So I bought a French Press...

[vakkotaur]

OR:

Egad, are we turning into coffee snobs?

There is a Caribou Coffee kiosk at a local store, and I stop there often enough that I have their "perks" card (nothing to do with percolators) and a week or two ago it offered a 25% discount on Caribou merchandise. One item I had been considering, but was put off by the price, was a French Press. I'd heard such a thing was good for cold brew, which I was interested in. So I bought - and got a better deal than expected as it'd already been marked down some.

After trying it both hot and cold, jmaynard and I were sold on the system. The result is a very smooth, even creamy, brew that needs no sweetener and no creamer at all. It's wonderfully smooth and complex black. Jay even said it might have spoiled him for regular coffee the way that good beer has spoiled him for macrobrew lager.

Recently I had been looking into dietary changes based on biochemistry ("That stuff grandma said would make you fat? It makes you fat. Here's why...") and one thing was that ANY sweet - even artificial - taste would trigger an insulin release and insulin aids in decrease of blood sugar by triggering its conversion to fat. So I had been cutting out any sweeteners where I could, with rare exception. That meant I switched to coffee (with cream if anything) and tea (with lemon if anything). I'm not sure how much my example had any influence, but I'd been feeling fuller on less and dropped a few pounds with no real effort.

But while that might have generated some interest in having more tea, the French Press needed no dietary argument. The taste spoke for itself. How loudly? Loud enough that Jay bought a small press for at work, and a burr grinder now sits on our counter. The slow cooker that had been there is now stowed - the grinder will see much more use.

We also tried cold brew by another method, but between a non-ideal container and a limited filtering arrangement I utterly refuse to duplicate that experiment without serious modification. It was a heinous painus in the anus. I can see getting a big press for that, but the price is also big. Perhaps that might be our Christmas present to ourselves or something. We shall see. One interesting thing is that while the cold brew doesn't need cream, it stands up to the addition of Irish Cream. The Irish Cream is there alright, but the flavor of coffee is also there and not swamped.

I still use the Keurig as it's fast and every cup is "the first out of the pot." But it's obviously a trade-off for speed and I add cream.

Comments

[pndc.livejournal.com]

Does "French press" mean something different in American English? To me, it's a synonym for cafetière, a glass jug into which one adds grounds and hot water, plus a plunger with a mesh filter to filter out the grounds from the coffee. My last one was something like twenty euros, and I only paid that much because it was a distress purchase.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

You have the definition exactly right. This one listed for $29.99 and makes about three cups (allegedly five, but it depends on how one defines a cup as such. For me, that's about a mug and a half, which is about right, if made a bit on the strong side.

Heavy metal java jive

[tippydevil.livejournal.com]

Wife had one and loved it, not just for the flavor reasons you mentioned, but because she only needs a cup of coffee and she's good, and making entire drip coffee pot just too much.
For someone like the roommate, who drinks coffee by the quart, it is a frustratingly slow process that he attempted to hurry because the drip machine was down ...and broke the plunger, more specifically stripped the metal threaded rod out of the plastic plunger frame. So, it's back on the Christmas list.

Re: Heavy metal java jive

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Plastic frame? Ouch. Metal all the way (aside from the borosilicate glass pot itself) on this one.

Re: Heavy metal java jive

[tippydevil.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, we kinda went cheap (it can hardly be called "snob" by the time they have them at Wal-mart) because it was an experiment. The next one definitely worth the investment in solid construction. :)