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Has Bean Brew Guide, the French Press

Number five in the Has Bean Brewing guide is on the French Press and is here for you today.

To tell you how I come up with these brew guides, I start with what I think I know and throw it all away. Then I spend a few days brewing badly, looking at what works and what doesn’t, then start to put together the guide. This one was done over the Christmas period and has been sitting waiting to be made.

As always there are some pdfs here

I look forwards to your thoughts ….

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7 Comments

  1. Fantastic, been looking for this and today of all days I got a new french press for work! Thanks

  2. Two issues I think you should address in an updated version:

    #1 First you give coffee dosage in relative units (g/l), but then you specify water dosage in absolute units (200+550 ml). Stick to one of the two.

    #2 You say to use scales to dose water, but then proceed to specify amount of water in ml. Certainly units of water should be specified in g.

  3. Hi Magnus

    To update them takes time and money I think its very clear from earlier brew guides that if you weight the water its better than measuring it in ml so turning 550ml in to 550g. Sorry your not happy with it but I think it is clear for most people.

  4. First of all, I love your guides! Great work!

    At the risk of coming accross a bit stupid, I have been asking myself how much you play around with the grindsize for each coffee?
    While it seems obvious to me to do so for espresso (mostly because you have an immediate feedback with extraction time), I wonder whether it is worth it or necessary doing so for french press coffee?
    My assumption would be that the course grind and the long extraction time doesn’t respond to minor changes a great deal, so I personally opted for a “one grind fits all” option, but how do you go about it, is it rewarding to make adjustments for various beans?

  5. Andre, the grind size plays a massive part in the brewing cycle not just because get it wrong its a muddy dirty cup, but small changes in grind particle size will increase or decrease the rate of extraction because of the face of the coffee available for extraction.

    Changing your grind (as I do to make it a very course grind) you have to make up for it with a longer extraction time. This can be dangerous but also very rewarding. fining the grind up so as not to muddy the cup but as close as you dare, can mean hitting the right extraction point is much harder. Think of a slow moving car and a fast moving car, which is easier to stop 🙂

  6. Heya,

    I’m clearly being very dim, but what’s the “Take another spoon and remove the remaining grinds from the carafe.” bit all about in step 8? What grinds? what carafe? what?!

    Looking fwd to brewing some immense Costa Rica Zarcera – mmmmust be perfect! 🙂

    Ess

  7. Hi Ess

    Carafe is the cafetiere, removing the grinds from the top will stop it continuing to extract

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