French presses are probably the most over-rated thing in the coffee world. Well after Starbucks.
A good coffee bean fresh ground into a good coffee maker that doesn’t have the classic warming pad beneath the coffee pot is great. We have a thermal carafe style pot.
With fresh ground dark roasted beans, you can reheat the coffee 4 hours later and it is better than any cup from a French press made from pre-ground coffee.
We have an OXO conical burr grinder and a Capresso 10 cup coffee maker. Even I can make really tasty coffee with this pairing.
So I wonder if this year later, with likely more time playing with coffee, the OP has some new takes?
Me, I am a French Press fan. Quick easy. Electric kettle set to 210, 36 to 40g of coffee, local coffee shops bought roasted locally, poured to the volume I know works by sight, go fill the dog bowl, come back and press down, and I’ve got my first big travel cup for getting ready and walking the dog, and my second for the drive to work. Not too fussy with exact time or exact volume.
My wife, more the coffee diva, does pour overs. 16g coffee to 240g water. References all the different notes of different beans.
Clearly different tastes from each. Not better or worse but different.
Philistine Keurig user here. For a long time, Melitta produced recyclable, vacuum-sealed, 12g K cups that had mesh instead of just a hole in the bottom. As a result, the coffee smelled fresh when you opened it, and there was more contact between the water and the coffee. I bought the dark roast version of these for years and years, and I thought it tasted great.
Unfortunately, they recently discontinued them, the bastards. I’ve been using other K cups, the darkest I can find, but they’re pretty meh. So now I’m reading this thread with more than a casual interest, and I will be figuring out some other way to get the coffee flavor I want…wish me luck.
We have a rather expensive espresso machine and burr grinder. Which are great for the morning coffee.
But if I just want a cuppa, and I have ground coffee, cone filter is plenty fine. I have a french press as well, but that’s more for sitting on the couch and relaxing.
And I do cold brew in the summer, and then make sugar syrup as well. Cold brew + sugar syrup + milk + ice = tasty coffee beverage.
We do not have a drip machine. When we would have guests, they get espresso-based drinks.
Other point. If you have hard water, clean your machine according to the manufacturer’s directions. You’ll get better tasting coffee and the machine will last longer.
BTW as long as you can boil water you can brew strong, tasty coffee— no additional equipment required, not even a press. Use good quality beans, coarsely ground.
BTW2 the top “deadliest coffee brands” appear to be 2-3x as strong as “normal” coffee, based on the information in that link.
We recently had to replace our coffee maker after a couple of decades w/ a couple of Brauns. When looking, we found it more challenging than we expected to find a simple drip maker. (Also, since our coffeemaker lives on the counter, my wife was concerned about looks.)
My wife did some research and ended up w/ the Moccamaster. IMO, the coffee is no better.worse than we got from the Brauns, or than I get from the Mr. Coffee at work.
I drink 2-3 cups of coffee every day - used to drink much more. Never understood folk who enthuse over various coffees.
These days I use a pour-over coffee maker, one of these $20 guys (though I have the other version with a silicone collar instead of whatever that material is.)
Before that, I did almost everything in a French press, and, after that, a Corelle percolator from the 70s(?)
My favorite of the bunch is the pour-over, which basically is like a manual drip coffee maker. I like it because it doesn’t use a lot of counter space, it’s easy to clean, and it consistently makes very good coffee. You don’t need a special fancy kettle to pour it from: I just use my regular one.
The percolator never made good coffee, even after reading up on all the tips and tricks of using it properly, and the French press was decent, but somehow not quite as “full” and flavorful as the pour-over.
Oh, and I like using my little Turkish cevze for Turkish coffee. That may actually be my absolute favorite coffee of the bunch and now that I got a burr grinder for Christmas that can evenly grind very fine grounds, it’s easy enough to get consistent results without pregrinding at the store.
as a kid I thought all coffee was bad. Probably because my parents used a percolator and robusta type coffee. Now most people drink Arabica coffee and no longer burn it with a percolator.
On a slight tangent, it’s just about impossible to get anything more than an extremely weak cup of joe out of a hotel room coffeemaker. My hack to get something drinkable is to use two of those sad little pouches–one in the drip compartment and one in the cup and let it steep for a few minutes. There’s a trend in some chains to have in-room Keurigs, but even then they tend to have off-market pods loaded with mediocre coffee.
I’ve tried all the hoopla, all the different methods and contraptions.
To me, the best taste comes from the simple little single cone dripper – I’ve had this type in many European hoity-toity restaurants. The things are widely available and very inexpensive; the super cheap ones from the dollar store work just about as well.
Yep, I love the basic pour over. I’m impatient, and an el cheapo plastic cone with a paper filter is quick and does great coffee. Oh, and takes up zero counter space, because I pour over into my cup, not a big carafe.
My wife has an aeropress, but she can wait for her coffee (I know, who ARE these people?)
So I use the same very-finely-ground beans she does. I love a rich, chocolatey dark roast… like Colectivo Dark Sumatra or my current favorite V E L O (with smokey notes of pipe tobacco and leather-bound books).