When I was in Belgium my hotel was situated next to a culinary shop. Every day I would pass by this shop on my way to the sites I would see that day and see all the snobbish kitchenware for sale inside, one day I had to look at what I would find inside. Being a tea freak, I quickly gravitated to the tea section of the store to see what items they had in stock. They had a selection of Bodum teakettles and some other tea apparatuses, all things that I already had in my pantry at home. I began noticing the coffee presses that were located beside the teakettles.

I had been enjoying great coffee in Europe and I thought that I would give coffee making a try at home. I remember hearing from one of my friends who is a huge coffee fan that pressed coffee is a really great way to enjoy coffee. So I decided to purchase a Bodum one cup press at this store. I choose this particular model because it was small and inexpensive. Since I was going to be packing this press in my suitcase I didn’t want a huge press and I wanted a relatively cheap press because I wasn’t sure how much I would enjoy coffee making so I didn’t want to make a big investment in something I might not use too much. I think it was around 19 Euro, I am sure you could find it for less money online.

So this small press fit the bill for what I had wanted, it was cheap and small. Before finally trying my new press when I got back home to the US I went to the local supermarket to buy some coffee beans. Apparently this is not an easy task! My press requires coarsely ground coffee so it doesn’t get stuck in the filter element of my press. Most coffee I found is sold either in whole beans or finely ground for drip coffee makers. Not personally owning a coffee grinder my only option was to grab a bag of whole bean coffee from one of the huge coffee tubs at the other end of the aisle and grind it in the store’s coffee grinder at a coarse setting. I checked if there were any remaining beans in the grinder than I poured my bag of coffee beans inside of the grinder. Apparently I had filled my bag with too many beans because the grinds began to overflow out of the bag resulting in a mess at the grinding station. After crudely cleaning the area with my hands I purchased the beans at the cash register than took them home.

Having all the elements now necessary to produce a cup of coffee I proceeded to put filtered water into my electric water kettle. I set the temperature on my kettle to just below boiling. While the water was heating up I placed three tablespoons of coffee grounds into the chamber of the coffee press. Once the water had reached my pre-programmed temperature I poured the water over the grounds until the water reached until about an inch of the top of the press beaker. I stirred the beans into the water to soak every ground with the water for about 30 seconds than I put on the press’ cap with the plunger fully raised and let the coffee sit for another three minutes. After the three minutes had elapsed I depressed the plunger slowly until it wouldn’t press down any further. I got out a coffee mug and poured the coffee I had just made.

The coffee came out a bit stronger than I would have liked but I simply needed to reduce the amount of time or the amount of grounds in the brewing process. The taste was much better though than coffee from a drip coffee maker, which usually tend to be somewhat bland in flavor. Another thing is that since this is a one-cup coffee maker you have to keep making new batches of coffee each time you want another cup. That criticism though is simply about the size of the device though, much larger ones are available in the market. Bottom line is that: this was an inexpensive and easy way to make a good cup of coffee. Though if you intend on making lots of coffee opt for a bigger press, as this pretty is far too small for making batches of coffee larger than one cup.