A French press, also known as a cafetière, cafetière à piston, caffettiera a stantuffo, press pot, coffee press, or coffee plunger, is a coffee brewing device, although it can also be used for other tasks. The earliest known device was patented in 1852 in France by Jacques-Victor Delforge and Henri-Otto Mayer.

In English, the device is known in North America as a French press or coffee press; in Britain and Ireland as a cafetière, after the brand, La Cafetière; in New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa as a coffee plunger, and coffee brewed in it as plunger coffee. It is known in French as cafetière à piston ("piston jug"), or simply as cafetière (also the usage in Dutch), though some speakers might also use genericized trademarks, such as Melior or Bodum. In Italian, it is known as a caffettiera a stantuffo; in German as a Pressstempelkanne, Stempelkanne ("stamp pot"), Stabfilterkanne, Kaffeepresse ("coffee press") or Bistrokanne.

Over the years, the French press has undergone several design modifications. The first coffee press, which may have been made in France, was the modern coffee press in its rudimentary form –a metal or cheesecloth screen fitted to a rod that users would press into a pot of hot water and coffee grounds. In 1852, two Frenchmen, a Paris metalsmith and a merchant, Henri-Otto Mayer and Jacques-Victor Delforge, patented a forerunner of the French press, that did not create a seal around the filter. A patent was filed by a Frenchman, Marcel-Pierre Paquet dit Jolbert, officially published on 5 August 1924.

In 1928, a coffee press was created by Milanese designers Giulio Moneta and Attilio Calimani which had a spring to seal the filter, and patented it in the United States in 1929. It underwent several design modifications through Faliero Bondanini, who patented his own version in 1958 and manufactured it in French clarinet factory Martin SA under the brand name Melior. (Its popularity may have been aided in 1965 by its use in the Michael Caine film The Ipcress File.) The device was litigated and further popularized throughout Europe by Melior-Martin, a French company, Household Articles Ltd. (La Cafetiere), a British company, and Bodum (Chambord), a Danish tableware and kitchenware company.

The modern French press consists of a narrow cylindrical beaker, usually made of glass or clear plastic, equipped with a metal or plastic lid and plunger that fits tightly in the cylinder and has a fine stainless steel wire or nylon mesh filter.

Coffee is brewed by placing coarsely ground coffee in the empty beaker and adding hot water, 93–96 °C (199–205 °F), in proportions of about 30 g (1 oz) of coffee grounds to 500 ml (17 US fl oz) of water, more or less to taste. After brewing, the plunger is depressed, holding down the coffee grounds while the coffee is served.

A French press works best with coffee of a coarser grind, about the consistency of cooking salt. Finer coffee grounds, when immersed in water, have lower permeability, requiring an excessive amount of force to be applied by hand to lower the plunger and are more likely to seep through or around the perimeter of the press filter and into the coffee drink. Additionally, finer grounds will tend to over-extract and cause the coffee to taste bitter.

Some writers give the optimal time for brewing as around four minutes. Other approaches, such as cold brewing, require several hours of contact between the water and the grounds to achieve the desired extraction.