Using a French Press is one way to brew undoubtedly tasty coffee—if you actually know how to do it correctly.
By correctly, I mean knowing the exact temperature the water has to be, how long the coffee needs to brew, and how to clean the darn thing without dragging coffee grounds from one end of the countertop to the other.
The folks behind Rite Press want to make all of those activities easier for consumers. Billed as the “no mess French Press,” the product is a new iteration of the popular coffee brewer that regulates time and temperature. It also uses patented technology to make cleanup considerably easier.
Founder and CEO Sargam Patel used his background in physics and engineering to come up with the concept back in 2015, and Rite Press has been in development ever since. The basic process remains the same as a normal French Press: measure grounds, pour water, let the coffee brew, press down on plunger.
Where Rite Press sets itself apart is with the extra features that give the user a more sophisticated choice and the ability to brew with more precision.
To that end, the Rite Press comes with a removable thermometer you use to measure water temperature—a crucial factor for brewing good coffee—before you combine it with the grounds. Not sure how long to let the coffee brew after adding the water? Just watch the hourglass feature, which attaches to the press via magnet. Once the sand inside is drained, the coffee is ready.
One of the biggest complaints about the traditional French Press is the mess involved with cleaning it. Many have tried to solve this problem. However, all those solutions involve extra steps or utensils, which translates to extra money and/or time.
With Rite Press, pushing the plunger down forces the coffee grounds into a removable chamber at the bottom of the pot, which then twists off for easy disposal of the grounds. (I’m assuming this is where Patel’s physics background comes into play.) Since I haven’t personally tried the product yet, I can’t say how much this improves the cleanup process of a French Press. But at the very least, there are fewer pieces to scrub grounds from.
There’s clearly a market for this reinvention: Rite Press’ Kickstarter campaign launched in January 2018 with a $20,000 goal and currently has over $1 million in pledges, which places them atop the all-time rankings for coffee projects on Kickstarter. There are still two days left to back the project. For doing so, you’ll get an assortment of Rite Press products, which start shipping in March.
Sounds innovative but somewhat useless for those of us that already own a gooseneck kettle that shuts off automatically just at the right temperature for coffee (no need for a thermometer) and a simple timer to measure the brewing time (no need for the hourglass feature). A twist off bottom sounds useless as well… the problem with cleaning a french press was not so much washing the grinds out of the glass container but rather getting the grinds out of the mesh filter area where they get wedged in! The AeroPress is so darn easy to clean and it gives you both a paper or metal filter option… why would you use this over an AeroPress?
Did you know that a year later, backers have still not received the products they backed. We just received an update the other day from CEO Sargam Patel asking each backer for $30 more in order to receive our products as they have apparently ran out of money. Over 2 million raised on Kickstarter and Indiegogo and nothing to show for it? You should do an updated article and investigation of this scam artist.
Backers of this on Kickstarter have now recieved an update telling us that they need an additional 30.00 in order to ship these out to us. In the mean time they are going to sell these on their website, so they are using the backers money (who never recieved a product) to sell to new customers. Indegogo customers have not recieved product either. Buyer beware!
you might want to update this article to accurately reflect the scam/scandal that is Rite Press. Took over 3 million bucks from Kickstarter and 2 other indie gogo campaigns and has yet to deliver the rite press to its backers and ONLY A WEEK AGO he is now asking for more money.