There’s a new kind of French Press in town. This one comes with some stunning features to make brewing gourmet coffee in artisan style easier than ever.
The Rite Press, a new French Press product launched on Kickstarter, comes with a thermometer, an hourglass, and it’s even a French Press with a removable bottom to make it easier than ever to clean out the coffee grounds. We’re going to take an in-depth look at the features this product offers and see how they compare to more traditional French Press products. Is it really the best French Press out there? You want to be sure if you’re going to spend over 100 dollars on their cheapest offering.
Why a French Press?
If you’re reading this article, you likely already know that you prefer a French Press, but for those of you who have never used one, I’ll give a short overview of the benefits of a French Press before diving into the features of the Rite Press. Many people believe that French Presses make the best cup of coffee. When brewing coffee using paper filters the filter actually removes a lot of the residual flavors and oils that are present in the coffee.
If you cook at all, you know that the oils are what gives food flavor. The grind size of coffee you use for French Presses is also coarser than in other brewing methods. This allows for the coffee grinds to not seep through the mesh. However, as there is no fine paper filter some small amount of coffee grinds will still be present in the coffee. This actually helps to give the coffee a natural well-bodied flavor that you simply won’t get from other styles of brewing.
Fully Insulated
The Rite Press features double walled insulation to ensure the coffee stays as warm as possible while brewing it or even while you’re on the go if you’re taking it to work with you. Rite advertises that their French Press will keep your coffee warm for hours due to the insulated walls.
The walls look to be around 1cm (0.4 inches) thick and are certainly more likely to be effective at conserving heat than a standard glass-walled French Press. This enables you to take your French Press with you rather than being stuck waiting for the coffee to finish brewing before leaving for work. The removable bottom fully complements this feature as you won’t have to worry about taking a big mess and clean-up project with you when you finally do arrive at the office.
Hourglass Timer
It’s easy to make sure your coffee has brewed for the perfect amount of time as there is a classy hourglass design built-in to the French Press that is fully rotatable. The hourglass feature differs between the standard designs and the ceramic design. On the standard Rite Press, the hourglass is contained with a small 2-dimensional plastic box stuck to the side of the French Press.
The plastic hourglass housing is fully rotatable and ensures easy and accurate timing for brewing your coffee. On the ceramic product, the hourglass is in a fully cylindrical design on the side opposite the handle. Rite also offers a Tea Kit which has a special thermometer and different colors of sand in the hourglasses for different types of Tea.
This can be extra useful as different types of tea need different amounts of time to brew and brew best at different temperatures. Please note that the timer will only be effective for brewing hot coffee and you will need to time it yourself for cold brewing.
Ceramic or Standard?
The Rite Press has two main products. The ceramic Rite Press, which is a higher quality, less portable version of the standard Rite Press. If you’re going to be mainly brewing your coffee at home and don’t anticipate taking it with you, the ceramic version is likely the one for you.
Taking the ceramic Rite Press on the go is not advisable specifically because of the hourglass design they went with. It’s a fully cylindrical design and protrudes quite far off of the shell of the Rite Press. It’s likely fragile and could break if you frequently lug it around. The Standard version, however, has a more compact hourglass that is less likely to be at risk of breaking when carrying it around. Both models are a French Press with a removable bottom to ensure that emptying the coffee grounds is as convenient as possible.
The ceramic presses are each 1 Liter in size and offer a higher quality more sleek model and come in 3 different matte colors: pink, white, and black. The price point will likely also be a point of concern. The standard model is expected to retail at $110 for the half liter and $145 for the one liter, whereas the ceramic model is expected to retail at $179.
True Quality
You might be surprised at how expensive the Rite Press is. If you’ve ever seen a normal French Press at a store you know you can buy a glass one for around $20, but similar to the cheapest coffee makers you are getting what you pay for. Your standard French Press is frustrating to use as frequently coffee grinds end up in your drink and after a while of using and cleaning the French Press the mesh will end up frayed and at an angle.
The Rite Press is the top of the line model of French Presses. It’s built to last for a long time and stand up to the abuse of daily use. The Rite Press is also the only French Press with a removable bottom that I’ve seen on the market. For coffee aficionados, there is no substitute if you want the best gourmet-tasting coffee, but also want the convenience of being able to brew it every day without hassle.
Tea Add-on
If you are a tea drinker, the Rite Press also offers a tea kit as an add-on. The tea kit comes with 3 additional hourglasses for timing your tea brew time for green teas, white teas, and black teas. Any true tea drinker knows that each type of tea leaf has a different optimal temperature and a different amount of time it should brew for.
The makers of the Rite Press are acutely aware of this fact and offer this add-on as a way to make that process as easy as possible. It also comes with a special thermometer that highlights the temperature range for each of the types of teas.