Your Weekly Voilà! Making the Perfect French Press Coffee 😊☕️🇫🇷

PASSION • CREATIVITY • INSPIRATION

Before our move to France, my husband and I had a coffee farm on the Big Island of Hawaii for 9 years. He adores coffee. Mais moi? I don't even like coffee ice cream. It's time we address the fact that my Weekly Voilàs are heavily skewed toward tea drinkers and my coffee aficionados are feeling left out. After all, it was the arrival of the coffee bean to Paris in 1644 that developed the concept of the café. Parisians gathered to share gossip, debate politics, and partake in the latest fad - drinking coffee.

Hubby Tim to the rescue this week as he shares his passion for coffee and the best method for brewing the perfect cup with your French press maker. Frankly, I found it all fascinating.

Without further ado . . .

I have to admit that we have a few French press coffee pots in our collection. I use the small ones to brew loose tea and one for my homemade chai tea. We have larger ones for when we have guests and Tim has his favorite that he uses most mornings. It's always a good idea to pick them up when you see them at yard sales or thrift stores. You know that glass carafe is going to break one day. You'll be ready with its replacement.

A Bit of History

The French love their coffee. In fact, they were one of the first European countries to embrace coffee culture in the 17th century. Later, Louis XIV became an ardent coffee drinker. While Austrian coffee houses are well known to history and may be uniquely responsible for the Enlightenment, the French were not far behind. Perhaps it had something to do with the close Austria-France relationship of the same time period. After all, Marie-Antoinette was an Austrian.

My first clue that the history of the French press was “un peu compliqué” was when I found out that Karen’s cousin called the French press an “Italian press.” A little research showed that what we call a French press - a glass cylinder with a metal screen attached to a plunger to filter the brewed coffee - was in fact patented in Milan in 1928. What is not generally known is that this invention was based on a French technique of brewing coffee that was patented nearly a century earlier. This type of brewer never really caught on with the Italians – they are pretty much in love with their Moka Pots – and thanks to the English, the nickname kind of stuck.

Many coffee drinkers love their coffee brewed this way. It is easy to adjust the strength of the brew, so you can have your cup the way you like it, there are no paper filters to remove the natural oils found in coffee, so you get the true aroma and flavor of the bean, and there is something to be said for the aesthetic of a carefully brewed pot of coffee in an attractive apparatus, not some plastic appliance.

Tim is a bit spoiled when it comes to coffee. For nine years, he cultivated 4,000 Kona coffee trees. Organic. Award-winning. Hand-picked. It was a lot of work.

How to Brew Coffee in a French Press

I read once that the Oxford English Dictionary defined the French press as “an exercise designed to develop and strengthen the biceps.” If you are having trouble pushing down the plunger on your French press pot, fear not; I am about to give you my fool-proof method for brewing the perfect pot. If you follow these steps, you will never have to work up a sweat just to have your morning cup.

First things first. Make certain your press is clean. Those “natural coffee oils” can build up on the surfaces of your brewer over time and as they age, they can impart “off flavors” to your coffee. Mild soap and water is usually a good choice for the job but don’t be afraid to get in there with a soft scrub brush if you notice any stubborn deposits.

The type of coffee you use is really up to you. I am partial to aromatic Arabicas myself but the techniques I am going to describe will work for any coffee. There is no need to go out and find a specialty coffee roaster just to try this. Although using higher quality coffee will improve your brew, this will even work with a grocery store brand.

If you look at the plunger of your press, you will notice that it has a fine screen. This is so that the brewed coffee can be separated from the coffee grounds. While coffee that is more finely ground will have more complete extraction, the finer the grind of your coffee, the more sediment you will get in your cup, so you will have to thread the needle here. I recommend a grind that is slightly coarser than what you would find in an “all purpose” grind. You can use an all-purpose grind – after all, it is “all purpose” – but a slightly coarser grind will give you a better final result.

How much coffee? How much water? Well, that depends on the size of your pot. If you take the time to measure your pot’s capacity one time, you will have a better chance of brewing good coffee for years to come. Use a liquid measuring cup to determine the volume of your pot in fluid ounces. You want to use one teaspoon of ground coffee for every ounce of water as a starting point. Do you like your coffee stronger? Use a little more ground coffee in the pot next time.

Experiment until you get a taste you like.

Now . . . Put your desired amount of ground coffee into your pot. The ideal temperature for brewing coffee is right around 200º F (93º C). Too low and you won’t get all the oils, aromas, and flavors. Too high and you will over extract, leaving you with a bitter-tasting cup. A good way to approximate this temperature is to boil your water and then take it off the heat until it stops bubbling. Then you are ready to go.

Pour enough hot water into the pot to cover the grounds and give it a stir. I like to use a chopstick, but I bet Karen would prefer some fancy French wooden spoon. (Why yes . . . Yes I would :)

Put the lid in place without pushing the plunger down and wait three minutes. What is happening at this point is what is known as “the bloom.” The contact of the water is causing carbon dioxide trapped in the coffee to be released. The fresher the coffee, the more CO2 is released and the more crucial this step is. If you like hot coffee, now is a good time to reboil your water.

When the three minutes has elapsed, pour the hot water to the level you have selected and replace the lid and plunger. Wait one minute and then gently push the plunger down.

Voilà! A perfect pot of French press coffee.

Tim has plenty of coffee stories and methods and I promise he'll share more of his expertise in future Weekly Voilàs. He mentioned something about "French Balloon" coffee? I have no idea. Tim is in the final edit of his book all about coffee and you can learn more by visiting his website, Procaffeination and receive his 21 Easy Hacks to Instantly Improve Your Coffee.

See. He's passionate about his cup of joe. (Where did that expression come from? Tim will know.)

Wishing you a good cup of your favorite hot beverage
and a peaceful weekend.

À bientôt mon amie,
Karen ☕️💕🇫🇷