Automatic french press coffee brewer

posted Jul 18th 2007 11:41pm by Will O'Brien
filed under: misc hacks

[Christoph] sent in [fingers] rather interesting coffee hacking project. (Use the fish to translate it to English.) Using various scrounged parts, he’s constructed his own automated french press brewer. A good french press is a bit of an art, so I can understand the desire to automate one. The grind itself isn’t too critical, but brewing time can vary with the roast and grind of the bean. Personally, I’ve found that decent brew temperature is the real key to a good press. [Fingers] machine provides a way to do everything consistently, but the custom aluminum brew chamber might be effecting the brew temperature.

Read

Comments [15]

Reader Comments

Wow, that finger background is really freaking me out. And what’s with the picture of a pile of shit halfway through the hack? Weird germans…

Posted at 2:43 am on Jul 19th, 2007 by Rob A

Has a rube goldberg feel to it.

Also, I hope he wasn’t soldering with leaded solder…

Posted at 3:16 am on Jul 19th, 2007 by Wolf

Coffee and hacking stuff.

Man that’s good.

Posted at 10:19 am on Jul 19th, 2007 by strider_mt2k

Wow… must be a bitch to clean every morning…

Posted at 10:49 am on Jul 19th, 2007 by AustinMiniMan

This seems a little impractical… ;), but it got me thinking about great coffee, which led to thinking about buying/making an espresso machine.
yummy

Posted at 12:02 pm on Jul 19th, 2007 by shawn

goddammit! i was totally doing this! oh well, guess I can try to improve or something.

very cool.

I disagree with the poster. the grind *is* important — maybe not as important as when making espresso — and a coarse, *consistent* grind does affect the result. of course, as the poster pointed out (and I agree), brewing temperature/time is much more important.

Posted at 12:02 pm on Jul 19th, 2007 by carlton

That’s impressive. The only commercial version of this sort of thing I know of is the Clover http://cloverequipment.com/home/default.aspx
which costs $10,000.

Posted at 2:10 pm on Jul 19th, 2007 by JP

I disagree with the French Press method. It’s the best way to get good coffee if you’re going to insist on using heat directly against the bean. The downside to heat extraction is that the more heat you use the more crap (acid, bitterness…) comes out.

If you haven’t tried it, try cold brewing which makes coffee like the good folks of Latin America drink it. It’s called “essence of coffee”. By steeping a pound of coarse ground coffee in nine cups of water you end up with a concentrate that you refrigerate and you just mix with hot water to a one to four ratio (adjust for your taste).

It has WAY less acid and a much better taste.

Posted at 3:20 pm on Jul 19th, 2007 by Julian

Perhaps I should have said that the grind needed for a french press has loads of wiggle room. (As opposed to espresso, where the grind can be quite finicky)

Posted at 3:33 pm on Jul 19th, 2007 by Will OBrien

You should add and timer or an alarm clock.

If your are too much geek, meabe you could put an network card whit ‘wake on lan’ function. So you could start your machine anywhere :)

p.s
you are really good in welding

Posted at 4:33 pm on Jul 19th, 2007 by SubFire

julian,

I have to disagree with you, partly. yes, the heat extraction will take out some acid, but that’s not particularly a bad thing. coffee *is* acidic, no? the real problem is burning coffee or letting it sit in heat for too long of a time, or be immersed in the grounds for too long. properly using a french press removes all these issues which are inherent in drip pots.

in my years of making coffee with a french press, I have found one of the many things it is not, is bitter. I can get a very dark sumatran roast, drink it black and taste hardly any bitterness at all. in fact, I always saw that as an advantage of the press pot over a drip pot.

that being said, I’ve never tried a cold brew, so I can’t comment on whether or not that would actually taste *better* :)

Posted at 10:06 am on Jul 20th, 2007 by carlton

One word for perfect coffee
“Sanka”
Why waste your time with all this stuff? When all you need to do is open a jar and scoop out some freeze dried goodness into a hot cup of water. :-)

Posted at 3:25 pm on Jul 20th, 2007 by megadoodie

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fingers-welt.de%2Fgallerie%2Feigen%2Fmaschine%2Fkaffee2%2Fkaffee2.htm&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools
translated version

Posted at 9:23 pm on Jul 20th, 2007 by drew

somone stab megadoodie 8 or 9 times with a old, slightly rusted spoon and then give him a PROPER glass of coffee
4 shots of espresso, consistant filtered(through some windowscreen, its cheap, its dirty, it works) grounds with a tablespoon of sucrose and 2 ounces of milk of cow added
coffee making is an art and everyone has their own style but a good cup of coffee is a good cup of coffee, no matter how its made
me personally, i like a slightly acidic, insanely strong cup
heres somthing that you all might wanna try if you have a cheap espresso maker(wouldnt wanna risk a $1000 unit), double(or triple) brewed :D(run a full load of water with no grounds to clean the machine)
the other day i ended up with a glass that was the same consistancy as cough syrup, triple brewed, 50% half and half(if you all cant tell, im highly caffinated as im typing this) now off to go play a high energy game before bed…

Posted at 3:42 am on Jul 24th, 2007 by Frogz

guys plz tell me how to get things from online!!is thers is any hacking software ha!!!
plz guys…. tell me the name i’ll download from the net….
i hope u will

Posted at 12:20 am on Aug 2nd, 2007 by shiyam

Automatic french press coffee brewer

Recent Posts

Reader Comments

Leave a Reply

Hacks

Resources

RSS newsfeeds

Most commented on (30 days)

Recent comments