Bodum Chambord (glass press)

The archetypal glass French press: borosilicate beaker, chrome frame, mesh plunger. Good-looking, fully replaceable, and thermally hopeless unless you preheat it.

Roast	Grind	Coffee	Water	Time
light	coarse	14 g	200 ml	4:30
medium	coarse	14 g	200 ml	4:10
dark	coarse	13 g	200 ml	3:50

Per 200 ml cup. Makes 2–8 at a time.

What goes wrong

Brewing in a cold glass beaker: the temperature drops through the steep and it sours. Old oils left in the mesh assembly taste rancid in every brew after. Plunging at an angle, or against a chip, cracks the beaker.

Care schedule

1 task for this machine.

Deep-clean the press

Monthly

The plunger is three or four separate discs that trap grounds and oil between them. Rinsing the beaker does nothing about that, and the trapped oil is what makes an old press taste rancid.

What you need

Washing-up liquid, or a scoop of oxygenated cleaner for a soak. A bottle brush. A tea towel.

What goes wrong

Rinsing the beaker and never taking the plunger apart. Reassembling wet. Forcing a distorted mesh back into service and blaming the grinder for the sediment. Putting an insulated steel press through a dishwasher.

The procedure

Unscrew the plunger knob and take the assembly apart. The cross plate, the mesh screen and the spiral plate all come off as separate pieces.

5 more steps

The rest is in the app, with a reminder when it is next due.

Get the app