What Coffee Beans Are Suitable for French Press? How to Use Starbucks French Press and What Coffee Grind Size?

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French Press: The Simple Solution for Quality Coffee

Today's discerning coffee lovers who want a proper pour-over at home need quite the toolkit: gooseneck kettle, server, dripper, filter papers, thermometer... Using it all is a production, and it hogs counter space the rest of the time. Is a quality cup really impossible without the full pour-over rig? Pose that question to FrontStreet Coffee's baristas and they'll reach straight for the dusty French press.

The French press — also called a press pot — is the simplest, most convenient way to brew coffee. The device is actually ancient by coffee standards: around 1850, a craftsman and a merchant jointly patented a "piston-filter coffee device," a metal canister with a movable rod, holes at the rod's base, and layers of flannel above and below. Push the rod to the bottom by hand, and the grounds are isolated at the bottom of the pot, leaving a relatively clean cup.

After decades of refinement, an Italian company in Milan finally registered a patent for an improved version in the late 1920s, and the French press we know today went on to win worldwide recognition.

Curiously, early French presses were used less for coffee than for tea. Tea infusers generally have coarser screens; coffee filters, finer ones. But if you love coffee, are short on time, or don't own an expensive machine, the French press is an excellent answer.

The Rich Flavor Profile of French Press Coffee

French press coffee is known for its heavy mouthfeel and full-bodied flavor, and FrontStreet Coffee uses its Guaxupé beans as the worked example of how to brew one well. As always, some background on the beans first.

Guaxupé coffee comes from the Buku Abel processing station in the Hambela sub-region of Ethiopia's Guji Zone, natural processed. In 2017, Ethiopia's DW company entered Buku Abel's natural lot in that year's TOH (Taste of Harvest) competition and took first place in the Ethiopia natural category on the strength of its rich strawberry-cream flavor. Beijing's Yisheng green importer brought the champion batch to China and, betting that improved post-harvest methods could make it the next viral coffee, christened it "Guaxupé" — "chief of all flowers."

That same year, at the China regional finals of the World Brewers Cup — a field otherwise dominated by Geisha — contestant Li Jianfei brewed this same Guaxupé batch to a superb second place. Once people learned the beans behind it were Ethiopian Guaxupé, the coffee's fame skyrocketed.

Guaxupé lots are versioned by year: Guaxupé 2.0 in 2018, 3.0 in 2019, 4.0 in 2020, 5.0 in 2021 — and 2022's arrival means Guaxupé 6.0 is on the way. FrontStreet Coffee pre-ordered the batch immediately, and friends will soon see Guaxupé 6.0 on our bean list.

Among the nearly fifty coffees on FrontStreet Coffee's list today you'll find both Guaxupé 5.0 and small-bean Guaxupé. FrontStreet first noticed the small-particle beans mixed into the 2018 and 2019 Guaxupé batches and, through comparison, found they were the main source of the coffee's aroma. In 2020, DW began processing them separately under the small-bean Guaxupé brand.

Cupping the two side by side, FrontStreet Coffee found small-bean Guaxupé closer to the strawberry-cream flavor of the 2017 champion natural, while Guaxupé 5.0 leans toward the citrus, berry notes, and tea-like character typical of the Guji region.

French Press Brewing Tutorial

Unless your hands belong to a barista, the delicious Guaxupé you enjoy at a café never quite reappears at home. Facing that gap, many people turn to the simplest method of all: brewing Guaxupé in a French press.

Which raises the question: how do you brew it without bitterness and astringency? How do you get a genuinely delicious cup of Guaxupé?

FrontStreet Coffee's French Press Brewing Tutorial

Brewing Equipment: French Press
Water Temperature: 90°C
Coffee Amount: 15g
Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15
Grind Size: 70% pass-through rate on China standard #20 sieve

First preheat the French press thoroughly with hot water, then pour it out.

Add 15g of grounds and pour in 225g of 90°C water.

Rest the plunger at its highest position, lid on, and steep for 4 minutes.

After 4 minutes, press the plunger gently and slowly down to one-quarter of the pot's height, then pour out the coffee and enjoy.

Brewed this way, FrontStreet's Guaxupé opens with rich mixed-berry aroma, distinct layered berry-juice notes, and a creamy texture — full-bodied and generous from first sip to last.

Brewing Insights and Tips

Guaxupé is roasted medium-light, and its flavor compounds extract relatively slowly in hot water, so FrontStreet Coffee recommends a higher water temperature to speed them along.

When serving it as pour-over, FrontStreet uses a three-stage method with a dripper. Because the hot water spends only a short time with the grounds before draining into the server, we grind finer — an 80% pass-through on the China #20 sieve — for Guaxupé pour-over.

French press, however, means extended steeping in hot water. To head off the bitterness and astringency of over-extraction, go coarser: 70% pass-through on the #20 sieve. Coarser grounds mean larger particles and less total surface area touching the water. Grind too fine and over-extraction lurks; too coarse and under-extraction leaves a watery, overly acidic cup.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For an effortless brewer, nothing beats the French press — brewing with one is as simple as making tea: grounds in, hot water in, stir, press, pour. And precisely because it's simple, the details decide everything. The press is a full-immersion device with a metal mesh, and that direct soaking is exactly why press coffee carries richer oils and a thicker, fuller body — though if you dislike sediment or fine particles in the cup, it may not be for you.

Bean choice matters most. Because immersion extraction keeps grounds in hot water for minutes, light roasts come out dominated by acidity that masks their florals and delicate layers; the press theoretically suits medium and dark roasts best, which express sweetness and caramel tones beautifully. If you prefer fragrant, perfumed coffee, FrontStreet's Strawberry Candy — a Geisha blend of Costa Rican honey-process and Panama washed Geisha, combining Central America's finest flavors — smells of rose, citrus, grape, and dried blueberry steeped in the press, and turns to strawberry-soft-candy aromas with a splash of milk. If you want low-acid black coffee with full, oily richness, go for FrontStreet's PWN Golden Mandheling: one of Asia's most famous specialty coffees, triple hand-sorted plus one machine pass for uniform, translucent beans, and at a medium-dark roast showing big, bold notes of spice, caramel, cedar, and dark chocolate, with a mellow press cup and honest crema.

On the details: grind to coarse sugar — EK43s setting 10.5, or 26 on a hand grinder, like fine gravel rather than sand. Too fine, and fines slip through the metal mesh to leave a sediment-heavy cup; if you do want finer grounds for more layered flavor, shorten the steep to avoid over-extraction. Keep the classic 1:15 ratio (15g coffee to 225g water) for a strength around 1.1-1.2% — fuller and rounder — then adjust to taste. Without a thermometer, let boiled water rest 2-3 minutes to land near 90°C, or a degree or two above your usual pour-over temperature, since the press's single pour and lack of agitation forfeit some extraction. Start at a 4-minute steep — 5 minutes can turn a dark roast bitter, while 3 may undershoot a light one — then press slowly to the bottom and pour carefully, leaving the bed undisturbed, and enjoy.