How to Use a French Press | Perfect Coffee

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My name is Mike Jones, and I'm a barista at Third Rail Coffee right by Washington Square Park in New York City. I'm going to teach you some basic coffee-making skills.

I'm going to show you how to make a French press. First there's a few things you're going to need. You're going to need some fresh coffee, preferably whole bean in which case you'll also need a grinder. You'll need a timer and then you'll also need the French press. So the first thing you're going to do is weigh out the beans. I like to use 25 grams of coffee for this size French press. Now if you don't have a scale, you can also just do three rounded scoops. So you can go ahead and grind this coffee. So this is ground medium coarse. You can play around with the grind setting after making it a couple of times. If it's tasting too bitter and too strong, you might be using a little bit too fine of a grind. And if it's a little bit watery and weak, then it might be too coarse. So you take the French press, and you're going to want to preheat it. You can either take water off a boil, have a nice water tower here. Then you let that sit for a while so it gets up to heat. Alright, so after the French press is preheated, you want to dry it out then add the grounds. Now again, I definitely recommend getting a scale, it just makes brewing coffee easier. But if you don't have one, you just want to use about 12 and a half ounces of water for this size. So I'm going to go ahead and add the water to the French press. The first amount I'm going to add is just enough to soak the grounds at the bottom of the press. So adding that in... so just that much water there. And then just stir it around to incorporate all the grounds with the water and start the timer. And you actually just let that sit there for 30 seconds. I would also recommend covering it when you're not doing anything to keep the heat intact. Alright, after 30 seconds you're going to add the rest of the water. Now this is either 12 and a half ounces or 400 grams of water. Once you've added all of that, just give it another gentle stir. And you put the plunger on and then you're going to let that sit until 3 and a half minutes. So after 3 and a half minutes you're going to press the plunger down. And this is another way you can tell if you've ground too coarse or too fine. If it goes without any resistance, it's going to be too coarse. And then if you have a really difficult time pressing down it's going to be too fine. Then I recommend decanting the French press before serving, because if you leave it sitting there it will actually keep extracting and end up tasting bitter. So once you've done that, you can just let it cool down and it's ready to serve.