For more knowledge about specialty coffee, please pay attention to: Front Street Coffee (Frontsteet Coffee）
With the continuous spread of coffee culture, there are many types of coffee utensils and hand-brew techniques. Whether it is Pour over(V60), siphon pot or French press, FrontStreet Coffee believes that they all have their own characteristics. There is no need to belittle any of them. Their existence is reasonable and everyone loves them.
For example, some people like the sense of ritual of hand brewing and the laboratory taste of siphon coffee, while others like the convenience and simplicity of the French press. The secret of each coffee appliance is not only in its appearance and operation methods. Making coffee is more like a science. Each appliance has its own characteristics of extracting coffee, and it also requires us to find the most perfect proportion and best taste through constant arrangement and combination.
The French press is far more than just a "lazy coffee maker". Although it is easy to operate, it does not lose the complete flavor of a good cup of coffee. In fact, French press extraction is the brewing method closest to cupping. It can fully bring out the oil components, aroma, essence and other flavoring elements in coffee. It has a smooth, sweet and rich taste, making it a very good breakfast coffee choice.
Therefore, in this article, FrontStreet Coffee teaches you how to use a French press to make a great cup of coffee. Before making coffee, FrontStreet Coffee will first teach you about the use of the French press. French Press, also known as French Press in Chinese, is used to brew tea and froth milk. Today, FrontStreet Coffee is used to brew coffee!
Step 1: Prepare a good bag of coffee
You need to prepare some delicious coffee beans. Delicious coffee means not only the quality of the green coffee beans, but also freshness, such as fresh roasting. Please buy coffee beans that have been roasted for no more than 7 days, and drink them within 30 days of the tasting period. If you want to taste good, you have to grind them freshly. Pre-ground coffee powder may also be good, but it is not the best. For example, many customers want to grind the beans after buying them at FrontStreet Coffee. Although FrontStreet Coffee provides grinding services, FrontStreet Coffee recommends that you use freshly ground coffee because the aroma of the coffee after grinding will dissipate very quickly.
Step 2: Design your extraction plan
You can start with a powder-to-water ratio of 1:10. For example, for 2 people, 20g of coffee beans are paired with about 200g of water. The final ratio depends on your taste.
Step 3: Get your electronic scale ready
You may think that FrontStreet Coffee's method is a bit exaggerated, but even if it is a French press with a scale and a measuring spoon, it is still recommended to prepare an electronic scale, because coffee beans will change density due to many factors such as growing altitude and roasting method, and the quality and weight of each bean are different. In addition, if you make a very good cup of coffee and want to replicate the taste, you must record this ratio. On the contrary, if you make a bad cup of coffee, you will also know how to make adjustments based on the data.
Step 4: Use fresh filtered water
Use fresh, clean soft water. Do not use too hard water for extraction, and do not use unfiltered water. If the water itself is not good, it will be difficult to make good-tasting coffee.
When everyone is ready, you can follow the steps of FrontStreet Coffee to use the French Press!
1. Grind the coffee beans first, and then pour them into the French press. At this time, ignore what many people say about the grinding degree. Don’t grind it too coarsely. Just grind it to a medium grind, which is probably a little coarser than usual for hand brewing. FrontStreet Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) believes that it is best to grind coffee beans more evenly, because coffee powder with uneven thickness is extracted in water, and water will extract extremely fine powder faster than coarser powder. That is, the fine powder part has been over-extracted, while the normal thick part has not been fully extracted. The extracted coffee liquid will not taste good either.
2. The water temperature is recommended to be around 88°C, and the ratio of powder to water is recommended to be 1:10-1:13. After pouring the hot water, stir it with a spoon to fully integrate the coffee powder and water.
3. Close the lid of the French press, stop the filter at the highest point, and let it sit for 4 minutes.
4. Before pressing down the filter, you can open the lid and use a spoon to scoop out the foam and small debris floating on it, and then press the filter to the bottom.
5. After brewing, pour it out into other insulated containers immediately! Don't delay, as the coffee grounds are still brewing in there. Then pour it into a cup and enjoy slowly.
Another question is which beans are suitable for French press? Which beans taste better when brewed in a French press? Take the coffee beans from Front Street as an example. FrontStreet Coffee has coffee beans from more than 50 production areas on its bean list. Each coffee bean has its own characteristics. The most suitable coffee beans for French press are Front Street Indonesian Gold Mandheling, Front Street Brazilian Queen Manor and Front Street Strawberry Candy. These beans are very suitable for French press in terms of taste and flavor. You can buy them directly at the Front Street Taobao store or the Front Street Tmall flagship store.
FrontStreet Coffee recommends that when choosing coffee beans made with a French press, you can choose beans with a balanced, dark chocolate, and nutty flavor for brewing. As for beans with richer flavor levels, FrontStreet Coffee does not recommend it because the French press is soaked and extracted. If the beans have rich flavor levels, it is difficult to use a French press to express the rich layers of the beans.
Unlike Pour over(V60) coffee, which is affected by many factors such as temperature, Pour over(V60) technique, and circle speed, the French press is a coffee appliance that is very suitable for novices. You only need to control the brewing time, because the longer the soaking time, the more substances will be extracted from the coffee until it is saturated, or it will reach a state that is more difficult to extract, that is, the longer it is steeped, the stronger the taste.
Of course, the intensity of the flavor depends on the degree of grinding. There are only 30% soluble substances in coffee beans, of which only about 18% are ideal flavor substances. As the coffee powder is ground finer, the contact area between the coffee powder particles and water becomes larger, and the amount of flavor substances extracted will also increase. Therefore, Front Street recommends that the grinding degree used in the French press should be between 70% and 75% of the Chinese standard No. 20 screen.
However, some friends are not sure about the degree of grinding and want Front Street to grind the powder for them. Front Street also offers grinding services, but it should be noted that as the coffee beans are ground into powder, the flavor will quickly dissipate. In order to enjoy a more extreme coffee flavor, Front Street recommends buying whole beans and grinding them freshly.
In addition, when you taste French press and Pour over(V60) coffee at the same time, you will find that there is a layer of grease floating on the surface of the coffee brewed by the French press, while most Pour over(V60) methods that use filter paper will filter out most of the grease because of the filter paper. Therefore, compared with Pour over(V60) coffee, the taste of French press will be more mellow, but you will also get fine coffee grounds. Because of the design of the metal filter, there will still be "fish that slip through the net", so don't take it too seriously.
For more specialty coffee beans, please add Front Street Coffee on private WeChat (FrontStreet Coffee), WeChat ID:kaixinguoguo0925
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
