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Nowadays, if a discerning coffee lover wants to enjoy a standard pour-over coffee, they need to have multiple tools at home: a gooseneck kettle, a server, a dripper, filter paper, a thermometer... It's a big production to use, and it takes up space when not in use. Is it really impossible to enjoy a refined cup of coffee without a pour-over coffee set? If this question were posed to a barista at Front Street Coffee, they would immediately pull out a dust-covered French press.

The French press, also known as the French press pot or French Press, is the simplest and most convenient coffee brewing method. In fact, this pot appeared quite early, around the 1850s, when a craftsman and a merchant jointly obtained a patent for a "piston-filter coffee device": a metal container connected to a movable rod, with holes at the bottom of the rod, sandwiching a layer of flannel above and below. By manually pressing the rod to the bottom, the coffee grounds are isolated at the bottom of the pot, resulting in a relatively clean cup of coffee.

After continuous technological improvements, it wasn't until the late 1920s that a company in Milan, Italy, registered a patent for a modified version of the French press, and the French press as we know it today became well-known to the world.

However, in the past, the French press was mainly used not for brewing coffee, but for brewing tea. Typically, the filter mesh for tea is coarser, while that for coffee is finer. If you love coffee but have no time, or don't have an expensive coffee machine at home, the French press is a great method.

Coffee brewed with a French press has a heavier mouthfeel and fuller flavor. Front Street will use Huakui coffee beans as an example to explain how to brew delicious coffee with a French press. As usual, Front Street will first introduce the information behind this coffee bean.

Huakui CoffeeThe beans originate from the Buku Abel processing plant in the Hambela sub-region of the Guji region in Ethiopia, using the sun-dried processing method. In 2017, the Ethiopian DW Company sent sun-dried coffee beans from the Buku Abel processing plant to participate in that year's TOH competition, winning the championship in the sun-dried group of the TOH Ethiopia region with its rich strawberry cream flavor. A Beijing green bean merchant introduced the same batch of championship coffee beans into China. Because the rich strawberry cream flavor was so outstanding, they believed that with further improvements in post-harvest processing, it had the potential to become the next wildly popular coffee bean, so they named it "Huakui" with high hopes, meaning "the head of a hundred flowers."

In the same year, at the World Coffee Brewing Championship China regional competition, where almost all contestants used Geisha variety coffee beans, contestant Li Jianfei used the same batch of Huakui coffee beans and achieved an excellent second place. When people asked, they discovered it was Huakui coffee beans from Ethiopia, and Huakui coffee beans became famous.

Huakui coffee beans are named in the format "Huakui X.0", incrementing with the year: Huakui 2.0 in 2018, Huakui 3.0 in 2019, Huakui 4.0 in 2020, Huakui 5.0 in 2021. The arrival of 2022 means Huakui 6.0 is also coming soon. Front Street Coffee immediately reserved the batch, and we believe that in the near future, friends will be able to see Huakui Coffee 6.0 on Front Street Coffee's bean list.

Today, Front Street Coffee's bean list of nearly fifty coffee beans includes Huakui 5.0 and Small-Bean Huakui coffee beans. Front Street once discovered small-particle Huakui coffee beans in the Huakui coffee beans of 2018 and 2019. Through comparison, Front Street found that these small-particle Huakui coffee beans are the main source of Huakui coffee's aroma. In 2020, DW Company processed the small-particle Huakui coffee beans separately, creating the Small-Bean Huakui brand.

Front Street conducted a cupping comparison between Huakui 5.0 coffee beans and Small-Bean Huakui coffee beans and found that the flavor of Small-Bean Huakui coffee is closer to the strawberry cream flavor of the 2017 sun-dried championship batch; while the flavor of Huakui 5.0 leans more toward the citrus and berry notes and tea-like quality of the Guji region.

Since our own hands are never the hands of a barista, even if the Huakui coffee we drink in a café is delicious, we can never replicate that flavor at home. Compared to complex pouring and brewing, friends turn their eyes to the simplest brewing method: using a French press to brew Huakui coffee beans.

But here's the problem: how to brew it to avoid making the Huakui coffee bitter and astringent, and how to get a delicious cup of Huakui coffee?

Front Street Coffee French Press Brewing Tutorial

Brewing equipment: French press

Water temperature: 90°C

Coffee dose: 15 grams

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Grind size: 70% passing through a Chinese standard No. 20 sieve

First, pour an appropriate amount of hot water into the French press for thorough preheating, then pour out the hot water.

Add 15 grams of coffee grounds into the French press, and pour in 225 grams of 90°C hot water.

Pull the plunger to the highest position and cover with the lid, letting it steep for 4 minutes.

After 4 minutes, gently and slowly press the plunger down to one-quarter of the French press, pour out the coffee liquid, and enjoy a cup of coffee.

The Huakui coffee brewed by Front Street using the above parameters and steps delivers a mixed berry aroma on the first sip, with a distinct compound berry juice feel and a creamy mouthfeel, overall full and rich.

Huakui coffee beans are medium-light roasted beans. After the coffee flavor compounds come into contact with hot water, the rate of flavor extraction is slower, so Front Street recommends using a higher water temperature to accelerate the extraction of flavor compounds.

When producing coffee, Front Street generally uses a three-stage pouring method with a dripper for extraction. Since the hot water poured in contacts the coffee grounds for a shorter time before ultimately dripping down into the server, Front Street generally uses a grind size of 80% passing through a Chinese standard No. 20 sieve when brewing Huakui coffee, which is finer than what is used for a French press.

However, coffee brewed with a French press is always the result of steeping in hot water at a relatively high temperature for a longer time. To avoid over-extraction and a bitter taste, Front Street recommends using a coarser grind size, 70% passing through a Chinese standard No. 20 sieve. A coarser grind size means larger coffee particles, which reduces the overall contact area with hot water. If the grind is too fine, over-extraction is likely; if the grind is too coarse, under-extraction is likely, resulting in a watery taste and excessive acidity.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.