How to plunge coffee

How do you do your coffee at home? How can you get a rich, quality brew without the barista at your local café?

Plunger Coffee

Plunger coffee is a method developed in the early 1990s that is easy to do at home and is also called French Press. A coffee plunger is smaller than a bottle of milk and simple to operate and clean. Anyone interested in coffee can learn to use this to make good coffee for themselves whenever they like.

What you’ll need

First, you’ll need freshly-roasted, coarse-ground coffee beans. Always use the beans within four weeks of their roast date or you’ll end up with stale beans and mediocre coffee. You’ll want to find a regular supply of good quality roasted beans, such as Black Market Roasters, from whom you can order online and have beans shipped to your door.

Procedure

Put one serve of coffee grinds into the plunger and add some hot water (about 92°C, a bit below boiling).
Stir the grinds and water a couple of times to ensure this paste is wet all the way through and let it breathe for half a minute. This pause is also called letting the coffee “bloom” and is important to developing the flavour of the brew.
Fill the rest of the plunger with hot water, for a ratio about 1:12 coffee grinds to water. Put the top of the plunger on but don’t press it down yet – it’s just a lid for now.
We recommend letting it brew for exactly four minutes before slowly pushing the plunger down through the coffee. This pushes all the grinds to the bottom, leaving a beautifully-brewed beverage in its wake. If the plunger more or less falls down on its own, use a finer grind next time; if it’s difficult to push it through the coffee, you need a coarser grind. It’s important to pour the coffee right away at this point; don’t let it sit or it will continue to steep and over-brew, ruining the flavour of the drink.

Plunger coffee is best consumed fresh. If you want to expand your coffee-making repertoire, you can learn how to use a real espresso machine. Learn from the best with Black Market Training: small classes run by experts who make coffee any and every way with professional skill.

With both theory and practice elements, you can develop the skills of a real barista. If you want to make and drink the best coffee, join our barista course today!