses the metal mesh filter is tight enough to prevent common foldgers or maxwell house coffee grounds from seeping through, and all of the varieties of every day common coffee grounds.

For the optimum and ultimate cup of coffee you're going to want to grind your own coffee beans. Typically it's a good idea to grind as much as you plan out in advance for consumption, because you don't want a bunch of fresh ground beans turning stale.

Depending on your french coffee press the metal mesh filter might be porous enough to allow fine ground beans to seep through the mesh. So if you have one like I'm describing you're not going to want to turn a grinder on and walk out of the room. Keep that in mind, experiment, and you can figure out what you need with a little trial and error.

After you have the coffee ground thing under control pour in the grounds into the bottom of your french coffee press.

Next we're going to need some hot water around 190f or so. Yes you're going to boil water but don't pour in the water while it's still boiling. Let it sit for a moment before pouring it in. This isn't an exact science so approximation is allowed without exactness as every person has their own personal preference.

After you pour in the water you can choose to stir up the grounds a bit if you desire to help release the oils, flavor, and etc. in the coffee grounds. The hot water will do the majority of the heavy lifting, but stirring around a little bit will help clobber the grounds a little bit still yet.

After you've got a bit of a nice golden froth going on it's time to put the mesh filter in and get a hold of the plunger and press down until it's to the bottom. You should have a fine cup of coffee to pour now.

Now you might ask how much coffee grounds should I use? This depends entirely on the volume that your french coffee press can contain, and your personal taste for strength.

There you go, there isn't a lot to it. The whole process is a lot more fun than a drip based coffee machine.