French press is a full-immersion brew with a coarse grind, which makes it one of the harder methods to over-extract by temperature.
The number
92 to 96 °C for most coffees. Boiling water off the boil for thirty seconds lands around there.
Why hot works here
Coarse grind means less surface area, so extraction is slower. Immersion is gentle — no pressure, no percolation. The four-minute contact is short relative to how coarse the grind is.
That combination means high temperature helps rather than harms.
When to go cooler
Dark roasts. 88 to 92 °C. They extract easily and turn ashy hot.
A very small brew in a cold press, where the thermal mass of the coffee is low relative to the glass — though the fix there is preheating, not cooling the water.
Preheat the press
A cold glass beaker drops the brew temperature by several degrees immediately. Rinse it with hot water first, and the brew stays where you put it.
The four-minute question
Four minutes is convention rather than law. Longer steeps at coarser grinds — eight or ten minutes — work well and are common in the “no-plunge” method.
What matters is that grind and time are matched. Long steep with a medium grind will over-extract.
Boiling water directly
Fine for most coffees, particularly light roasts. It is not the crime it is sometimes described as.
Last reviewed 8 August 2026