Plastic Free French Coffee Press
February 10th, 2016Update: Found It
Secura Stainless Steel French Press Coffee Maker
$29.
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My wife just broke my Bodum French press, so I thought I’d upgrade to one of the nice double-wall stainless steel presses I’ve seen on Amazon. One problem: they almost all contain some plastic, usually somewhere on the plunger.
I can only find one double-wall stainless steel French press that contains no plastic: Frieling Brushed 18/10 Stainless Steel French Press.
Price: About a hundred bucks!?
Someone out in Cryptogon land must know of a plastic free double-wall French press for less. If you do, please let me know.
Funny thing about the coffee-making device we Anglo’s commonly refer as a “French” press.
While spending a week supporting Helen Patton and her foundation during D-Day events in Normandy last June, a similar situation occurred.
Here in the Borderlands, with five countries (incl. France) all within an hour or so, one simply buys the Bodum ™ replacement vessel and goes right in brewing.
Figured the same would be possible in France, but as I learned in Cherbourg one afternoon last year, the opposite is true.
Not only were the replacement glass vessels not available, but the very idea of a “French press” was utterly alien to every person we approached at several different retail shops large & small.
In other words, “French press” is a misnomer (likely via long-term product marketing), much like “French” fries falsely awarding the Tricolore credit for one of the most powerful culinary icons of French-speaking Belgium (Wallonia) : Frites (“fries”)
It’s one of those silly little conundrums floating about I’ll get around to answering definitively one of these days.
No matter what the real story turns out to be, the daily-use Bodum in our kitchen is now just a “coffee press”.
UPDATE :
Figured if it was worth burning a couple minutes sharing an anecdote, it was worth a couple more to make a rudimentary survey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_press
“Its French name is cafetière à piston, though French speakers also use genericized trademarks, notably Melior or Bodum.”
The term “cafetiere” — preferred by all our English friends — was familiar to French retailers, though none of the four stores we visited actually carried one.
Sadly, what they DID have in ludicrous variety were shiny automated “coffee machines”. Using the little pre-fab pouches, packets and plastic vessels of chemically-enhanced goop instead of actual coffee beans.
If we’d had the time to track down a culinary specialty store, I’ll wager they’d have what we needed. At a considerable markup, of course.
Ever try cold-brewing?
For iced coffees and other summer beverages containing coffee, I’ve had excellent results with my occasional experiments.
I first heard about cold brewing a couple of decades back, but when I read that it contains much less caffeine than conventionally brewed coffee, I decided to give it a pass.
I achieve a very smooth flavor (that many cold brewers seem to be seeking) by using a thermometer to get the water to around 96C before adding it to the freshly ground coffee. A burr grinder is also good. With a burr grinder, you avoid the dust and boulder syndrome that produces inferior coffee. I used to shake my blade grinder while it was running to try to get as even a grind as possible. Burr grinder—much better.