Have found a few threads where people have described anywhere between 1 full turn to 2 full turns, and am trying all options to dial in at these various grind settings and burning through a whole lot of coffee!

Can anyone help me out with a Lido 3 based French Press recipe that they love ?

ie:

1. Water - eg. 30 seconds off boil
2. Grind setting on Lido 3:
3. Brew time

My limited supply of coffee thanks you in advance!

I have kept trying out different approaches. The best I have found so far is :

20g Coffee
300g water just off boil
Grind on Lido 3 is 1 full rotation (so 16 marks)

Pour 100g of the water. Let bloom, then stir. Add rest of water.
Brew for total of 7 minutes

Mouthfeel was great, very rich. Very dark colour and shiny surface. Very balanced flavour - no sour or bitter notes and very full flavour.


Still hoping to hear any other approaches that work for everyone else.

I'm curious to see what others post as I will be grinding with a Lido3 shortly.

My answer would be: what ever works for you...

I'm currently doing french press with a pharos with a medium-ish grind. I seem to prefer 12.5g of coffee to about 400ml/g of water. Most here would probably find that watery/weak, but I like the flavour I get. I tend to switch coffees a lot between Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Sumatra Mandheling, Thailand Doi Chaang and various South Americans. All except the Sumatra (dark) are a medium roast.

I find I get a good enough brew to distinguish easily between the different coffees and taste most of the notes associated with a particular roast. I guess I just like my coffee weak.

For grind, I settled out at a level where my french press catches all the fines (the pharos creates more fines than the lido).

I'm probably not as particular as most here though.

Simon345 wrote:... Let bloom, then stir. Add rest of water ...

With FP - or any immersion method - a bloom phase isn't necessary (unlike pourover). One could just dump in all the water, possibly add a very short stir just to make sure all the coffee is in contact with water, and then go on to whatever is next.

However, I am guessing that your 100g/bloom phase will affect results as it will lower the temperature of initial extraction. (Artificial example: 100g water @ 98C + 20 g coffee @ 21C might give a slurry temp in the mid-80C's; lower if the FP wasn't pre-heated). Subsequently adding water will raise the temperature of further extraction. Rising temperature was a topic of a recent thread, albeit in an espresso context Article on controlled temperature incline/decline in espresso extraction-Rancilio XCelcius

Thanks, I think my step around bloom was too vague. I am simply pausing for maybe 10 seconds to stir, and then dumping the rest of the water in.

The more that I try my recipe the more I am :

A. Enjoying the result of the recipe, because it is really delicious. I am currently brewing with an Ethopian single origin and the berry sweetness, richness and body of the resulting brew is just amazing. No sour and no bitter, its just spot on.

B. Impressed at the grind consistency of the Lido. I am brewing for a full 7 minutes with water just off the boil. This would give any fines ample opportunity to get bitter and nasty and I just can't taste any evidence of this. To compare, I also had beans run through a Ditting on comparable grind size and there was a heap of noticeable bitterness using the same recipe.

Simon345 wrote:...

B. Impressed at the grind consistency of the Lido. I am brewing for a full 7 minutes with water just off the boil. This would give any fines ample opportunity to get bitter and nasty and I just can't taste any evidence of this. To compare, I also had beans run through a Ditting on comparable grind size and there was a heap of noticeable bitterness using the same recipe.

Well, that's interesting. My pharos should generate more fines, but I've not found any bitterness with the Yirgacheffe I normally brew. I also have not noticed any real difference between my normal brew of 3-4 minutes vs longer brews when I get distracted.

I've even done brews where I start with the normal cycle then pour everything into a metal bowl and pop it in the freezer for 1/2 hour before straining to use in ice coffee. Maybe I've got the tasters equivelant of a tin ear?

I use 23oz water and about 37-39g of beans. I have my Lido 3 set around a 10. I use the Hoffman method. 200F water, pour into the FP (I'm swirling the press while pouring to saturate the grinds), let sit for 4 minutes, then stir the grinds/break the crust, remove some of the scum (foam) up top, let sit for 4-5 minutes, and then pour. I don't actually plunge - he has an interesting explanation in his book why not to. I plunge just past the lip of the spout which means the screen is essentially acting as a filter. The majority of the grinds still stay at the bottom. All the coffees I tend to use in FP are medium roasted SOs. I aimed for medium grind for this method based on Hoffman's suggestion. But I tend to play around a bit with the grind setting depending on how the coffee is tasting as it ages post roast. I've tried coarser with this method (like 14) and it didn't come out balanced at all.