[AmandaPanda] How to Use a French Press

Pour over gang unite! It's so much easier, makes a better cup, AND it's so much easier to clean. Leave it to a Frenchman to needlessly complicate a cup of Joe, then act like it's the greatest thing since snails.

No scale, no grinder, no kettle with adjustable temperature… tsk, tsk, tsk
- I see you found a space on top of the cabinets to cast aspersions on the fridge top squatter in the comic.
  Would make for an excellent hidden panel.

And then there's me, who just dumps some coffee grounds in a cup, adds boiled water, and stirs it to sink the solid matter to the bottom of the cup so it's drinkable without being chewy.
All these fancy toys for making coffee are just extra things to clean. I'm too lazy for that.
- Eh, coffee itself is apparently really high in cholesterol, and simple paper filters do a nice job getting rid of it. I had no idea, learned recently. French pressers suffer a similar fate, so drip all day for me.
  
  I did not know that about the cholesterol, appreciated info!
  I barely drink coffee anymore these days since caffeine pills are just so much easier, but I'll keep it in mind for the rest of the bag of beans in my cupboard.
  Also this probably explains how some vegans have such high cholesterol despite no animal products being consumed.

It's all bean water and the sanctimony people attach to any of it is weird.
It's also funny to make a comment about French presser users judging other coffee drinkers which inherently judges the french presser.
- It's like the peasant class making fun of untouchables
  
  ...
  It's like people who drink bean water making fun of other people who drink bean water, and attaching way too goddamn much to all of it.

Again we are talking about the coffee maker as if it's the most important part in the quality of your coffee. It's also how you spot someone pretending to know coffee. Far more important are the beans. After the beans comes your grinder and water quality.
A connaisseur can enjoy every style of coffee making but never bad beans. Industrial type of coffee is mostly on the bad side btw..
- My work only stocks Starbucks KCups in the break room. I used to not mind it because it was free. I got sick a few months ago and now all that I can taste is just charcoal when I drink Starbucks coffee. I switched so fast after that.

I have a French Press and I like the convenience of it. I can make my coffee even if the power is out and I don't need to buy filter cups.
- When the.. power is out? Where do you live where that's a concern and how do you heat your water without electricity?
  
  I boil the water using a kettle on a gas stove. While it is rare, power can still go out sometimes, perhaps once or twice a year. I can't go without coffee.

it's not smug if you're actually better than everyone else.

I really don't understand why people are so weird about coffee. And I don't mean "why are people so judgmental" I mean "why are people so weirdly defensive about it".
If you post a picture of a well done steak online people will verbally skin you alive.
People will travel to be able to go to some of the few restaurants with chefs that know how to prepare fugu without killing you.
People will pay hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars for certain alcoholic beverages.
And yet coffee is seen as this uniquely smug thing, even if you're pouring water into a $10 plastic funnel or mixing coffee grounds in a glass jar. Like, yeah, if you have $10,000 worth of equipment you're clearly a wealthy person with a hobby, but again, pour over and a French press is literally just a funnel and a jar respectively.
- Differences in matters of taste leads to disgust
- To be fair, consider the expansive global industry required to enjoy coffee. The supply chains for steak, fugu, and alcohol don't really compare. The fact that just about anyone in the global north can enjoy a coffee at any time of day for a few bucks really is a luxurious privilege.
  
  Same goes for chocolate.
  Both are more carbon intensive (by weight) than pork or chicken.
  
  The only part that really stands out for coffee is the farming of the raw material. Alcohol compares favourably if you buy local, but it's really common to buy spirits and wines from different continents that may be aged in casks from yet another continent, which isn't really any less involved than coffee.

That press can really handle the pressure. What's the estimated PSI on that 4th panel? Looks like half of the volume has been compressed. Supercritical french press!
- More impressed by that hand strength! Its takes a hand or two or a nuclear plant to compress a liquid!
- Brought to you by Los Alamos Coffee.
- Okay, so, I completed this impossible task. Now, how do I get coffee into my cup?

Aeropress users after reading this comic
- I have a good used car worth of money tied up in my espresso stuff just so I can judge harder.

I'd been using the cheapest drip coffee machine I could find for a few years. Got gifted a Keurig machine recently and it's nice, but I really couldn't care less about how good the coffee is cause it's a twice a month pick-me-up.

I've got the best way to make coffee. You take the absolute cheapest instant coffee you can find, and a bit of salt to make it palatable. My grandpa says they made it like that when he visited Vietnam, so it must be pretty fancy, right?
- Gotta be fancy if it's from overseas!

This is wrong. You need to steep in cold water for 24 hours.
- Hell yeah you do, but I just use a regular old mason jar with a lid for that.
- Simply install a €10.000 espresso machine and have coffee instantly

Moka pot supremacy gang rise up.

Sooo what I find funny is... all things considered, French Press isn't even that sophisticated; it doesn't involve adjusting the speed at which one pours the water, so it's a lot less technically demanding than using like a V60 or something... I think the last time I went to a coffee class the instructors were all scoffing at the French Press lol (including one of them not wanting to "waste" a really high-quality batch of coffee on a French Press)
Also James Hoffmann has an alternative technique for using a French Press that makes coffee that is less "muddy"... basically doing the same as usual, but after 4 minutes instead of plunging, try to us a spoon to remove all the foam, and then keep the coffee inside for another 5-10 min. Then pour out coffee without plunging
- There's Melita-style and Chemex pourovers which is less demanding on the pouring techniques.
  Also, a lot of people seem to use too fine of grind size for french press, which requires coarse grind.
- Pour like 3/4 full, stir, then cover with a coffee filter (that's the same size as the French press) before filling the rest of the way.
  It's similar to how a lot of japanese cooking tells you to scoop off the foam, or you can use coffee filters on top of your soup to catch the foam.
- And at the end of the day, all hot brewing methods are still inferior to the stupidest patient person.
  Cold brew is objectively better coffee, and literally just requires you to delay coffee satisfaction by like 15-20 hours.
  
  There is no objectivity in taste. Coffee drinking is a spectrum of preferences from flavor profiles delivered by growing, bean blending and roasting practices to acidity, particulate matter, strength, caffeine content, additives (milk/sugar/etc), and other subjectivity.
  I personally don't enjoy most cold brews, or cold coffee in general, as cold coffee tends to allow more fruity flavors come through, which I do not enjoy at all in my coffee experience.
  I however, would not turn down a cold brew if that's all that's available. I mean, hell, I'll drink a cup of black from a rundown diner that's brewed from folgers and been sitting on a hot plate for 30+ minutes. And if that's somebody's favorite cup of coffee, I'm not gonna judge them and tell them their coffee is inferior.
  
  I wonder if i can use fine powder to do it, sounds like something that might actually save me times in the morning

The thing I miss most about using my French press.

I put ground beans in, pour hot water on them and start pressing pretty much immediately. How freakin strong do you need your coffee to wait for 4 whole minutes?
- Coffee is a matter of taste. So no one should tell you that you're doing it wrong. Maybe it's just a preference.
  But "immediatly" is… pretty fast. I wonder if your grind is very fine or if you have very dark beans. I don't like coffee, so I brew mine pretty cool and for 2 minutes max so I get a very cocoy drink.
  If you feel like it, you may want to try different grinds and recipes. Personally I feel like it's worth it.
  
  Coffee is highly personal, I agree. The comment above reminded me of a friend though, a very woke social worker, highly anti exploitation and pro environment. You get the point. She did hand filter, but like... Putting 5 spoons in and then just splashing boiling water over it so that the water hardly even touched the coffee because it just whooshed to the sides. Her coffee was... Brownish water. It was so light, if it were driving in the US, it wouldn't have been racially profiled. She liked it that way and while it was not drinkable for me, it's fine, she likes it, but it was just such a waste. It took a lot of careful phrasing to point it out to her that, you do you, but you are wasting coffee (which is, after all, ethically, socially and environmentally quite complicated to say the least) and you could get the same strength/result with like 1/5th of the coffee you use. She is still rather grateful for your coffee needs... more love and has now diverted to more conscious coffee making.
  
  Sounds like you are skipping the "cast judgement" step
  
  I won't go into details, but let's put it this way: I think what I'm doing will offend french press owners more than a paper filter.
- I think it's more about taste than strength? I was a skeptic until I started trying things. still prefer a quick and dirty pour over but this is my go-to french press method
- So I have an Aeropress (highly recommend because of cleaning ease) but I couldn't even wait more than a couple minutes because it will start draining through the filter almost immediately. If I waited four minutes there would be nothing to even press... Have I been doing this wrong somehow the whole time?
  
  Pro tip - put the aeropress upside down and fill it up from the bottom, then screw on the filter, flip and into the cup it goes.
  
  You're supposed to add the coffee and water, then place the plunger into the top of the cylinder to hold everything in, giving the coffee time to steep. Here's a good example of how to use an Aeropress.
- What are you smoking

I'd recognize that break room anywhere.
- Pam, Stan, and Angela acting like one of her cats :D

People who use drugs first thing in the morning are weird.
- I mean
  broadly gestures at everything
- You casting judgement for something like this is not only weird but stupid.
- Isn't it the norm to use drugs first thing in the morning?
  
  The weird thing is that it's so normal to do drugs first thing in the morning that everyone who don't are the weird ones.

You don't want to stir it. Agitation increases bitterness. If it isn't mixing well, pour slower.
- I've been using the Stumptown method, which has you pour half the water, wait a minute, then there'll be a crust on top.. you want to break that crust with your spoon then give it a light stir. Then pour the other half of the water, wait til the 4 minute mark, press, and voila.
  If you don't stir in that crust, you'll have unevenly brewed grounds. If you're getting bitterness from stirring, try a coarser grind.
- That sounds like bs. Your slow pour is also agitating it
- Nice judgment location

I cast judgement on anyone using A disgusting Fr@nch press, you should use pour over.

Filtering your coffee through a paper filter removes the cafestol.
Cafestol makes coffee “bad” for you.
- If it's not bad for me what the fuck is the point?
- Cafestol is not really that well studied, and at least in rats it's an anticarcinogen.
  
  https://academic.oup.com/mend/article/21/7/1603/2738489?login=false

French Press: for coffee drinkers who hate coffee
- Anything is better than the vile brew produced by a coffee pod machine.
  https://media.giphy.com/media/TeDpSbeCLAPtu/giphy.gif
  
  Anything?
- Elaborate?
  
  They're just being a coffee snob. A coffee enjoyer knows that good coffee can be made in many different ways, as long as you have good beans and a decent grinder. French press can make excellent coffee, even if it's not my preferred method.
  Snobs just enjoy proving that they're better.