I don’t want to hijack your thread with a discussion on roasts, so I’ll just say: most people have been “trained” that dark roast means full-bodied and most flavorful. We associate that almost burned flavor with lots of body. It would take retraining your palate, but you might find that a medium roast has more flavor than a dark or french roast. The lighter roast lets more of the coffee character come through.
And if you do really like darker roasts, TJ’s isn’t going to be the most flavorful.
You are correct; I hope I did not confuse anyone.
Yeah, well, let me share one secret technique: put a couple of tablespoons of coffee right in a mug. Add the hot water, stir it all up for thirty seconds, then wait a few minutes for the coffee to brew and the solids to settle to the bottom. Sip carefully, and remember not to take a big swig at the finish…
This was going to be my recommendation. He’s also fun to watch.
I’ll also second the recommendation to try a lighter roast. The quality of the coffee matters more with a lighter roast, all dark roasts taste similar. And you’ll get more interesting flavors.
AKA, Cowboy Coffee.
The part I’m not understanding about French press, pour over, or cowboy coffee is how any of these processes produce hot coffee.
By the time it’s done steeping or filtering or whatever, you have tepid coffee at best. The perfect brew of the finest beans, once reduced to tepid, is suitable only for pouring down drains.
McDonald’s style coochie-fryingly-hot coffee is not good either. But tepid is useless.
And the increased mortality.
Summary, mortality rate:
filtered coffee < no coffee < unfiltered coffee
https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/article/27/18/1986/6125530
The solution is insulated containers. I do my pour over into an insulated cup, and the water goes in at about 202F, but by the time it’s done the cup is at the perfect drinking temperature. If I wanted the coffee a bit hotter, I could preheat the cup.
When I make tea, and pour the 202F water directly into the cup, I have to let it sit with the lid off for about 10 minutes before it is ready to drink.
In the past I’ve seen insulated French presses to avoid exactly this problem.
I’ve not found that to be a problem at all with the Melitta-style filter pour-over method, despite typically only making one cup at a time (dripping directly into an ordinary coffee mug). One cup will of course cool more quickly than a big pot of coffee, but it’s still plenty hot even after I add quite a bit of cream. You are perhaps imagining the drip process to take longer than it actually does. I haven’t timed it but one cup couldn’t take much more than about a minute to drip, and the water going in is close to boiling.
One advantage of French press is you can pour some of the hot kettle water into the mug while you wait for the coffee to brew, then spill it out before pouring the coffee into it, and avoid the whole cold mug thing.
A French press only steeps for 2-3 minutes and then you plunge and pour your coffee, and a single cup pour-over takes just about as long if you are standing over it (although I have a bad habit of walking away and forgetting about it). If I’m making more than 1-2 cups I have a Bodum double wall 8 cup maker that will keep coffee warm for a couple of hours.
Percolators tend to grossly overextract from the coffee, and those drip-brew “MR COFFEE” makers are basically e-waste that produces stale battery acid even before it is sitting for hours on end until it evaporates, leaving an indelible layer of burnt residue that spoils any brews.
Stranger
4 min and no plunging …
That was more like 10 minutes total, but an interesting method. My method: After pouing in the water on fresh grounds, I give a vigorous stir (plastic chopstick so not to damage the carafe), then insert the plunger to just below the top of the water, so all grounds are submerged. Set timer for 4 minutes, and when done, slowly push plunger all the way down and pour the coffee. And I drink my coffee unadulterated, black, like my soul.
I’ve actually done that. And the usual Boy Scout leader percolator campout coffee isn’t far off either, despite the strange little filters we’ve got these days, so I’m well versed in not drinking the crud at the bottom.
You know, you may be right about that, I’ll try some other coffees after this one runs out. But I do like that near-burnt flavor (the one Starbucks ruined in the 90s by making it 2x as burnt).
Day 2 (I’m not going to do this every day, but): I slowed it down even more, and let the initial pour of water sit while I walked the dog. The result was richer coffee with better flavor, though still not what I want.
It’s fun to experiment, anyway.
Are you using enough coffee?
I think so? It’s piled pretty high.
yeah … the recipe calls for:
… sounds about right - so you should be “good”
Same! We have a Baratza Encore grinder and a double-walled Bodum French press. Great coffee!
I use this double walled stainless steel press and it keeps the coffee piping hot.
Honey, half & half, and enjoy. I use twice as much coffee as I probably should.
I do find French Press to not be as piping hot as I’d like. But I pre-warm it with scalding hot water, as well as the mug that I’m serving into, and use a double-wall insulated press. That mostly solves the problem, but it’s definitely not hot enough to nurse all morning, it needs to be finished up in 10-15 mins at most. I also have a little $10 mug warmer that helps with that.