The French Press is one of my favorite brewing methods – but for the longest time it stood below most other hand brewing methods for coffee. The reason for this? It's not the full immersion of the French Press – which produces a fantastic alternate result – its that the classic French Press leaves you with this extra oily bitterness (and often leaves you with a bit of dregs in your cup).
There is a solution to this. This process came to me when I was trying to figure out how to replicate a very specific experience of a very specific coffee after cupping it. The cupping process involves immersion brewing of grounds in a cup – and then the grounds are not removed, but the foam on top is. As I started to think this could be done with the French Press, I discovered this process had been originally talked about online by Tim Wendelboe.
The nice thing about this is that it is super easy to implement. You don't really need to know or understand anything, except the extra mechanical step that I demonstrate in this video.
If you are coming new to the Press, I recommend watching the whole thing, as I go through the entire process – including the standard French Press recipe (brewing approx 17:1 water:coffee ratio). The ‘extra' step comes after the original brew time is complete, and before you press the grounds through the coffee.
If you are already familiar and comfortable enough with your French Press method, then you can certainly skip ahead to 3:10 in the video where I explain the new steps, how to do them, and why. Whenever I do a Press at home this is a step I almost always implement (I've even tried being lazy since figuring this out, but now I can't stand the old style French Press when this one is so easy to do).
The result you get is simply a much cleaner brew, that ends up being sweeter because there are less bitter elements impeding your taste.
Enjoy – and subscribe to Coffee Lovers TV on Youtube! (currently it's labeled as Coffee Lovers Magazine – I need to change that)