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How To Use a Cafetière: Pro Tips
You can’t go wrong with a Cafetiere.
A couple of little tweaks and you can take your morning plunge to the next level.
The classic cafetiere uses a mesh filter to brew a full bodied coffee and is a staple kitchen appliance for the vast majority of home coffee drinkers.
While new coffee shops now use Cafetiere on their filter menu. Checkout the main differences between filter and cafetière coffee.
Going by various other names depending on the area of the world you find yourself in the cafetiere, plunger or French press has a mysterious history.
The device was supposedly invented in France in the mid 19th Century but then didn’t get patented until nearly one hundred years later.
A few tweaks and modifications later, the cafetiere is one of the most widely used and best coffee filter machines in the world.
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My first experience using a cafetiere was long before I discovered speciality coffee and very little thought went into the brewing recipe other than lob a couple of spoonfuls of pre-ground coffee in, fill with water, wait a couple of minutes and plunge.
With most commercial coffee over roasted and bitter tasting it probably didn’t really matter how I made it anyway.
However after now trying to get as much out of each speciality coffee as I can, I have designed a recipe that produces a delicious cup of coffee.
So, here’s how to make coffee in a cafetiere;
How To Make a Cafetière
1. Preheat the French Press
Preheat your French press with hot water. This is a great habit to get into, the temperature of your coffee filter method is very important when making a great cup of coffee.
If the brewing water hits a cold French press the overall brew temperature will decrease resulting in an under-extracted coffee.
Keep the hot water inside the cafetiere for a minute or two, depending on whether you have a glass or stainless steel French press it may take a little longer to heat the jug.
2. Grind the coffee
Grind up those lovely beans and enjoy the wonderful aromas of freshly ground coffee.
Because a cafetière is an immersion brew method, which means the coffee is completely submerged in water and stays in contact until it is poured into a cup, you are aiming for a fairly coarse grind.
This is because the larger the surface area of the coffee the longer it takes to extract its flavours and because using a french press has a mesh filter finer grinds can slip through.
Usually on most grinders, especially burr grinders this means one of the higher numbers. If you use a blade grinder grind for less time than you usually would.
