Adrianmsmith
Long story short, brewers don’t really make coffee ‘taste different’ (within reasonable expectation, bearing in mind identically made cups rarely taste identical), all else being equal, filter papers/lack of filters make a bigger difference and the amount of suspended silt affects mouthfeel/perception of body.
But to answer your points…
- A French press has no paper filter (some Espro models do have a filter option, but I have not found these helpful, compared to longer steeps where things can settle), so in many cases a French press will have more silt in the cup compared to a Switch immersion only brew. The silt does not count towards extraction and doesn’t really carry any flavour compounds, though ground up bits of burnt wood in your drink tend to make it more bitter in a malfunction and typically thicken the mouthfeel. In my experience, you can get a decent extraction in a Switch at a coarser grind & faster (about 5min) than a small French press. Long steep French presses can be very clean, but take more time (20min minimum, fine grind, for a small glass press, 40-60min, medium grind, for large & insulated presses). The way most people make a French press produces awful, under-extracted, silty coffee, so I’d say if you want to make a cup in around 5min, purely through immersion, then the Switch is the better bet. Either brewer, in optimum conditions, produce equivalent cups.
- There is no more related faff with pour over. Any brew method requires you to dose consistently at the required grind setting and introduce the amount of water that gives you your preferred strength range. If you just let the coffee sit & steep, this will take longer than pouring in controlled, timed pours with a pour over. The difference is timing the pour of the water vs timing the steep, but in both cases you get what you ‘make’. I mostly use my Switch to make pour over, just using the switch function to preheat the brewer. I do this because it’s quicker than steeping, I find it less faff. Good brews with either approach, or a hybrid approach, will be equivalent once dialed in (if so, you rarely, if ever, need to change grind setting) and carried out consistently.