Since the start of the 20th century, coffee drinkers have debated on how to prepare their morning cup. With a French Press or through a Pour Over?
In this guide, we’ll revisit this debate and compare two brewing methods to help you decide which brewing method fits your lifestyle.
Both contenders are manual brewing methods. Meaning, you’ll have to do a bit more than push a button or two to prepare your cup.
Despite that both are manual brewing methods, the French Press makes a very different cup from a pour over. Likewise, preparation for either is very different and might better suit certain needs over others.
Let’s take a closer look at both brewing methods.
The French Press: A Timeless Classic
People have been making pressed coffee since the mid-1800s. But the version we’re familiar with today was not released until 1958 when Faliero Bondanini patented his own design.
The French Press is a form of immersion brewing. This method means that you steep the coffee grounds in hot water for a certain amount of time to brew the coffee.
The beauty of this type of brewing, and more specifically with the French Press, is that it’s dead simple. As long as you have good coffee to brew, there’s very little that can come between you and a great final cup. 2007 World Barista Champion James Hoffmann likewise dubbed the French Press as the “most underrated method for brewing coffee” in his book.
To many of us, there’s a certain novelty in seeing how cafés or coffee professionals prepare a manual brew. Almost as if the brew process itself is a presentation. The French Press is not that. It is so common-place in modern households that anybody can brew with it. Because of that, it lets the coffee really speak for itself.
Pour Over: A Modern Revival
In 1908, a German entrepreneur named Melitta Bentz, made the first pour over. In search of a cleaner cup, she created a double-filtration system by punching holes into a brass pot and by using a paper filter. She would then fill the pot with ground coffee, place it on top of her cup, and pour water. This became the basis for the pour over method we see in many cafés today.
Despite Bentz’s groundbreaking discovery, the pour over method only started to gain popularity in recent times. In fact, the French Press overtook the market with Faliero Bondanini’s version just a few decades after the pour over was invented.
Today, there are many kinds of pour over devices. Each made with their own tweaks and characteristics to help craft the perfect cup. So much so that pour over is usually the preferred method for many contestants in coffee competitions like the World Brewer’s Cup.
These days, we associate pour overs to be the ‘ideal cup’. There is as much of an art to it as there is a science. Many brewers especially like to geek out on extraction, perfecting the technique, and the other aspects of pour overs.
Contrast that with the coffee we know from a French Press and we have two very different approaches. One of simplicity and tradition. Whereas, the other one is a precise art.
Now the question remains, which method is right for you between these two long-standing contenders?
The Brewdown
All factors equal, this is how both methods fair:
Ease of Use
In the world of manual brewing, it does not get any easier than the French Press. Unlike a pour over, it is much more forgiving to adjustments in your brew.
Likewise, the French Press is also more forgiving if you don’t have a scale or a fancy kettle. Most of the time, you can get away with eyeballing your brews with a French Press. It does not require you to learn any special technique to make your coffee. Simply pour water into ground coffee, steep, and press.
In contrast, pour overs are sensitive to changes in every variable – grind size, pouring technique, type of filter, etc. There are also different kinds of pour over devices available that all behave differently from one another.
While pour overs can be done without a gooseneck kettle or a scale (that’s how they were made in the beginning), they lose in the consistency game. They’re not as easy to eyeball. You’ll also need the control from a gooseneck kettle more to make sure you’re pouring the right amount of water at a time. Otherwise, the brew you enjoyed today, might not taste as good tomorrow if all these factors are not measured.
Versatility
While there is a learning curve to go through with pour overs, the reward is the ability to completely tailor your coffee to your liking. This is why pour over fans can be very particular with their brew recipes.
On the other hand, the French Press is much more limited. Outside of brew time, grind size, agitation, and water temperature, you don’t have as much control over what flavors you want to highlight in a coffee compared to pour overs.
If you like your coffee over ice, the French Press can make small batches of cold brew. However, the downside to this will be that your coffee will taste completely different to how it does when it’s brewed with hot water. With pour overs, there are recipes that are meant to go with ice so that the coffee won’t taste completely different to when it’s only brewed with hot water.
Price
Since the French Press does not need extra equipment, it is the cheaper option between the two. In contrast, you’ll need to invest to have a working pour over setup. Assuming you already have a decent grinder, you’ll need the ff. equipment for pour overs:
Taste
Before diving deeper into taste differences, let’s make something clear. A good brew always starts with good beans. Mind-blowing, right? With so many ways to make coffee now, it’s easy to get trapped into thinking “which brew method makes the best coffee?”.
The better question you should be asking yourself is “which brewing method best suits me and my taste preferences?”. A fancy brewing device is not a substitute for bad coffee. To paraphrase 2007 World Barista Champion, James Hoffmann:
“You can get every aspect of your brew right and have immaculate technique. But even with all of these, if you start with bad coffee, your final cup will just be perfectly bad.”
Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about taste.
Pour Over
Because a pour over filters out the oil and sediment from the coffee, you end with a light and clean-tasting cup.
Depending on your technique, you can further highlight certain aspects of your coffee – in terms of actual flavor notes in the coffee, or in terms of extraction phase (acidity, sweetness, mouthfeel).
This control over all aspects of the brew is why pour over fans enjoy this method with light to medium roasts. So they can really zero in on what they want to taste. This doesn’t mean that pour overs can’t be enjoyed with darker roasts. They certainly can.
French Press
With a French Press, your coffee will not go through a filter. Because of this, there is always a tendency for a bit of sediment to retain. The final cup will usually be rich and heavy.
Now, just because a French Press won’t let you have the same amount of control over flavor notes does not mean it inherently produces an inferior brew to a pour over. Because no technique is involved, you’re getting an unbiased reading of how the coffee tastes. It’s for this reason coffee graders and roasters do cuppings to evaluate coffee instead of evaluating through a pour over or other brew methods.
Buying Recommendations
In reality, you can’t go wrong with either brew method. Better still if you can have both.
I personally prefer pour overs because I like the control and I enjoy the process. But whenever I get new beans, I always start with a French Press to orient myself with the coffee.
If you really have to pick one, here’s a quick gist to help choose between the two:
Go pour over if you:
- Want your coffee to taste a very specific way
- Enjoy the process
- Want to experiment with your brews
Go French Press if you:
- Don’t want to think too hard about brewing
- Don’t have the extra equipment for pour overs
- Want to taste the coffee for what it is
About the Author
Daniel Yu
Daniel is the head author of Project Barista. Since 2016, he discovered his passion for specialty coffee. His personal mission is to share everything he’s learned over the years.
