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.
I think the idea of using coarse grounds for the French press is mostly for filtering out the grounds with the steel mesh on the plunger. If you have a finer mesh, by all means, go for it.
I’ve also seen some of my fellow coffee lovers at work use filters wrapped around their press, or using an ultra-fine metal mesh on their air press. They’ll go for a finer grind, and it definitely helps the brew steep quicker.
Personally, if I’m using a glass press, I can usually tell the brew is done by jostling the pot and seeing if the grounds sink. In my metal one, it’s usually 5+ mins, and then it’ll jostle and test the resistance with the plunger to see if the grounds sank.
I concur that the built-in mesh filters in all but the most expensive french presses are crap.
I strain the brew out of my press through a fine mesh filter.
I’ve been doing this for several years. I kept the original not-very-fine strainer on my Bodum press, because anything finer would be too hard or slow to press even after several extra minutes’ wait for settling. So instead, I just transfer the coffee to a carafe after pressing, and post-filter the stuff with a paper filter.
It’s not ideal, but it turns out to be the best coffee I can make in multi-cup quantities with no more expensive apparatus than just the French press. It tastes far better than any routine with coarser grounds. It seems more efficient in grounds (and time spent) than pour-over. And although my aeropress can exceed this quality when loaded with fine grounds, it can’t make several cups at once.
I’ve been playing a lot with the V60 and aeropress the last month. Time to get the French press out for some fun.
fwiw, it sounds to me like your encore may have an issue. at 0 the burrs should start making interference noise and the grinder should be making espresso-range powder/dust.
I will try to re-calibrate my Encore, if I decide I want to get into espresso.
it wont ever be good for that and i wasn’t suggesting it
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