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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

French press for me. I buy my beans weekly from a local roaster and grind them at purchase.

I think I get mot of the upside of 100% fresh ground and pour-over with a bit less work. And I start cooking breakfast while the water boils, so no time lost.

At work, it's generic machine coffee. It doesn't taste great, but it keeps me going.

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I use a French Press abut 90% of the time. But the different methods are better at extracting certain kinds of flavors, so it really depends on what kind of coffee I'm using. For most coffee, the FP is great at extracting deep, earthy flavors (and the oil, obviously). So that's always my go-to coffee in the morning. For brighter, more citrus-y coffee (Intelligentsia brand excels at these lighter ones), I favor the pourover or Aeropress method to really highlight the fruity notes.

Hmmm, hadn't thought about the oil part of the equation - I just assumed the oils would pass through a filter as well as through the mesh on the press. I'll have to try pour-over sometime to see if I notice a difference. Generally I prefer a rich, chocolatey, nutty flavor - I guess that's what you describe as earthy?

Paper filters remove much more of the oils.

There's some evidence that grinding with an extremely high quality grinder will give better results for at least a few days than on-demand grind with a "bad" (i.e. less than few hundred dollar burr grinders, not to mention any blade grinder) grinder. This is one such "study" - https://prima-coffee.com/learn/article/grinder-basics/it-alw...

So, I think you're doing fine unless you want to spend more money :)

If you're brewing espresso, where the freshness of the grind is integral to the texture of the result, maybe this is less true. But anyone who's taking espresso seriously has a nice grinder anyway, I guess. (And on the opposite, I think French Press is very tolerant)

I don't buy the article's "study" whatsoever. From the pictures, they are testing the "flavor" using a drip method and don't control for the temperature. Using a drip method the ground should be fine. Fine is fine. .05mm coffee grains should mechanistically speaking soak through just as well as .08mm coffee grains.

It also strikes me as odd that each of the grinders was exactly consistent across an entire week for its flavor profile, and that further the exact consistency matches the cost(margin) of the grinders, and that even further the company who is doing this "study" happens to also be selling the grinders!

Low quality grinders will result in unequal sized grains of coffee. Given that the flavor of coffee is largely based on the degree of extraction, having an even sized grounds will improve the consistency of the produced coffee.

My point is that once you get to a fine enough granularity of coffee (as required per drip makers), you are likely getting the full extraction regardless at which point the quality of your grinder is moot.

Further, I have a hard time believing that inconsistent extractions is consistent with "better" flavor. It seems to me that the flavor would just be "different".

quality filters will work with unequal size grounds.

example: a chemex with a barrista warrior filter will work amazingly well with medium to coarse grinds - just as well with medium or coarse only.

however, if you still subscribe to 'it must be the same size grind' - grind it twice at the same setting, then use a Kruve filter. I like using a 1100 and 400 size filters in my kruve, to give me the three types of grind i prefer (under 400 for my espresso, between 1100 and 400 for drip, and above 1100 for pourover. - all with the same bean!

I feel like the least amount of work is to mix the coffee and water and let it sit a day and then add hot water to it. Cold brew concentrate meets Americano. I can either use a filter and a tap (see below) or mix it in a mason jar and pour the sludge through a filter later.

Keep this in the fridge - https://www.kitchenaid.com/countertop-appliances/coffee-prod...

and this on the counter - https://www.cuisinart.com/shopping/appliances/tea_kettles/cp...

French press also extracts and preserves all the oils present in coffee beans, whereas drip/chemex filters them out.

As a sidenote, french press is also great for brewing tea, but keep your coffee and tea presses separated.

You frame the difference in oils as a bad thing, but it's simply personal preference (I much prefer paper filtered coffee).

Only because parent mentioned preferring that, in other posts in this thread people mentioned preferring the opposite.

If you use a metal filter with the drip/chemex devices, you can get the volatile oils in your coffee as well. Same for the Aeropress (which does have a metal filter option as well).

I love my French press, but recently picked up a pour over pot with a metal filter. I find myself preferring pour over lately...

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