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Best Coffee Grinders for French Press

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Finding Your Coffee Grinder

French press coffee can be the best you can have at home when it’s done right. A French press soaks the coarse grinds for quite a long time, bringing out the nuance and rich flavor of any blend of coffee you choose to brew with.

However, using the right grinder is vital for getting that great taste. Freshly ground coffee is going to make a significant improvement over pre-ground coffee. Using the best coffee grinder for a French press can really elevate the taste of your coffee.

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This Veken coffee grinder is definitely one of the best choices when it comes to coffee grinders for a French Press. It is a blade grinder, with a high-strength blade that can easily and quickly crush up coffee for your French press.

French press coffee needs to be ground quite coarsely, so control is important. This coffee grinder has a compact shape which makes it portable but it also helps with control. As the vast majority of your beans are in contact with the blade at once, it should give a more consistent grind than other blade grinders.

The grinder also features a high capacity and some high quality touches like a stainless steel interior for easier cleaning. This one of the best choices if you’re looking for a blade grinder to make your coffee the best that you can get from a French press.

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This coffee grinder for a French press is on the more expensive side, but you get a higher quality for that price. This is a burr grinder, which is an entirely different way of grinding your beans. Your coffee is forced through gears that grind all of the beans into a uniform and consistent size. This means your resulting ground coffee is going to all be the exact same consistency.

With the Chefman electric burr grinder, you can make great coffee for a French press. On top of this though, it has some added features which really set it apart. It can be customized between 17 settings. This gives you more than enough room to experiment with other ways to brew or alter your French press recipe. Parts are detachable to make for easy cleaning, and there is a free brush included for polishing for hard to reach nooks and cranny.

This is one of the best French press coffee grinders if you’re serious about getting great tasting coffee.

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This Vremi electric coffee grinder is designed to be simple in both function and design. It is compact, easy to store, and can be operated with pretty much just a single touch.

This device looks a bit like a pod. The interior is just a container for the beans, and the blade itself. While simple and sleekly designed, this grinder can make great coffee for your French press. There are double stainless steel blades that can quickly and efficiently chop beans into the desired consistency for a French press.

This grinder also fits 100g of coffee, which is considerably more than most others on the market. This makes it great for you if you want to grind a lot of coffee without having to devote too much counter space to a big grinder.

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This is a French press blade grinder that is built to last. If you’re looking for a French press grinder that is going to have quite a shelf life, then this is a good choice.

This grinder is built to survive falls. This is important for a grinder since they can normally be a bit bulky and delicate. The last thing you want is damage to the blades from a single fall forcing you to get a replacement. This grinder avoids that.

This Kaffee grinds can make the coarse consistency you need for your French press quickly and easily. On top of this, it can grind other things like seeds and nuts.

This grinder has a fairly standard capacity and consistency for a blade grinder when it comes to how it performs. If you’re looking for something solid that is going to last a while, then the Kaffee grinder is a great choice to make your French press coffee.

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This is a burr grinder that is built to get you the best tasting coffee at a great price. You’re not going to find the features and add-ons of some of the other grinders on this list, but it can’t be beaten in quality or value.

This uses a burr system to grind which gives a great consistent grind for your French press coffee. This can be manually adjusted between 14 different settings so you can get your coffee just perfect for you. How does it do all this and stay at a decent price point? It is a hand grinder. Hand grinding isn’t much of a sacrifice for a French press since they’re ground quite coarse anyway. Hand grinding for espresso can take a while, but a French press shouldn’t slow you down too much.

Going for a hand grinder like this lets you get much higher quality burrs than you would find at this price point for an electric grinder. It is all about compromise though. This is great for traveling or just brewing up great French press coffee on a budget.

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The JavaPresse is pretty well known when it comes to hand grinders, it is about the most popular model out there. This is a great French press coffee grinder that strikes a compromise between quality and price. It comes in at a decent price point without skimping on the quality of your French press coffee or added features.

This is adjustable between 19 different points, so you should be able to fine-tune your grind settings until you find one that is perfect for the way you like your French press coffee. It uses burrs which gives you a guarantee of quality in what you’re drinking. On top of this, the whole thing is made from stainless steel so it is easy to disassemble and clean. This is a great way to grind your coffee for a French press.

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One advantage of a hand grinder is avoiding the loud crashing noises that come with an electric grinder and its high powered motor. This grinder doesn’t have that problem; it spins at a much lower volume by muffling itself.

Inside of the grinder, there is a steel blade set-up but one with a difference. It creates a vortex inside the unit, this pulls in beans to the blade. This is going to help you get a more consistent grind and with that a better-tasting cup of coffee. On top of this, it is a one-touch operation machine with a large capacity. You won’t have to grind beans multiple times a day, even if you drink a lot of coffee.

This is a great choice for your French press grinder if you’re looking for something quiet and efficient.

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This is a countertop blade grinder from Kaffee, it can make great French press coffee that brings out the subtle flavors of your beans.

This particular grinder is compact and built to be a small countertop device. It is barely bigger than the coffee compartment inside of it. Blade grinders can get loud, with a sharp object spinning that fast a bit of noise is to be expected. This is quite a bit quieter than most other blade grinders available.

The compact and sleek design of this coffee grinder helps it be a bit more economical with your beans. Few of them are going to miss the blade, so you can be confident you’re getting a consistent grind. This is perfect for your French press, which needs a coarse to medium grind.

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This manual hand grinder is specifically designed for use with a French press! This is another hand grinder with a ceramic burr. Like the others, this high-quality burr is going to make sure all of your grinds are of the same consistency. For a French press, this means delicious coffee without any grinds making their way through the filter.

This grinder is made from stainless steel, which will make cleaning relatively simple. It is also designed to fit in with a French Press. It is sleek and well built, so it isn’t going to look out of place in any kitchen.

If you’re looking for a simple grinder to help you get the most out of your French press coffee, then this grinder is a great choice for you.

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This French Press coffee grinder is something a bit different. This one is definitely focused on the aesthetic. It is a retro-styled coffee grinder, one that emphasizes the simplicity in grinding coffee with a novel look.

While the visuals are the main appeal here, this is a decent grinder too. It uses a burr inside to crush your beans to an even consistency. This makes consistent and well-ground coffee. While it might look like a throwback, this can grind beans just as well as a stylish modern device.

It might look complicated, but the grinding here is done with a simple crank the same as any other hand grinder. The grinds are deposited into a small drawer on the base of the grinder. This can make cleaning a bit of a hassle, but this is the trade-off for this grinder’s unique style. This is a great coffee grinder for your French press if you’re looking for something a bit different.

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This Classic Cuisine grinder is a relatively simple French press coffee grinder, but it is built with some convenient features. The container for the coffee has measurement markings on it. This makes it simple to only grind the amount that you need. Most grinders omit this, so you would need specialist scales that can accurately measure things at a low weight.

This grinder won’t work unless the safety lid is fully attached. This makes brewing coffee pretty simple and safe. It is a blade grinder, so you’ll have to perfect the timing if you want to get your coffee at just the right consistency for your French press. However, If you’re looking for a good grinder with great ease-of-use features, then this is a great one for you.

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Buying Guide & FAQ

Those are some of the coffee beans for a French press at the moment. However, you’ll need to find which one of those is exactly right for you. The perfect grinder is going to give you great coffee every time, but it will also be easy to use and suit the way you make coffee. This buying guide covers everything you need to know to find the right coffee grinder for you, and how to use it to make great coffee.

Beginner’s Guide to Coffee Grinders

Coffee grinders are a vital part of making your French press coffee at home taste a lot better. However, they can be intimidating at first, it can be difficult to know what you’re even looking for in a grinder. This is what you need to know:

What Do Coffee Grinders Do?

Coffee grinders essentially just mash up your beans! Although, a good coffee grinder goes further. The job of a coffee grinder is to make your coffee beans into a smaller consistency. The more control you have over the size of the resulting coffee, the better. Equally, having the coffee ground to a uniform size is vital. There are two main grinder types; blade and burr. Each grinds in a different way, but the end product is the same.

Why Does Grind Size Matter?

When you brew coffee, you soak the grounds in water for a specific period of time to allow flavors to dissolve into the water. This happens faster or slower depending on the type of grind you use. When you’re brewing with a French press, you need a coarse or medium-coarse grind as the water is in contact with the coffee for quite a while. The filter of your French press also can’t stop fine pieces of coffee getting in your cup, so it needs to be coarse to medium.

Why Does Consistency Matter?

Consistency in your ground coffee is to what degree your grounds are all the same size. This is important as smaller or larger coffee extracts flavors into the cup quicker or slower. If parts of your ground coffee are larger than others, they will take a different amount of time to dissolve Burr Grindersinto your coffee. With half of the coffee in your French press extracting twice as quick as the other, you’ll end up with a weird tasting cup. That’s why consistency is important for your French press coffee.

Blade Grinders

Blade grinders work in a similar way to a blender, they spin a sharp blade to crush things up. A coffee blade grinder uses a spinning blade to grind your coffee, the longer the blade runs for, the finer your coffee will be. These grinders can have some issues with consistency in the size of the coffee since beans won’t necessarily all hit the blade at an equal rate.

Burr grinders force each bit of coffee through a small gap with two ‘burrs’ or sharp gears. The beans are crushed between these burrs, resulting in ground coffee that is identical in consistency and grinds. These types give great control over the consistency of your ground coffee.

What Type of Grinder Do You Need For a French Press?

For a French press, you can use either a blade or a burr grinder but your results are going to vary.

If you’re using a blade grinder, you’ll need to only spin it for a short amount of time. The grind for a French press is quite coarse, even a medium-coarse grind isn’t as fine as the majority of other methods of brewing. So a short spin is all that is needed. This can make it tricky to get the right consistency, but a good blade grinder should manage. Most of those featured in this list have quite small containers for the coffee. This allows all the coffee to be hit by the blade, which should help you get a more consistent grind.

For a burr grinder, you need to set it to a coarse or medium-coarse grind. You will get uniform grinds that are perfect for use in your French press.

Either type of grinder is going to be fine for you to use. However, deciding which one really comes down to each individual model and which fits your other requirements. A blade grinder is a bit harder to get right, but it can be more convenient.

French Press Brewing Basics for Beginners

Brewing coffee in a French press can be one of the best methods available. A French press gives you a full-bodied coffee, it is perfect for bringing out even the subtlest tastes in your beans. When done correctly, it is a really simple way for you to make fantastic coffee.

Unfortunately, it does take a bit of practice and know-how! These are the basics of how brewing in a French press works.

Coffee Starts with Extraction

Brewing coffee is essentially just extracting flavor from your beans and giving that to your water! This is done by soaking the grounds, where flavors and oils dissolve from the coffee into the water. This gives it is strength and caffeine content. In terms of your French press coffee, seeping your grounds for a few minutes brings the flavor into the water, plunging them pushes the ground coffee down to keep it out of your cup and stop the extraction process.

Coffee and Water

Inside your French press, all you’re going to have is coffee and water. Getting this ratio right though can be difficult. A good starting point is a 1:15 ratio, adding 15 parts of water for every part of coffee. Following this, it is best to experiment and find a ratio that is exactly right for you.

Heating Things Up

With your water and coffee correctly portioned, the heat is the next thing you need to figure out. Hot water is going to extract flavor from coffee quickly, so make that time count. Pre-heat your French press before doing this to make sure it is at the right temperature for brewing to start with. You should use water that is at around 200 degrees. You can use a thermometer to get up to 200 degrees, or just take it off the boil around 30 seconds before you start brewing.

Steeping Time

The steeping time is how long you leave the water and coffee to sit for. Too long and your coffee will be over-extracted and bitter, too short will make it under-extracted. Your French press coffee is going to taste perfect in between these two. 4 minutes is a good starting point. Start at four minutes, then adjust this depending on your taste.

Coffee Grinding Basics for Beginners

 Those are the basics of how your French press works, but your coffee is only really as good as your grind. Grinding your coffee is key for getting a better taste out of your French press. This is what you need to know about the process:

  • Freshly Ground Coffee Tastes Better – Once coffee is ground, its flavor starts to degrade. Once it has been sat for more than a week a lot of that nuance and flavor is going to have eroded. Freshly ground coffee tastes great and considerably better than the stale alternative. Try to drink as fresh as possible for your French press coffee.

  • Grind Level – Grind level is important for brewing in a French press. Coffee is extracted quicker the finer it is ground, for a French press, you’ll need a slow extraction. Get your grind level right for the way that you’re brewing.

  • Burrs and Blades – Burr grinders on the whole get a more consistent grind and can be much easier to control. However, a blade grinder can work, you’ll just need to perfect the timing.

  • Storage – Once your coffee is ground, the sooner you drink it the better. If you don’t fancy grinding each time you have a cup though, freshly ground coffee can keep for around a week. Store it somewhere away from light, heat, and moisture.

Which Grind Level to Use for French Press Coffee?

Grinding coffee can really make your French press taste a lot better, but it has to be ground correctly. All of the grinders here can be adjusted for different methods of brewing coffee. If you want to get the most out of your French press coffee, you’ve got to get this right.

A coarse or medium-coarse grind of coffee is usually right for a French press. This is for a couple of reasons. First, your French Press’ filter can’t catch all of the smaller pieces of a finer grind. If you go too fine compared with the standard French press grind, you’ll end up with some grinds in your cup.

The second is the taste. A French press is typically brewed for a few minutes before plunging. If coffee is fine or medium, this period will result in over-extracted and bitter coffee.

This doesn’t mean you can’t experiment though. If you’re finding your coffee isn’t tasting as strong or flavorful as you’d like, try going a little finer. Of course, you shouldn’t go so fine that your French press can’t filter it out. However, experimenting with slightly finer grinds (to the medium-coarse level) in your French press might go well with the way you like your coffee to taste.

Expert French Press Brewing Tips

How to Make the Perfect French Press Coffee

Making the perfect French press coffee isn’t quite as simple as putting just water and grinds in a cup. Making the perfect French press coffee requires a bit of practice and the right method. This is how you can do it: 

  • Grind Your Beans – This is always the first step! Grind your beans to a coarse to medium coarse density. You can experiment with going finer, but coarse is the right starting point.
  • PreHeat – Pre-heat your French press and mug.
  • Weight Out Your Coffee – If you have scales, then this is going to be a lot easier! Place your French press on the scale then reset it to zero. Then put in your required weight of coffee. You can judge this from how much water you’ll be putting in. Anywhere from 1:16 coffee to water, to 1:15 coffee to water is a good starting point.
  • Boil Your Water – Boil your water and let it sit for thirty seconds to reach the right temperature. You’re then ready to start brewing.
  • Bloom – You’re going to be letting the water and coffee touch for four minutes, but not by pouring it all at once. With your timer started, you should pour in a little bit of coffee, just enough to cover the grounds. Let the coffee sit like this for thirty seconds, this is called blooming. It allows carbon dioxide to escape from the coffee. Give it a stir once it has bloomed.
  • Pour the Rest of Your Water – Fill your French Press at this point and leave it to steep.
  • Stir – Stir your coffee around one minute into steeping. By this time, all the grounds will have risen to the top. Stirring agitates the brew again.
  • Plunge – After four minutes have passed, you’re ready to stir and plunge your French press.
  • Pour – Decant the coffee out of your French press to stop the extraction.

This recipe will make great French press coffee, especially when you’ve ground your beans fresh! Experiment from here to find the adjustments that will make it perfect for you. Everyone’s taste is different so going a bit finer with the grind or using a slightly different ratio for water to coffee can make a big difference to the taste of your coffee.

Top 10 French Press Tips from Baristas

These are some of the top tips on how to get perfect French press coffee every time from trained baristas:

  1. Use a ScaleA scale allows you to exactly measure the amount of coffee you’re using to really perfect your recipe. This is much more effective than just judging by sight or with a spoon!

  2. Water Matters
    The water you use to brew does matter. Try to use filtered water where possible. If it tastes good on its own, it’ll brew better coffee.
  1. Coarse to Medium-Coarse
    Coarse is the starting point for French press coffee, but you can go a bit finer towards medium to get the flavor right. However, it has to stay on the coarser end to allow the filter to actually work.
  1. Pre-Heating
    Pre-heating is a great way to make sure your coffee tastes a bit better, it helps prevent the coffee’s taste being altered by sudden changes in temperature. Pre-heat your French press before brewing, and your cups prior to serving.
  1. Bloom
    Blooming your coffee before brewing is detailed in our guide to making French press coffee above. While it isn’t essential, it helps to make sure the brewing process goes as it should.
  1. Water Temperature
    Water that has just boiled isn’t perfect for making coffee. It needs to be somewhere around 195-200 degrees. This can be achieved by using a thermometer or letting your water cool for thirty seconds before brewing.
  1. Empty the French Press
    Once your coffee is done brewing, take it all out from the French press. If you’re drinking more than one cup, leaving the rest in the French press is going to make extraction continue. Be sure to remove all of your coffee, put it in a carafe or serving pot until you need it.
  1. Keep Things Clean
    This is pretty basic, but a French press needs to be washed after every use. Even if you’re using it twice in quick succession, it needs a proper wash.
  1.  Skim the Top
    Skimming the top of the French press after stirring will remove some of the sentiment and foam that has built up. This stuff can get through the filter, so it is important to get rid of it.
  1. Agitate The Coffee
    Stirring agitates the coffee and helps the extraction process. Doing this more than once can be beneficial. Experiment with stirring timings, stirring once after blooming, a little bit before plunging, and even in the middle of the brew to break up the crust of coffee that forms. 

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