Jenny Gomes

I love coffee. I love mason jars. I love things made in America. Maybe in that order. Enter the Portland Press by Bucket PDX, a mason jar French press, which makes damn good coffee in a mason jar, and, you guessed it, is made in the USA.

 

I remember thinking that coffee was gross. That was a really, really long time ago before the days of two jobs in college. When I had just one job and no major yet, I did not desire coffee and didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Many of you may remember days of past where you did not yet know the love affair that most fall into with this caffeinated, kind friend. And then, for most of us, some set of circumstances drives us to try and then, of course, learn to love, coffee. For me, it took the combo of late nights waitressing, early mornings at my fave fabric store job, and stacks of English major reading to skim-ahem, thoughtfully pour over- that led me to appreciate coffee.

 

If you don’t drink coffee, I hope you’ll stay with me for the rest of this post and I also hope you will take my sincere applaud- good for you. It is kinda lame to have any crutch at all but I don’t find it prohibitive enough to change. Crutch on I shall.

 

I also hope all my readers-coffee drinkers and abstainers alike- read on because this post is really about the amazing Portland Press and any tool that makes our lives better by helping us make more of it is a fine thing indeed. I would bet that this company will produce more equally smart devices in the future, so stay tuned.

 

The Portland Press is not a newspaper, so if you google it and come up with something other than this well-crafted implement, keep scrolling. It the invention of an outfit called Bucket PDX and this team of smarties realized that in the coffee making world, most options are made overseas, cheaply of plastic that ends up breaking and being irreparable. Try it; One winter I broke two glass carafes in about a month and went through the utter joke of trying to replace them. The coffee pot purchasing model is set up for you to buy more coffee pots. It is a racket, Wildflowers, and here’s a way out.

 

I’ll explain what a French press is before I get to the genius that is the Portland Press. A French press is a glass vessel in which an ardent coffee lover would put ground coffee. On top of that, one would pour almost boiling water. After steeping, the fitted lid and accompanying plunger are pushed down, thus pressing more goodness from the coffee. Coffee is poured and humans are thus happy, stated, and productive.

 

The problem with the French press (the model I owned before the Portland and in general) is that they are made of thin glass that breaks easily and needs to be replaced…how I do not know. I bet it involves buying a whole new damn press but I’m not going to find out. They also are made overseas. The one model I got seemed really pretty online but when I got it, the rose-gold metal turned out to look pretty cheap and the black handle looks more plastic than anything remotely French. And it was not an inexpensive model.

 

Here I should admit that after the made in China French press purchase, I caved and got my husband a Keurig style coffee maker for his birthday. I will also admit that they make decent, hot coffee very quickly. They are also silly expensive, the plastic cups of coffee are a racket in themselves (I haven’t found them for cheaper than 37 cents each, and usually see them for 50 cents or more) and which it is lame the little cups aren’t recyclable and are inherently super wasteful. I really am concerned with the idea of getting the flimsy plastic really hot and drinking the coffee that has been forced through it. Aren’t you not supposed to heat plastic containers in the microwave? I’m no scientist but it seems like a bad idea.

 

The Portland Press solves all of these concerns and then some. First and foremost: It makes delicious coffee. It cannot be argued; the quality of the coffee produced is awesome. I’m no food elitist, but hear me say: the coffee is really, really good when made in this press.

 

Next off, it takes 5-7 minutes for me to make 3+ measuring cups of coffee from start to finish, depending on how much water I have in the teapot. That is not instant, but it isn’t a long time either. I cannot argue that it isn’t as fast as a Keurig style machine but when I look at ours that is out of commission for some mysterious reason, a mere 13 months after purchase, I don’t care about the few extra minutes.
The lid is made from wood grown and logged in a sustainable, warm ‘n fuzzy fashion in America, and when I read the manual, it states in sort of an unnecessary and sweetly defeated way that one little tiny metal part had to be made in China-but in a factory that met their very high standards- I felt like I had to give those guys at Bucket a high five and a hug. Um, almost the WHOLE thing -wood lid, wool cozy (from happy, humanely raised Oregon sheep!), silicone gasket, (made in CA!) metal plunger (mostly made in the US!) and mason jar are made domestically. I feel like this is a homerun product in so many ways (no, this is not a sponsored post!) that one little metal part made overseas is a non-issue. Well done, Bucket PDX, well done.  

Here is the video that Bucket PDX has shared on their site about the Portland Press.

 

It is evident that the whole product, from concept to creation to sale, is totally well thought out. The best part, even better than the felted wool cozy (you better believe I’m going to test my new wool felting kit out in decorating it!) is that it all screws to a standard, buy in tons of places for about a dollar each, 3 cup mason jar. One of my very first blog posts is an ode to this jar because of its utility. It is the taller, wide mouth jar that is fairly new by mason jar standards, and ideal for canning asparagus spears. It seems so stupid that other presses are made from glass that is NOT a mason jar. Mason jars are meant to be submerged in boiling water, canning season after canning season. They are meant to get hot! They resist chipping, resist cracking under my hasty and clumsy care and are really affordable.

 

So, whenever I do end up breaking my mason jar, I can just buy another one. At the hardware store, at Target, on Amazon, at a thrift store- all for probably under a dollar. I won’t have to call some 1-800 number, I won’t have to have a model number, a serial number, a Hail Mary, and I won’t have to buy another lid. This is truly the last coffee pot I’ll ever need. Right? That’s right, Wildflowers.

Win the Portland Press!

To put the cherry on top, the sweet guys at Bucket PDX have shared a Portland Press for me to give away to one lucky reader. I know they are sweet because they sent me the press without asking for my readership numbers (they didn’t care that I’m a newbie!), answered a ton of my excited emails, and sounded genuinely happy that I liked their press. I know you’ll love it too 🙂

Win the Portland Press!

Enter to win yours here! You will get 5 extra entries for sharing this giveaway so share your heart out with those who will love it too.

Win the Portland Press!

https://thedomesticwildflower.com/giveaways/portland-press-mason-jar-french-press-giveaway/

You know what else I love? The packaging! There’s no plastic anywhere! No dumb plastic bag, no box-within-a-box BS, no insane zip ties…I’ll rant about wasteful plastic packaging in another post but I hate waste and there is zero in this box.

If you don’t want to risk not winning the giveaway, buy yours by clicking the affiliate photo link below! Y’all should probably plan on getting every mother in your life one for Mother’s Day because they are just that awesome.