French Press Coffee Maker 450ml with Soft Touch Heatproof Outer Sleeve

A 450 ml French press with the glass wrapped in a soft touch sleeve, so the heat stays in the coffee instead of in the hand carrying it. It brews enough for a big mug and a top-up, or a pot of loose leaf tea, and it looks like something you would leave standing on the counter.

No chrome cage. No plastic handle. No bare glass to wrap a tea towel around. Grounds in, water in, wait, press.

The brewing was never the problem

You already know how a press works, and four minutes and a plunger is not an idea that needed improving. What has never been fixed is everything around it. The usual cafetière is a naked glass beaker held in a chrome frame with a plastic handle bolted to one side. Every part of that description is a small daily annoyance. It goes cold while you are still on the first cup. The frame collects grounds in corners you cannot reach, and the handle is the bit most likely to work loose.

This one starts at the other end. The glass sits inside a soft touch sleeve that runs from just under the rim down and under the base, so there is nothing to hold on to because the whole body is the grip. Pick it up anywhere you like. The sleeve holds the warmth in and keeps it off your fingers, and the glass is no longer the part meeting the counter every time you set it down.

What is left is a plain matt cylinder, black or white, with a narrow window cut down one side and a small clear glass lip at the rim to pour from.

Where the cheap press gives itself away

The standard glass and chrome press cuts the same three corners, whatever it costs. The beaker is thin and it rings when you set it down. The mesh is a single loose disc that sits a millimetre clear of the wall, so the last inch of every pour is silt. And the whole thing is designed to be seen through, which sounds appealing until you have looked at cold, spent grounds in a glass cylinder on your worktop for a week.

Here the beaker is borosilicate glass and it never has to be handled bare. The plunger carries a fine steel mesh on a three spoke cross, and above it, seated in the neck of the carafe under the lid, is a second collar slotted the whole way round. Coffee leaves through the glass lip at the rim, so it gets past both of them on the way out. What lands in the cup is clean to the bottom.

It does loose leaf just as well

Tea asks more of a filter than coffee does. A whole leaf opens right out in hot water and a coarse strainer simply lets it through, which is why so much loose leaf ends up in a bag instead. Fill this one, give it a few minutes and press, and the leaves stay where they were put.

Nothing about it is powered either, so there is no cable, no base unit and nothing to plug in. A kettle and four minutes is the whole apparatus.

Deep Black or Arctic White. Both are matt, both are the same press underneath, and either one earns the space it takes next to the kettle.

Specifications

Capacity: 450 ml (0.45 L)

Weight: 12 oz (340 g)

Carafe: Borosilicate glass, inside a soft touch outer sleeve that covers it from just below the rim to under the base

Filter: High density stainless steel mesh disc on a three spoke holder, with a second slotted collar seated in the neck under the lid

Plunger: Polished steel rod with a flat press knob set into the lid

Pour: Clear glass lip at the rim

Window: A narrow vertical slot through the sleeve on one side, cut through to the glass

Brews: Ground coffee or loose leaf tea

Power: None. No batteries, no cable, no electricity

Colors: Deep Black, Arctic White

Package Includes

1x French Press Coffee Maker