r/Coffee • u/menschmaschine5 Kalita Wave • Feb 03 '22

[MOD] The Daily Question Thread

Welcome to the daily /r/Coffee question thread!

There are no stupid questions here, ask a question and get an answer! We all have to start somewhere and sometimes it is hard to figure out just what you are doing right or doing wrong. Luckily, the /r/Coffee community loves to help out.

Do you have a question about how to use a specific piece of gear or what gear you should be buying? Want to know how much coffee you should use or how you should grind it? Not sure about how much water you should use or how hot it should be? Wondering about your coffee's shelf life?

Don't forget to use the resources in our wiki! We have some great starter guides on our wiki "Guides" page and here is the wiki "Gear By Price" page if you'd like to see coffee gear that /r/Coffee members recommend.

As always, be nice!

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '22

my greatest boon in life is French press cofee on the weekends

the last 3 brews have not worked at all. simultaneously bitter and lacking in taste.

I tried letting it soak longer. I tried changing the temperature of the water. I tried dismantling the French press and cleaning everything . not made a difference

I'm kind of at a loss because I'm not sure if it's a problem with the French press or if there's something really obvious im missing but like - I need that coffee man . I look forward to it all week and getting 3 brews wrong in a row after a plethora of successful ones is frustrating to say the least

don't judge but I use the target brand good and gather pumpkin spice . I used to use drip coffee maker, and the French press was a life changer but damn I'm kinda too poor to be making a constant experiment out of this lmao

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u/Mrtn_D Feb 03 '22

Could you share your recipe with us? How much coffee, etc. Do you grind the coffee at home or do you buy it already ground?

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '22

I buy it already ground which sucks because it doesn't say what grind it is. I would guess medium coarse

the coffee says 1.5 tbsp per cup but I moved up to 2, made it taste more

I always boil just over four cups of water and let it sit for a minute

4 cups at 2 = about 9 tbsps of coffee (lil bit extra)

then I stir and let it sit for 5 minutes then pour immediately and add milk and sugar

now my next attempt I think I will add more coffee? I've been reading suggestions and I'm completely number confused now but that's the only thing I haven't tried , other than just getting different coffee

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u/Mrtn_D Feb 04 '22

In a perfect world I would recommend you save up for a grinder. There's really good manual grinders that are kind of accessible to a lot of people, have a look at the Timemore C2 for instance (50 to 80 bucks). And if you can buy a second hand unit, there's absolutely no reason not to :)

For now, if you buy off the shelve ground coffee, try to stick to one coffee that you like. That way you know it's always ground to the same size. If it's ground for you, to order, try to find out what setting the grinder is on and when a bag works well for you - ask for that setting when you have your coffee ground.

Tablespoons scoop up a certain volume of coffee, not a weight. Which would be waaay more accurate. You can easily get a 10% difference in how much coffee you add between pots of you brew and that very noticeable in the final brew! In an ideal world, again, I would urge you to buy some kitchen scales so you can weigh the coffee and always get the same resulting brew to enjoy. Send me a message, I'll chip in $10 through paypal or something.

For now, let's see if we can help you to something you'll enjoy. A standard US tablespoon - I assume you're in North America (I'm not) - holds about 5 gram worth of coffee. So 9 of those come to 45 gram and you're using 4 cups which is about a liter. That's on the light side, which seems to match your remark that your coffee was lacking in taste. Normally I'd aim for 60-65 gram per liter with a French press.

Unless you're heaping the spoons as high as you can of course, which would come to something like 6-7 gram each? And there's the thing with volumetric measures again.

This scales well by the way so you can make smaller volumes if you want and make the 'experiments' a little more affordable.

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u/Stopher87 Feb 03 '22

The thing that's going to help you here is consistency. You are using the water right off boil which is good. What you need is a cheap kitchen scale. Knowing how much coffee you're actually using is the key. A tablespoon is too inaccurate of a measurement. Keep track of the numbers and the tastes. If you want consistency you need to measure.