The art of the French press

Ever since I married a morning person, I've taken up drinking coffee. My husband loves Starbucks and got me hooked on a daily "Venti traditional." ("Traditional" = bold-flavored drip coffee; "Mild" and "Decaf" are also available, but who would want those?)

Starbucks makes excellent coffee. But as daily customers, we noticed a bit of variation in the quality. For instance, for about a month or two early this year, the coffee seemed overly bitter, even at several different stores. I wondered if a batch of beans had been roasted a little too long.
But overall, I was quite happy going to Starbucks every morning. At our local store, we became friends with the managers and the morning shift baristas. They often had our coffee ready for us before we reached the register. They would laugh at me when my pre-caffeinated brain would direct me to give them my car keys instead of my Starbucks card for payment.

However, our favorite local store is in a corporate office location, open only on weekdays. If you drink coffee, you know that you can't drink it only on weekdays. You've got to have it every day. So on the weekends, we frequented other stores in search of coffee.

Well, a few months ago we had a series of 4 bad experiences at these other Starbucks stores. We actually had the worst experience you can have with coffee: they gave us decaf instead of the real deal. I would realize this fact when about 4 hours after drinking the coffee, I felt like I needed to lie down and die as my head split open. Caffeine withdrawal makes for a miserable day. Once caffeine withdrawal is upon me, I can't recover from it that day. I have to sleep it off.

So I started thinking about making my own coffee at home. We had tried it before with an old drip coffee maker and burr grinder my husband owned, but we were not able to make coffee as good as Starbucks'. We had made about 20 pots, tweaking the variables on each pot, to no avail (but a good buzz though!) Our experience jived with what I had read in an Cook's review of automatic drip coffee makers: they don't make good coffee. Nothing to compete with coffee-house coffee.

However, I now had a new idea. Maybe I could try making French press coffee for myself in the morning. We had already heard that the French press method is the "best" way to make coffee. Starbucks managers Gary and Thomas had both given us French press to try when they were conducting their own coffee tastings.

So I headed down to my local Sur la Table and surveyed the many coffee-making options. I finally decided to buy 2 Bodum individual double-wall insulated stainless steel French press coffee makers. I know that the stainless steel double-wall insulated design does a great job maintaining the temperature of liquids. Plus, it doesn't break. The stainless model also had a silicone gasket seal around the mesh filter of the press. That seemed like a good idea for keeping the grounds out of the pressed coffee. I grabbed a pound of Caffe Verona beans from Starbucks and a quart of half and half from Trader Joe's, and headed home to experiment with my new toys.

Now I knew that it would be a bit of work to make the French press coffee. You have to heat the water in a pot or kettle. You have to grind the coffee to the right level of coarseness. (I planned to use an old model Braun burr grinder we already owned.) Then you add the water to the coffee, stir, wait about 4 minutes, and press.

I was shocked, however, that it took me half an hour to make 2 servings of French press coffee. Half an hour! I can make entire dinners in that amount of time or even less. Even worse, though -- making the coffee had generated an enormous mess. It looked like I had had a fight with the coffee grinder and lost. Cleanup took another 15 minutes.

The coffee, though, was really good. Not only did it taste good, it brought me to a new level of coffee high. Good stuff! It must have 10X more caffeine than the drip variety.

I still wasn't tasting all the flavor nuances I wanted to taste, though. I appreciate the caramel notes in particular, but they weren't coming through. So with each successive batch of coffee I made, I tweaked the variables here and there.

Along the way I certainly learned some lessons:

1. Our Braun grinder doesn't produce uniformly coarse grounds. The fine dust gets over-extracted in the French press, causing bitterness. Using a fine strainer to sift away the fine dust helps make rich coffee without bitterness. Of course, it makes even more of a mess and stains my white porcelain sink, but that's the part of the price I have to pay for my coffee.
2. It's true that adding a little salt to the coffee as it brews also helps prevent bitterness. It brings out the sweet caramel flavors as well.
3. I settled on 3 scoops of coffee beans to 10 ounces water, slightly more water than recommended.
4. After adding the water to the coffee, stir vigorously for around 20 seconds. The coffee will actually froth.
5. You must brew the coffee exactly the perfect amount of time: 4 minutes. At least 4 minutes: just 3 minutes yielded a weak and wimpy brew. No longer than 4 minutes, 30 seconds. Any longer and bitter flavors begin to dominate. So there is about a 30-second window for perfect coffee. It is therefore essential to start a timer right after adding the water to the coffee. Not after stirring.
6. It is also essential to wipe off any coffee grounds that may have stuck to the sides or the threads of the cup. Drinking grounds is bad. It is also helpful to insert the press with its silicone ring ever so carefully to make sure that the silicone pushes all the grounds down beneath it.
7. When the timer rings and it's time to press, gently swirl the cup around to break up any clumps of coffee that may have formed before slowing pressing all the way to the bottom of the cup.

The result of this tedious, time-consuming, error-prone procedure is the most delicious coffee I have ever had -- intense, rich, and full-bodied; sweet and full-flavored without bitterness.

My current favorite coffee bean is Trader Joe's Yemen Mocha Java. The chocolate flavors are undeniably delicious. It doesn't get any better than this!