Project challenge: make something out of this?

Okay, so I was washing our french press (coffee press, whatever you want to call it) the other night and I thought, hmmm, "Surely this has homebrew gadget potential"

Only I am not clever enough to think of what. Maybe it does not, but I thought I would thrw it out there.

If you are not familiar, it is a glass carafe with a plunger in the lid. You place your coffee grounds in the glass then pour hot water in. Then you gradually press the plunger down and it pushes the grounds to the bottom. The plunger is an excellent filter/strainer capable of seperating out the finest of coffee grounds. It is comprised of first a metal frame (circle) with four spokes at the bottom (facing the grounds) then a very fine ss mesh, then a plastic frame with a silk (?) mesh, and finally a another metal disk with larger holes (maybe 1/8" diameter) and a spring/coil on the outside that presses the ss mesh (which curves up) against the walls oh the vessel.

On its own I suppose it is not very useful, least I think not, as the carafe is rather small (they come in different sizes but we are not talking gallons here), but maybe the plunger idea? Use the plunger concept in a lauter tun? I do not know.

Again, maybe it is not adaptable, or it is a redundant idea, but I thought I would throw it out there for all you tinkerers.

If you come up with anything let me know.

I don't know what you could do with the actual french press, but you could use the plunger concept to filter hops and hot break material from your boil kettle. If you made the bottom coil of an immersion chiller virtually the same size as the interior diameter of your kettle and put the chiller inside a paint strainer bag you could "press" the loose material to the bottom of the kettle and siphon off the cooled wort.

Hop tea. Oak tea. Hmmmmm.....

Hop tea. Oak tea. Hmmmmm.....

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Dude beat me to it. That's what I'd use it for.

Dude said:

Hop tea. Oak tea. Hmmmmm.....

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That's what I was thinking.

Some micro brew restaurants will infuse some fresh hops into their draft beer by pressing a smaller amount of beer through hop leaves and adding it to the glass.

Or...if you decide to make a late color or flavor addition to a secondary, could you steep some specialty grains and use this to press/extract the liquid and add?

Or...you could make coffee....

Hmm... I have a french press in my office that I haven't used for years... and I have a batch of red ale at the house that I'm thinking of oaking...

Thanks for the idea, Dude!

Some people will do a micro mash in them to make wort for starters

BierMuncher said:

Or...you could make coffee....

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That's like saying, "you could use that water cooler for water."

Now, as to the tea concept...

You mean put some hot water and hops or grains, wood chips and make a tea, then add to the fermenter? How would this actually work? You would have to let it cool yes? Would it be sanitary?

I like the brewpot chiller/plunger idea. Have to think about that some more.

My drip pot coffee maker justed crapped put on me this morning. I was looking at this http://www.allaboutbeer.com/features/235coffee.html

and I am thinking about seeing if I can salvage the heating parts and adapting them to my mlt... I am not very electronically (electrically yes, electronically, no) savy but who knows?

They featured a guest on one of the earlier episodes of Basic Brewing Radio who used his to make all grain starters. Basically, he used 1/4lb of grain and did a tiny mash in the french press. I'm not sure if it would be time well spent for all of us, but if you're a purist or just enjoy a touch of maltose in your coffee then by all means!