I have been experimenting with brewing medium roasts in my french press.

Contrary to popular advice, I have found that grinding on my Baratza Encore’s grinder finest setting of “0” gets me a better brew than the traditional advice of settings 20 (middle) to 40 (coarsest).

The resulting grounds were somewhat smaller than supermarket ground granule size, eyeballing about 1/2 to 2/3 the size. Certainly nowhere near espresso-powder fine.

With the finer grounds, I brew for 3-4 minutes with my hot water at 195F/90.5C, the default for my Zojirushi hot water pot.

I have tried this with both a whole bean local roast, and a bag of nearly-expired supermarket house brand grounds that was on sale for $5.

The local roast yielded smooth taste with bright and pleasant fruity notes from a shorter brew of 3 minutes. The house brand, umm… the finer grind improved the taste.

I theorize that re-grinding the old house brand grounds exposed volatile flavor compounds that hadn’t evaporated or oxidized yet.

A 4 minute brew with the local roast was too long, and resulted in astringency.

4 minutes of brewing with the old house brand was only slightly astringent, but much better than the weak sauce at 3 minutes.

As with anything on the internet, YMMV.

p.s. I’m an impatient bastard and I’m not willing to wait 8 minutes for James Hoffman’s Ultimate French Press Technique, which I find doesn’t result in a better tasting brew anyway.