dukas Senior Member Joined: 21 Oct 2012 Posts: 9 Location: Florida Expertise: Just starting
Posted Sun Oct 21, 2012, 9:13am Subject: Correct size French press
I routinely make between 8 and 12 ounces of coffee at a time. I use a 32-ounce Bodum press. The plunger barely reaches one-third of the way below the surface of the liquid. Would it be more efficient for me to use a 3-cup (12 ounce) press? I had read that they are not too good because the water cools off too much toward the end of the 4-minute cycle.
Posted Sun Oct 21, 2012, 11:35am Subject: Re: Correct size French press
Don't worry about temperature - it's not as critical (esp. for french press) as it seems, so long as you've got enough time at a high (>200°F) strike temperature.
Quick answer is yes - use a press pot that is set for your desired production amount.
French Press/Press Pot is really designed for brewing at capacity. At full capacity, the plunger should be fairly close to the thickness of the grounds at typical brew ratios. Under-producing in a Press Pot will do exactly what you are finding.
Think of the end of the plunger distance as "optimized" for the capacity of the press. Less coffee produced means less grounds in the bottom mixed with coffee, and the produced coffee is less of the fraction of volume of the stuff below the plunger and the stuff above the plunger. Think of the extreme - if you were to try and produce 4 oz of coffee at correct brew ratio, it's likely you wouldn't even be able to get the filter down to the surface of the brew slurry.
I ran into issues on press pot when trying to measure absorption - the press pot has a fixed amount of volume for the grounds. If you had a longer shaft, and have the plunger go all the way to the bottom, and you squeeze the grounds at the end, you will push a CRAPLOAD more fines through the mesh - which most press pots have enough of already. BTDT - LOL!
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
dukas Senior Member Joined: 21 Oct 2012 Posts: 9 Location: Florida Expertise: Just starting
Posted Mon Oct 22, 2012, 6:51am Subject: Re: Correct size French press
Update: I bought a 3-cupper, increased the amount of beans from three to four tablespoons, and now I get a good cup of coffee. Thank you for your advice.
Now I have to decide whether to trade in my Kenmore flat burr grinder for Capresso Infinity.
Posted Mon Oct 22, 2012, 8:42am Subject: Re: Correct size French press
Netpilosopher, I believe what you stated about french presses producing the best coffee when used near maximum capacity and have experienced that. By the way, I've learned to believe pretty much everything you write, with out experiencing it. I've learned so much. Thanks a lot.
What I still do not understand here though, is why. I think the Bodum press being used is the standard one with the coiled wire and wire mesh gasket interface with the glass beaker. When I use that press, I find that any excess liquid below the screen drains fairly easily. This is certainly not the case with my 1 lilire Espro press and it is easier to understand how using that press near maximum capacity affects the taste. I have a stainless steel Bodum travel press as well, with a silicone gasket and probably a finer filter than the standard; it behaves more like the Espro.
Does the difference in taste, when using a standard Bodum near capacity, have have anything to do with full load of coffee changing the filtering? Does it act a little like the coffee puck filtering of the AeroPress?
calblacksmith Moderator Joined: 25 Nov 2007 Posts: 5,679 Location: Riverside, Ca, U.S.A. Expertise: I live coffee
Espresso: ECM Veneziano A1 Grinder: Many different commercial Vac Pot: 40s era Silex Drip: Milita, Bunn&Curtis... Roaster: Cast iron pan, gas burner
Posted Mon Oct 22, 2012, 12:40pm Subject: Re: Correct size French press
The Aeropress works backwards to the way a French press works, the Aeropress is more like a vac pot in that respect where the water flows back through the grounds where as the French press pushes the grounds down and out of the way, trapping them at the bottom of the press so they can't float up and into your cup.
Don't mash the screen down hard on the FP and don't take ALL the liquid you can get, rather just press down until the grounds are confined at the bottom and leave the last half oz or more on a larger press to prevent most of the fines finding their way into the cup.
In real life, my name is Wayne P.
Feed the newbs, starve the trolls and above all enjoy what you drink!
Posted Mon Oct 22, 2012, 1:57pm Subject: Re: Correct size French press
calblacksmith is right - both the AeroPress and VacPot end up utilizing the grounds for filtration. In fact, the majority of filtration comes from the grounds binding together rather than the actual filtration barrier itself.
Take a Press Pot brew for example:
Make it normally - the result is fairly cloudy with fines.
Run the result through just a paper filter. The result is better, less cloudy but still some fines - but the filter trapped a few of the fines. Go ahead and drink it.
Then make another press pot, but this time take the whole slurry and pour it into a Chemex or pourover and allow it to draindown. When it finishes, you'll have coffee that's as clarified as a pourover, and in many respects will be indistinguishable in mouthfeel and taste. The combo of the filtration barrier allows the grounds to combine and act as a filter.
In fact, this combo of the grounds and the filter I think may exhibit particulate material properties called "segregation". Illy mentions that small particles migrate through the puck during espresso production - and they can see this with the flow rate through the puck (rapid at first, then slows) and if they have a special machine that can reverse flow, they see this same phenomenon each direction. The rapid flow is where the small particles migrate through the puck to create an additional filtration barrier (which also traps oils if the process of percolation is gravity driven).
You can see this if you vibrate a container of gravel - the small particles migrate to the bottom, the big stones migrate upwards.
In my CCD, there is a lot of time for the smaller particles to migrate to the bottom, and I suspect that's why the absorption of my CCD is more like 2.4 (rather than 1.7 like my BCM). If I allow my CCD to draindown until it stops dripping, I can scrape the top layers away and see the difference in particle size. When the Hario MMS is acting up, I get a low layer at the point of the filter that's basically fines and sludge - stuff that would have been in a press pot or floating around still settling.
There is no settled or packed grounds layer with a press pot since the filtering is top down, and the filter is large enough to pass 100micron particles - so the only way to reduce fines is allow it to settle before pressing. I find this works quite well and part of the reason I do a 6:00 steep now rather than 4:00 before. Most of the time the strength is at equilibrium anyway, but the extra 2 minutes helps to settle the fines low and reduce the chances they make it to the cup. My recipe here: "Re: Recipes that seem to work - for me."
Notice in the description I agitate and then submerge the grounds with the screen. Then, I press. After it has sat undisturbed from minute 1:30 to ~5:30.
------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Le café doit être noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, et doux comme l'amour.
"There is no right answer with coffee. There is only the elixir in your cup at the moment you partake."
"...I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;..." - Lord Kelvin RECIPES thread => http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/585708
Posted Mon Oct 22, 2012, 6:52pm Subject: Re: Correct size French press
Thank you both so much for those excellent explanations. I had never thought of the effect that gravity would have on locating the fines in the layer of filtering coffee.
Hmm, now I'm wondering how the combined filtering of 2 thinner layers of coffee on the vertical filters (5 to 12 times finer than a standard french press) operates in an Espro press. I guess I'll have to spend some time thinking about that.
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