Last year, the fine folks over at the American Press headquarters sent me an American Press brewer to check out and review (I was upfront with them and let them know it would take me some time to evaluate the brewer).

When my package arrived, I was quite impressed with the contents of my rectangular brown box—the American Press is fancy looking. I have spent many months field testing this unique brewer and here are my thoughts:

Introduction- What is an American Press

The American Press is a relatively new brewer to the market. Funded by an Indiegogo campaign in early 2016, it takes an innovative approach to manual brewing. It is sleek and somewhat resembles a French press in look and outward brewing mechanics.

The American Press is different from the the French press because of what happens on the inside of the carafe. With a French press, when the coffee is finished brewing the coffee grounds are (mostly) filtered away from the brewed coffee by a mesh filter that is plunged downward through the coffee sludge.

In contrast, the American Press has a filter basket that holds the ground coffee separate from the brewing water. As the filter basket is pressed downward through hot water, the water is forced up through the filter basket creating a slightly pressurized extraction environment. The 100 micron filter basket keeps most of the muck out of the brewed coffee and doesn’t absorb the oils like a paper filtered coffee.

The result is a delicious cup of coffee and, due to the design, a fairly repeatable brewing process.

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