Nothing separates the coffee from the water in a French press until you decide to. That is its strength: the grounds stay in contact throughout, so the result is heavy, sweet and forgiving of small errors. Most of the sediment people dislike comes from pressing hard, not from the method itself.
What you need
- 30g of coffee, ground coarse
- 500g of water, just off the boil
- A press warmed with hot water first
The method
- Add the ground coffee, and start the timer as you pour all the water in.
- Leave it four minutes. Do not stir.
- Break the crust with a spoon and stir gently, twice.
- Skim off the foam and floating grounds, and discard them.
- Rest the brew a further five minutes, uncovered, so the fines settle.
- Lower the plunger just to the surface, then pour slowly.
Why the wait
Those five minutes after skimming do the work the plunger would otherwise do badly. Pushing the mesh down through the bed stirs the fines back into suspension; letting them fall takes them out. Press to the bottom and you undo what you have just settled.
Adjusting
Bitter and drying means too fine a grind, or too long in the water. Coarsen the grind before you shorten the time. Thin and sharp means the opposite: go finer, and check the water was close to boiling when it went in.
Decant
Pour out everything you intend to drink as soon as it is ready. Coffee left sitting on the grounds keeps extracting, and the second cup will not taste like the first.