That press can really handle the pressure. What’s the estimated PSI on that 4th panel? Looks like half of the volume has been compressed. Supercritical french press!
Okay, so, I completed this impossible task. Now, how do I get coffee into my cup?
Brought to you by Los Alamos Coffee.
More impressed by that hand strength! Its takes a hand or two or a nuclear plant to compress a liquid!
This is wrong. You need to steep in cold water for 24 hours.
Hell yeah you do, but I just use a regular old mason jar with a lid for that.
Filtering your coffee through a paper filter removes the cafestol.
Cafestol makes coffee “bad” for you.
Cafestol is not really well that studied, and at least in rats it’s an anticarcinogen.
If it’s not bad for me what the fuck is the point?
You don’t want to stir it. Agitation increases bitterness. If it isn’t mixing well, pour slower.
Nice judgment location
I’ve been using the Stumptown method, which has you pour half the water, wait a minute, then there’ll be a crust on top… you want to break that crust with your spoon then give it a light stir. Then pour the other half of the water, wait til the 4 minute mark, press, and voila.
If you don’t stir in that crust, you’ll have unevenly brewed grounds. If you’re getting bitterness from stirring, try a coarser grind.
That sounds like bs. Your slow pour is also agitating it
Aeropress users after reading this comic
I have a good used car worth of money tied up in my espresso stuff just so I can judge harder.
I have a French Press and I like the convenience of it. I can make my coffee even if the power is out and I don’t need to buy filter cups.
When the… power is out? Where do you live where that’s a concern and how do you heat your water without electricity?
No scale, no grinder, no kettle with adjustable temperature… tsk, tsk, tsk
I see you found a space on top of the cabinets to cast aspersions on the fridge top squatter in the comic.
Would make for an excellent hidden panel.
I’d recognize that break room anywhere.
Pam, Stan, and Angela acting like one of her cats :D
Sooo what I find funny is… all things considered, French Press isn’t even that sophisticated; it doesn’t involve adjusting the speed at which one pours the water, so it’s a lot less technically demanding than using like a V60 or something… I think the last time I went to a coffee class the instructors were all scoffing at the French Press lol (including one of them not wanting to “waste” a really high-quality batch of coffee on a French Press)
Also James Hoffmann has an alternative technique for using a French Press that makes coffee that is less “muddy”… basically doing the same as usual, but after 4 minutes instead of plunging, try to us a spoon to remove all the foam, and then keep the coffee inside for another 5-10 min. Then pour out coffee without plunging
And at the end of the day, all hot brewing methods are still inferior to the stupidest patient person.
Cold brew is objectively better coffee, and literally just requires you to delay coffee satisfaction by like 15-20 hours.
There is no objectivity in taste. Coffee drinking is a spectrum of preferences from flavor profiles delivered by growing, bean blending and roasting practices to acidity, particulate matter, strength, caffeine content, additives (milk/sugar/etc), and other subjectivity.
I personally don’t enjoy most cold brews, or cold coffee in general, as cold coffee tends to allow more fruity flavors come through, which I do not enjoy at all in my coffee experience.
I however, would not turn down a cold brew if that’s all that’s available. I mean, hell, I’ll drink a cup of black from a rundown diner that’s brewed from folgers and been sitting on a hot plate for 30+ minutes. And if that’s somebody’s favorite cup of coffee, I’m not gonna judge them and tell them their coffee is inferior.
I wonder if i can use fine powder to do it, sounds like something that might actually save me times in the morning
Pour like 3/4 full, stir, then cover with a coffee filter (that’s the same size as the French press) before filling the rest of the way.
It’s similar to how a lot of japanese cooking tells you to scoop off the foam, or you can use coffee filters on top of your soup to catch the foam.
There’s Melita-style and Chemex pourovers which is less demanding on the pouring techniques.
Also, a lot of people seem to use too fine of grind size for french press, which requires coarse grind.
it’s not smug if you’re actually better than everyone else.
I put ground beans in, pour hot water on them and start pressing pretty much immediately. How freakin strong do you need your coffee to wait for 4 whole minutes?
Coffee is a matter of taste. So no one should tell you that you’re doing it wrong. Maybe it’s just a preference.
But “immediatly” is… pretty fast. I wonder if your grind is very fine or if you have very dark beans. I don’t like coffee, so I brew mine pretty cool and for 2 minutes max so I get a very cocoy drink.
If you feel like it, you may want to try different grinds and recipes. Personally I feel like it’s worth it.
Sounds like you are skipping the “cast judgement” step
Coffee is highly personal, I agree. The comment above reminded me of a friend though, a very woke social worker, highly anti exploitation and pro environment. You get the point. She did hand filter, but like… Putting 5 spoons in and then just splashing boiling water over it so that the water hardly even touched the coffee because it just whooshed to the sides. Her coffee was… Brownish water. It was so light, if it were driving in the US, it wouldn’t have been racially profiled. She liked it that way and while it was not drinkable for me, it’s fine, she likes it, but it was just such a waste. It took a lot of careful phrasing to point it out to her that, you do you, but you are wasting coffee (which is, after all, ethically, socially and environmentally quite complicated to say the least) and you could get the same strength/result with like 1/5th of the coffee you use. She is still rather grateful for your coffee needs… more love and has now diverted to more conscious coffee making.
I won’t go into details, but let’s put it this way: I think what I’m doing will offend french press owners more than a paper filter.
So I have an Aeropress (highly recommend because of cleaning ease) but I couldn’t even wait more than a couple minutes because it will start draining through the filter almost immediately. If I waited four minutes there would be nothing to even press… Have I been doing this wrong somehow the whole time?
Pro tip - put the aeropress upside down and fill it up from the bottom, then screw on the filter, flip and into the cup it goes.
Oh man, I feel stupid now…
Don’t be, the way you do it is the official way, I think? The upside down one is the way people have discovered to give the brewing process more flexibility.
You’re supposed to add the coffee and water, then place the plunger into the top of the cylinder to hold everything in, giving the coffee time to steep. Here’s a good example of how to use an Aeropress.
So that’s sort of where the confusion comes in. The aeropress comes with a stirring rod and recommends stirring before pressing. But if you stir it, more than half the liquid has drained out the filter before you can even get the plunger on.
I will try this next time.
I think it’s more about taste than strength? I was a skeptic until I started trying things. still prefer a quick and dirty pour over but this is my go-to french press method
French Press: for coffee drinkers who hate coffee
Elaborate?
They’re just being a coffee snob. A coffee enjoyer knows that good coffee can be made in many different ways, as long as you have good beans and a decent grinder. French press can make excellent coffee, even if it’s not my preferred method.
Snobs just enjoy proving that they’re better.
Anything is better than the vile brew produced by a coffee pod machine.
Anything?
And then there’s me, who just dumps some coffee grounds in a cup, adds boiled water, and stirs it to sink the solid matter to the bottom of the cup so it’s drinkable without being chewy.
All these fancy toys for making coffee are just extra things to clean. I’m too lazy for that.
Eh, coffee itself is apparently really high in cholesterol, and simple paper filters do a nice job getting rid of it. I had no idea, learned recently. French pressers suffer a similar fate, so drip all day for me.
I did not know that about the cholesterol, appreciated info!
I barely drink coffee anymore these days since caffeine pills are just so much easier, but I’ll keep it in mind for the rest of the bag of beans in my cupboard.
Also this probably explains how some vegans have such high cholesterol despite no animal products being consumed.
Yeah, I know I certainly wouldn’t have expected it. I stopped doing the French press because I found it gave me serious heartburn, where drip somehow does not. Caffeine pills seems like a much simpler solution, although I’ve really dialed it back to my one (double) cup in the morning and that’s it. And apparently two cups of coffee is a-ok.
Pour over gang unite! It’s so much easier, makes a better cup, AND it’s so much easier to clean. Leave it to a Frenchman to needlessly complicate a cup of Joe, then act like it’s the greatest thing since snails.
I’ve tried several methods of preparing coffee beans.
Pour over blew my mind with its smooth taste and flavor.
My default is espresso from a machine or a moka pot.
People who use drugs first thing in the morning are weird.
You casting judgement for something like this is not only weird but stupid.
Isn’t it the norm to use drugs first thing in the morning?
The weird thing is that it’s so normal to do drugs first thing in the morning that everyone who don’t are the weird ones.
I mean
broadly gestures at everything
![[AmandaPanda] How to Use a French Press](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ee32467b-73d1-47cf-8003-7da852c0877c.jpeg){kind=link}
