French Press & Keep Cup - Groundd Xpress

The French press has barely changed in decades. You add coffee, add water, wait, plunge, pour. It works, but it leaves you with a jug of coffee sitting on its grounds and a pot to clean before you’ve even had your first sip.

The Groundd Xpress takes that familiar process and rethinks it from the ground up. It combines a travel coffee cup with a reusable stainless steel filter and a plunging system, so you brew, filter and drink from the same vessel. After spending time brewing with it, we think it’s one of the more thoughtfully designed coffee presses we’ve come across. This Groundd Xpress review covers how it works, what the filter is like in the cup and where it falls short.

What Is the Groundd Xpress?

At its simplest, the Groundd Xpress is a redesigned French press built to double as a travel coffee press. Conceptually, it borrows ideas from a few different brewing formats. There’s the immersion brewing and plunger of a French press, a filter that feels similar to an AeroPress filter, the portability of a travel brewer and enough versatility to work as a tea brewer.

The Groundd Xpress was designed in Australia and manufactured in China. The company was founded by Nick, who has an engineering background and is based in Margaret River, WA. That engineering background shows. Almost every part of this brewer has a considered purpose, from the lid through to the way the spent grounds are stored once you’ve finished brewing.

Design and Build Quality

The body of the Groundd Xpress is made from glass, with a wooden veneer wrapped around the outside. A soft silicone band helps keep the veneer in place. Inside, the filter and plunging components are stainless steel. Overall, it feels well made, using quality parts and well thought-out componentry.

One of the things we like most about Groundd is how they’ve approached replacement parts. Every component is available separately online. If you break the glass, you can buy a new one. The same goes for the wooden veneer holder, the plunging cap or the stainless steel filter. Rather than replacing the whole brewer because one piece is lost or damaged, you just replace that piece. It’s a sensible approach that more coffee gear brands should take.

The trade-off with a glass body is heat. The glass is quite thick, so it won’t get so hot that you can’t hold it, but it does become noticeably warm in your hand while brewing. That’s true of most glass French press designs, and it’s worth knowing before you buy.

How Does the Groundd Xpress Work?

The Groundd Xpress is made up of a few main parts, the glass body with its wooden veneer holder, a lid and the filter and plunging system.

The plunging rod is mounted to the filter, while the lid sits on top. The rod can be unscrewed from the filter, which is where a lot of this brewer’s versatility comes from (more on that below). The filter unit itself includes a one-way valve, with a stainless steel filter on the back. You can unscrew it to access the other side of the valve and the filter pops out too. There’s a circular cut-out in the middle of the filter, which allows the components to screw together.

The lid has also been designed with more than one job in mind. According to Groundd, it can hold around 20g of coffee beans, which is handy if you want to carry a dose with you. Keep in mind that’s a volumetric measurement, so it’s a rough guide rather than a precise dose. The drinking cap has an open and closed position. We measured it at around 70mm and it can be used on other cups of a similar standard size, although it does have a central hole for the plunger rod, so keep that in mind if you plan to use it as a lid elsewhere.

One clever detail is the water-level guide built into the wooden veneer holder. After adding your coffee, slide the wooden holder down so its bottom edge sits level with the top of your coffee grounds. The top of the holder then shows roughly how high your water should go. It’s a smart touch, although we’d still recommend weighing your coffee and water and working to a ratio rather than relying on volume alone. Weighing gives you a much more repeatable result from one brew to the next.

How to Brew Coffee with the Groundd Xpress

Brewing with the Groundd Xpress will feel familiar if you’ve used a French press before. Here’s the workflow we use:

1. Add your coffee grounds to the glass body.
2. Add hot water. Ideally, weigh both your coffee and water.
3. Place the plunging and filter system on top.
4. Attach the cap. We like to leave it in the open position while brewing.
5. Let the coffee brew for around 2-4 minutes, depending on the coffee and the style of brew you’re after.
6. Press the plunger down.
7. The filter pushes through the coffee and seals the spent grounds at the bottom, separating them from your brewed coffee.
8. Your brewer is now your travel coffee cup.

Brewing and Drinking from the Same Cup

This is where the Groundd Xpress really separates itself from a traditional French press. Once you plunge, the filter seals and stops the brew in place. Your spent grounds stay trapped at the bottom, while the finished coffee sits above the filter, ready to drink.

That means there’s no need to pour into another cup. You can take the Groundd Xpress with you and use it like a KeepCup or any other reusable travel cup. It also fits standard car cup holders, so it works for a morning commute as well as on the bench at home.

Adding Milk, Sugar or Sweetener

If you take your coffee with milk, sugar, honey or sweetener, the Groundd Xpress handles that well. Unscrew the plunging rod from the filter and lift it out completely, which also disengages the cap. You now have direct access to the brewed coffee, while the filter continues to hold the spent grounds below.

Add whatever you like, then use the plunging rod to give it a stir. You can pop the cap back on, or if you’d rather not drink through plastic, take the cap off and drink straight from the glass. For coffee drinkers who like a splash of milk or a little sweetness, it’s a well-solved problem.

When it’s time to clean up, put the rod back in, pull the filter unit out and you’ve got access to the spent grounds. Just be aware there will be a little hot water sitting with the grounds under the filter, so take care when opening it.

How Good Is the Reusable Filter?

The stainless steel filter is one of the most important parts of the Groundd Xpress and how you’ll feel about it depends on what you’re used to drinking.

If you’re coming from a traditional French press, the Groundd Xpress produces a much cleaner cup. Standard French presses use a spiral metal mesh filter with relatively large holes, which lets more fine particles through. That’s what gives French press coffee its heavy body and often a layer of sediment at the bottom.

If you’re used to filter coffee brewed through paper, the Groundd Xpress will taste thicker, with more body. That comes down to the size of the holes in a stainless steel filter, which let through more oils and fine particles than paper does.

In our brews, we didn’t notice a huge amount of sediment, although a small amount was still there. With reusable metal filters, it’s very hard to avoid completely. We don’t see that as a negative though. Plenty of people enjoy that fuller texture, and some deliberately try to recreate it.

We also tried adding a paper filter alongside the stainless steel filter. It made the plunger very hard to push down and the brewer isn’t designed for it, so we wouldn’t recommend it.

Using the Groundd Xpress for Tea?

The Groundd Xpress is even better for brewing tea, the stainless steel filter works great for tea as it does for coffee, and you could use it for other brews too. Being able to brew tea, coffee and more in one vessel adds to its value as an everyday single serve brewer.

What We Like About the Groundd Xpress

• Clever all-in-one design that brews, filters and doubles as a cup
• Travel-friendly and fits standard car cup holders
• Reusable stainless steel coffee filter
• Every component can be replaced individually
• Easy to add milk, sugar or sweetener after brewing
• Spent grounds are sealed away and easy to access for cleaning
• Works for tea and other infusions
• A noticeably cleaner cup than a traditional French press

What Could Be Better?

• The glass body gets noticeably warm while brewing
• It isn’t designed to use a paper filter alongside the stainless steel filter, as plunging becomes difficult
• A small amount of sediment still makes it into the cup
• The drinking cap is plastic, although you can remove it and drink from the glass
• Hot water and grounds remain under the filter, so you need to be careful when opening it to clean

Groundd Xpress vs Traditional French Press

The biggest difference comes down to filtration. The finer stainless steel filter in the Groundd Xpress produces a cleaner cup with less sediment than the large mesh filter of a standard French press, while still keeping some of that fuller body.

The second difference is what happens after you plunge. A traditional French press leaves your coffee sitting on the grounds, so it keeps extracting unless you pour it all out. The Groundd Xpress seals the grounds away beneath the filter, stopping the brew and letting you drink straight from the brewer.

Then there’s portability. A French press is a kitchen bench brewer. The Groundd Xpress is a travel coffee press that goes with you, fits in a car cup holder and lets you add milk or sugar along the way. As a French press alternative, it keeps the simplicity of immersion brewing but changes almost everything around it.

Final Verdict

The Groundd Xpress isn’t just another French press. What makes it stand out is that brewing, filtration, separating the grounds and drinking have all been designed to work as one system. Each of those steps has been thought through, from the water-level guide on the wooden veneer holder through to the removable plunging rod that lets you stir in milk.

It isn’t perfect. The glass body gets warm, you’ll still find a little sediment in the cup and paper filters aren’t really an option. But if you enjoy French-press-style coffee and want something compact, portable and easy to live with, it’s a genuinely interesting option. The ability to replace individual parts also means it’s built to last rather than be thrown away.

Interested? You can buy the Groundd Xpress online at Basic Barista.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should you brew coffee in the Groundd Xpress?

Around 2-4 minutes, depending on your coffee and the style of brew you’re after.

Is the Groundd Xpress coffee cleaner than a French press?

Yes. Its stainless steel filter lets through fewer fine particles than a traditional French press mesh filter, so the cup is noticeably cleaner, although a small amount of sediment can still occur.

Can you add milk or sugar to the Groundd Xpress?

Yes. Unscrew and remove the plunging rod to access your coffee, add milk, sugar, honey or sweetener and stir with the rod.

Does the Groundd Xpress fit in a car cup holder?

Yes, it fits standard car cup holder sizes.

Can you brew tea in the Groundd Xpress?

Yes. The stainless steel filter works well for tea and other infusions as well as coffee.