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January 22, 2008

Must be a metric cup ()

by fluffy at 7:18 PM
So, I went and bought a French press for coffee. The smallest reasonably-priced one I could find was a 3-cup model, which I figured was overkill for me most of the time but, hey, I guess when I have people over I can make multiple cups, right?

Well, I got it today, and it's a pretty wee thing. On the directions it refers to "each 4-ounce cup." I know that for hot drinks, "cup" usually means "cup full" and not "English cup" but, wow, 4 ounces? So I guess this is the perfect size for me after all!

Except I just made coffee in it and even though I filled it up all the way, the resulting "pot" didn't even fill up one 8-ounce coffee cup halfway. What the hell. Now I'm feeling cheated.

Comments

#10388 01/22/2008 10:32 pm
Man, that's some hardcore false advertising.

What's really sad is that a lot of the reviews basically say, "Yeah, it just made a tiny little bit of coffee, but five stars anyway because it tastes SO GOOD~"

Um, yeah, good coffee made in pretty much ANY French press is going to taste really good. That's why you rate the object based on its overall value, including actual capacity vs. stated capactiy.
#10390 01/23/2008 09:01 am
Yeah, Europeans generally drink very small cups of very strong coffee (thus espresso, long coffee, etc.). French press coffee is strong, but not as strong as espresso, right? I wouldn't call it false advertising, I'd call it not being aware of market differences.
-bill
#10392 01/23/2008 09:52 am
Well, the thing is that even if it DOES supposedly make 3 4-ounce cups (which would have been perfect for what I bought it for anyway), what came out was still way less than 12 ounces (it was more like 6). I think the coffee grounds ended up soaking/locking up much of the water.

(That last picture shows how much coffee I got, in a normal 8-ounce mug. It's not a giant mug - it's a tiny French press.)
#10394 01/23/2008 12:48 pm
okay. can't you, uh, press the grounds?
i'm planning on getting a real espresso machine to replace my not-really-an-espresso-machine that i have right now.
-bill
#10395 01/23/2008 01:41 pm
I did press the grounds, but there's only so much you can squeeze out of them. I may have used too many to begin with though, but still, it seems like I should have gotten more than half a dang cup.
#10400 01/27/2008 12:29 pm
So if I read your post correctly, you went out of your way to find the smallest press you could find, bought it, and are now complaining that's it's too small? I kid, of course. Perhaps these were the cups that they had in mind.
#10401 01/27/2008 01:15 pm
I went not very far out of my way to find a size of press which would satisfy a certain size (the smallest one larger than one cup) and found out it doesn't even do one cup.