How to Brew Espresso Beans with French Press - Which Coffee Beans Are Suitable for French Press - French Press Usage Guide

How to Use a French Press

The principle behind the French press is very simple. Boil water and rinse the press and the cup with hot water to preheat both. Grind the coffee beans. Place the grounds in the press, then pour in hot water at the appropriate temperature — grounds first, then water. Let it steep for 4–5 minutes, then press the filter down to separate the coffee liquid from the grounds. Pour into a cup and add sugar and milk as you like. Enjoy.

The steps look simple, but the fineness of the grind, the temperature of the water, and the steeping time all affect how the coffee tastes.

Why French Press Coffee Has Grounds

When you make coffee with a French press there will always be some grounds in the cup. Even without granular pieces, fine particles make French press coffee look cloudy, and you usually see a mud-like sediment at the bottom after drinking. The cause is either that the coffee was ground too finely or that the plunger was pushed down too quickly.

How to Reduce the Grounds

1. Adjust the grind coarser so the particles are slightly larger; the mesh filter can then catch more of the grounds during brewing.

2. Slow the pressing step. Pushing too fast stirs the grounds at the bottom back up into the coffee above.

3. Use a better grinder. Any grinder produces fine particles, and those fines are what cloud the coffee, but a better grinder produces noticeably fewer of them.

In any case, it is impossible to eliminate grounds from French press coffee entirely; the goal is simply to keep them to a minimum.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Because the French press is a full-immersion brewer with a metal mesh filter, water and grounds stay in direct contact and the resulting cup keeps more oil, giving a heavier, fuller body. That makes the method a poor fit for anyone who dislikes sediment, and a good fit for medium or dark roasts, whose sweetness and caramel notes come through well over a longer steep. If you like an aromatic, floral-leaning cup, FrontStreet's Strawberry Candy is a rewarding choice: the blend of Costa Rican honey-processed coffee and Panama washed Geisha opens up in the press with rose, citrus, grape, and raisin, and with milk it turns into strawberry gummy candy.

If you want a low-acid black coffee with a full, oily body, FrontStreet's PWN Golden Mandheling is the first pick. One of Asia's best-known specialty coffees, it is sorted three times by hand and once by machine so the beans are even and translucent. Medium-dark roasted, the beans are large and carry dense spice, caramel, cedar, and dark chocolate aromas; brewed in a French press the cup is thick and rich with a generous crema-like oiliness.

FrontStreet sizes the grind for a French press at coarse sugar — 10.5 on an EK43s electric grinder or 26 clicks on a hand grinder, closer to small gravel than fine sand — and warns that too fine a grind lets water through the coffee too quickly and pushes fines through the metal mesh, leaving heavy sediment. For ratio, start from 1:15 (15 grams of coffee to 225 grams of water), which yields a concentration of roughly 1.1–1.2%. For water, a temperature of about 90°C works well; because a French press gets a single pour with no stirring to raise extraction, you can go 1–2°C higher than a normal pour-over. Steep for 3–5 minutes, beginning around 4 minutes — a dark roast can turn bitter at 5, while a light roast may need more than 3 to release its flavor.