I'm wondering how many people do this when they FP brew, and if anyone has any strong feelings, or better yet, experimental evidence of its benefits?
When I brew FP I first preheat the press with boiling water from the kettle. Then I dump the water back into the kettle to heat back to boiling, and meanwhile add the grounds to the press with a little of the water from the kettle, stir it in and allow them to expand. There seems to be just a right amount of water. Too little and the grounds do not get fully wet. Too much water and you get foam. Just the right amount of water and gasses from the beans form pockets of air in the grounds instead of foam, making the whole thing rise like a cake. By the time my water is boiling again the cake is done rising and I can stir the air out of it before pouring, much more easily than it is to stir the air out of the foam that forms without a bloom step.
I think this benefits me in two ways. I can pour straight boiling water into this and in mixing with the cooler slurry this takes the temperature down to a more ideal temperature. Secondly I suspect it reduces the formation of carbonic acid. I should note that I am often behind on my roasting and using beans that haven't been rested, so this may be more important to me than to some. I have no proof of this, but I rarely taste the acidity problems that are warned of from insufficient resting. It makes sense to me that the gasses that form pockets in barely wet grounds would be reacting with the water less, than gasses that mix with the water to form a foam.
I'm curious if anyone can confirm or debunk this theory.
