How to Make Coffee Using A French Press

If you want an easy way to make coffee at home, it's hard to go wrong with a French press.

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Food & Wine / Ashley Rodriguez

Whether you received a French press as a homecoming gift, stocked up on one as an essential tool for your dorm room, or purchased one in an earnest attempt to make more coffee at home, most people have likely interacted with or even own a French press.

The French press is a staple, and is a generally affordable brewer whose international name helps dress up a deceptively simple technique: Pour hot water on top of ground coffee, let it sit, and press. There's nothing complicated about the ubiquitous brewer, but to truly make a great cup of coffee, you must understand how it brews and what to look out for — and that's not just limited to coffee (you can use it to strain tea leaves, make milk foam, and even strain stocks). Here's everything you need to know to get the most out of your French press for coffee and beyond.

Food & Wine / Ashley Rodriguez

When looking for a French press recipe, you might look for specifics, like the exact amount of coffee to use and the precise volume of water. Some recipes provide that, but some French press recipes (and any coffee recipe, for that matter) rely more on ratios — or the relationship between coffee and water — and it's helpful to know this ratio to scale up or down. Whether brewing a single cup for yourself or brewing for a crowd, the ratio will stay the same, but the amount you brew changes. This is also helpful when considering the size of your French press: If a recipe calls for 600 grams of water, but your French press can only hold 400, you can use a ratio to adjust the recipe.

Most brewing recipes recommend using one gram of coffee to 16 grams of water (you'll see this written out as a 1:16 ratio), but that's not a hard and fast rule. "Don't be afraid to experiment and try new recipes and make it your own," says Iaisha Munnerlyn, Educator and Coffee Consultant at Tradecraft Coffee & Tea. "I can't stress enough how important it is to make your coffee ritual yours; you enjoy the cup better."

Although it's helpful to start with a ratio, Munnerlyn cautions sticking to a specific one. "I think people often get stuck on recipes and ratios, so I love advice encouraging people to experiment and taste until they find something they like."

So feel free to experiment! Start with a 1:15 or 1:16 ratio (our recommended recipe uses a 1:15 ratio), and see what you think. If the coffee tastes too intense or overpowering, try a ratio with more water, like 1:17 or 1:18. If you want your coffee to pack more punch, try a more concentrated ratio.

Food & Wine / Ashley Rodriguez

For this recipe, we'll assume you're using a 1-liter French press, the most common size brewer. However, feel free to adjust the numbers using your preferred ratio of coffee to water.

You can use any French press you can find, but we tested some industry favorites and landed on the classic Bodum Chambord as our top pick for its simplicity and elegance. If you're looking to play with filtration (most French presses have a pretty standard mesh filter), look to the Espro line of presses, which we also love. Their plungers feature a much finer mesh filter meant to capture the soot and fine particles that can sometimes be left behind in a French press.

Bodum Chambord French Press

Amazon

Espro Press Everyday

Courtesy of Amazon

Grinding fresh grounds ensures you preserve all the aromas and flavors a bean offers. That's especially true for a French press, where some of the coffee's oils contribute positively to the mouthfeel but can muddle some flavors, so a precise burr grinder is essential versus a blade grinder where the particles can come out all different sizes. While we used a Fellow Ode grinder for this experiment (a grinder we also love and named on our list of best grinders), we like the Baratza Encore for its range of grind settings and affordability.

Baratza Encore Grinder

Amazon

One perk of a French press is that you don't need to be precise with how you pour. Many coffee recipes call for a gooseneck kettle to ensure precision, but you can use any hot water kettle for a French press. We found during our testing that we like the Zwilling Enfinigy for its cool touch feature and hold feature, so if you walk away from the kettle, it'll still be hot for up to 30 minutes.

Zwilling Enfinigy

If you zoom backward and look at the French press as a tool, it's a device that can filter things. Loose-leaf tea connoisseurs might be familiar with tea brewers that look very similar to French presses, so if you're looking to make it a multitasker, follow our steps for brewing tea on your French press. You can also use the brewer to filter stocks and broths, but be diligent about cleaning afterward if you go this route.

Another clever way to use a French press is to froth milk. Pushing the plunger up and down introduces air into the milk, which creates the foam you're used to seeing on your favorite drinks like lattes and cappuccinos. It takes some muscle, but you'll see the milk expand and get bubbly after a bit.

French press coffee is unique in that there's no paper filter — it's a full immersion method, and the plunger serves as the filter at the end of the brewing process. "No filter needed! All you need is hot water, a French press, and ground coffee," says Munnerlyn. "It also allows more room to control the end result because you can play around with different variables. i.e., grind settings and water temperature."

But one of the hiccups when brewing French press coffee is that most people leave their coffee in the French press after plunging, but, as Munnerlyn notes, "the longer you have the coffee steeping, the more bitter flavor notes you pull from the grounds." Pour your finished coffee into a decanter or directly into mugs.

Another thing to consider is the coffee you'd like to brew. Like grind settings, this is a matter of choice and preference, but one way to think about brewing generally is to think about flavor clarity and body on two ends of a spectrum. Brewers with heavy-duty filters (think the three-layer filters on the Chemex) offer more flavor clarity, so floral, light-roasted coffees tend to shine.

On the other hand, because of its metal filter, a French press allows oils and sediment to end up in your cup, making for a unique and pleasant body but might mask the flavor. "Bold and dark [roasted coffees] hold up so well in a French press," says Munnerlyn. "Get a bit fancy and add some milk. Perfection!"

Also — and we cannot emphasize this enough — clean your French press. If your coffee is ever tasting rancid or weird, it's likely because it hasn't been cleaned properly, and we'd estimate that most brewing problems with a French press are due to dirty filters and old oils.

Absolutely! Try it out! There's nothing inherent to a French press, meaning you have to use one type of grind setting, so give it a whirl and see what you think. One reason many recipes recommend using a coarser grind is the longer brew time of the French press. The longer coffee interacts with water, the more flavors you'll pull out of the grounds, but there's a limit when the flavors go from pleasant to bitter (that's why you see very fine grind settings for quick brew methods, like espresso, and medium ones for 2-3 minute brews, like a V60 or Chemex).

"Stronger" might be the wrong word. Technically, your coffee will get "stronger" because it'll pull more out of the coffee as it sits, but there's a sweet spot where you pull just the right mix of soluble components before bitterness starts to creep in. That's why you want to decant your coffee after brewing.

Most French presses can be cleaned by hand with soap and water and occasionally should be cleaned with a dedicated coffee cleaner to lift oils and water scale buildup. But more people need to take apart and clean each component of the plunger. There are three pieces to most plungers, which act as the filter for the French press. Because there's no paper filter, these pieces can easily get caked with oils and spent grounds. Make sure to take these pieces apart every few brews and soak them in a dedicated coffee cleaning solution.

Ashley Rodriguez has been a barista for almost ten years and has worked as a manager, trainer, and coffee writer. She's also written product reviews for websites like Serious Eats, The Kitchn, and Forbes, and she currently works as the managing editor for Fresh Cup, a coffee trade publication.