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Edited on Thu Feb-22-07 07:55 PM by Chan790
As several people here have said, you want a course grind, probably the coarsest setting on your grinder. Add the grounds first and then pour almost-boiling (NOT boiling, almost boiling...around 190'F-200'F or 97'C-99'C) water over the top to the fill line for the amount of grounds used. Stir sparingly (you do have to stir otherwise the grounds on the top of the heap will not steep)..only enough to make sure all the grounds are wet.
Set a timer for 4 minutes, 3:45 if you like your coffee weaker, no more than 5 minutes AT MOST (at 5:15 your coffee will have over-steeped and be so bitter as to be pretty inedible). Plunge the plunger when the timer goes off. Expect mud at the bottom of the cup. It's really unavoidable unless you pre-filter your coffee prior to consumption. (I cannot recommend this, it entirely defeats the purpose of French pressing which is the get the purest cup of coffee possible from the bean. If you must filter...use a very-clean metal filter.)
Only the top 4/5 of the liquid is meant to be consumed. The last 1/5 is usually mostly sediment. (Much like some fine red wines, micro-batched cognac, and Chimay.) Pressed coffee has a life post-brewing of about 20 minutes. 25 if you decant it to a clean vessel.
99% of brewed coffee by volume is water. Use the best available water...it makes a difference. The number one reason pressed coffee tastes better at Peets, Starbucks, Seattle's Best or your local indie coffeehouse is because their water is filtered, usually triple-filtered. At home, I use Fiji^TM brand bottled water...Aquafina works too, even Dasani. Tap water doesn't. (Municipal water has chlorine, well water has dissolved mineral matter.) If you want a visual clue to how nasty tap water is...look at the inside of your tea kettle. Oh yeah, buy a new tea kettle unless you want to ruin your pure water. (Kidding...I do know people so hardcore that they buy a new kettle every 6 months. Actually you can wash a tea kettle with vinegar to remove mineral deposits. Chlorinated/Fluoridated muni water burns off the chemicals when boiled so a simple soapy wash will do the trick there.)
The number two reason is the freshness of the grounds...coffee begins to go stale as soon as it is exposed to air following roasting. Ground coffee goes stale exponentially faster...the more recent the grind the better the coffee. (even 30 minutes makes a huge difference) Stale grounds make stale coffee. That's why we grind to order for pressings.
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