Pour Over, French Press, Drip Pot, etc. - What is the best way for you to brew?
The question above gives a clue to its answer - which is best for you? No one brewing method is superior to others, they’re merely different and will accentuate different characteristics of a given roasted coffee. So, a brew method might be best for you if you have a sense of what you want to get out o a specific coffee or coffee in general.
Pour Over v. French Press - The Extremes of Filter Coffee
With a proliferation of brewing methods these days, French press and pour over tend to represent opposite ends of a spectrum and are also fairly well known, so these two brew methods offer a good case study in the brew method accentuating different characteristics of a good coffee.
Understanding the differences is the start of customizing your coffee to your test and finding the best brew method for your tastes. We should say, the best way to answer this question is for you to try these methods with the same coffee to taste the difference, but this post can give you a sense of what to expect.
French Press - Body and Richness, Maybe One Dimensional
The most notable thing about a French press, other than its aesthetic appeal, is that it brews coffee using a full immersion. Your freshly ground coffee has complete contact with the brewing water for the entirety of the brewing process. Once its time to filter, a mix of gravity and a metal filter allow you to pour your cup and leave the grounds of coffee behind. The result is what you could call a very full extraction, with a strong showing from both soluble and insoluble compounds ending up in your cup (we’ll post soon on extraction and solubility to help make sense of these nerdy terms).
What that means is that a French press produces a very full bodied cup of coffee that can tend to accentuate one or two flavor notes. If full body and somewhat concentrated, rich character is what you enjoy, then a French press can really nail it. The trade off is that delicate, floral flavors tend to be muted when brewing with a French Press. Additionally, a coffee with a more complex flavor profile can become somewhat one dimensional when brewed with a French press.
Pour Over - Delicate and Potential for Complexity
Pour over dripper and filters come in a range of shapes and sizes, literally. Beyond that there are a range of dripper and filter materials as well as modifications that can be done to how the water interacts with the coffee. That said, the farthest end of the spectrum from the French press is likely a cone, paper filter pour over. It’s worth noting that the plastic Hario V60 is probably the greatest bang for your buck in the entire coffee world.
While there are pour over drippers that create full immersion brewing, most are not full immersion, meaning that the brew water is poured over the coffee grounds and is pulled down by gravity through the grounds as you pour. In this case, a considerable portion of your coffee is fully filtered and in your cup before you’ve even finished pouring.
This method, combined with the finer filtration of a paper filter, doesn’t extract as thoroughly and removes more insoluble coffee particles than a metal filter or a flat bottom filter, accentuating a coffee’s complexity and any delicate floral and fruit characteristics that coffee might have. Many who enjoy a pour over are after clarity - when multiple, distinct flavors are discernible simultaneously and as you sip.
The trade off is that your coffee won’t have as full a body when brewed as a pour over as compared to a French press. You also might have such a multidimensional coffee that you don’t experience it as intense or rich the way you would with a French press.
Anything in Between?
With these two brewing methods representing two ends of a spectrum, is there anything in between? Yes, in fact, there is even a spectrum within these two brewing methods. Let your French press sit and gently pour without using the plunger and you’ll have a slightly lighter body and likely more “clarity” than if you “press” and agitate the settled coffee. Use a full immersion pour over dripper, a no-bypass, or a flat bottom pour over and you’ll get more body and likely more intensity from fewer flavors. The world of coffee is so complex that you can even move about the spectrum just by changing filters with a single brewer. Beyond French press and pour over, brewing methods and their own individual characteristics abound - filter pots, the aero-press, various kinds of espresso extraction, and so on all exist.
The World of Coffee is So Complex…Which is What We Love!
Hopefully the above is insightful and allows you to begin assessing what kinds of coffees you like as well as how you want to go about brewing them. While the world of coffee can be a bit overwhelming, the variety and complexity of it is one thing we love as coffee roasters. Dial in a brew method and profile and have the same comforting cup every day, or play around with a wide range of single origins and experience complexity and variety in every sip, as if it were wine.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention, as biased as we are, that the quality of your coffee beans makes the biggest difference, even more than the brew method. Check out our consistent and reliable set of blends or try a few of our seasonal single origin coffees for an exercise in variety.
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