French press
coffee brewing device
A French press, also known as a cafetière, cafetière à piston, caffettiera a stantuffo, press pot, coffee press, or coffee plunger, is a coffee brewing device, although it can also be used for other tasks. As a method of coffee preparation based on steeping the coffee grounds for a few minutes in hot water, the French press is a very simple device which can deliver an excellent coffee taste. Since it is compact and portable, the French press is a popular choice for camping.
In 1812, Benjamin Thompson invented a drip-press coffee brewing device In 1852, Jacques-Victor Delforge and Henri-Otto Mayer patented a device in France.
Name
In English, the device is known in North America as a French press or coffee press; in Britain and Ireland as a cafetière, from the French for "coffee maker"; and in New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa as a coffee plunger (the coffee brewed in it is plunger coffee). It is known in French as a cafetière à piston or simply cafetière (also the usage in Dutch), though some speakers might also use genericized trademarks, such as Melior or Bodum. In Italian, it is known as a caffettiera a stantuffo; in German as a Pressstempelkanne, Stempelkanne ("stamp pot"), Stabfilterkanne, Kaffeepresse ("coffee press") or Bistrokanne.
Design history
Over the years, the French press has undergone several design modifications. The first coffee press, which may have been made in France, was the modern coffee press in its rudimentary form – a metal or cheesecloth screen fitted to a rod that users would press into a pot of hot water and coffee grounds. In 1852, two Frenchmen, a Paris metalsmith and a merchant, Henri-Otto Mayer and Jacques-Victor Delforge, patented a forerunner of the French press, that did not create a seal around the filter.
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This entry incorporates text from “French press” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.