effect of coffee on cholesterol
My two favorite methods are French press and drip filter.
French press always seems to have a richer taste. It's important to use coarsely-ground coffee, as drip grind is too fine for the French filter to press the grounds to the bottom, and you can wind up with silty coffee (still tastes good, but silty).
When selecting a drip filter machine, I always look for one with a "1-4 cups" feature, which double boils the water to get it hotter. Even when making more than four cups, I still activate the feature, even though it lengthens the brew time. Also, Melitta-style filters definitely give better results than a flat Mr Coffee-style filter. My parents recently bought a Mr Coffee and it tastes very weak, no doubt because the coffee is dispersed over a wide area and the water never has a chance to pass through most of it. They wind up using more coffee to get the desired taste. (Note: I've used Bunn commercial machines with flat filters that turn out decent coffee, but I'm limiting my discussion here to machines for home use).
For years, medical studies have shown disparate results when trying to measure the effect of coffee on cholesterol. Several recent studies seem to indicate that people who drink filter coffee see a drop in LDL (bad) cholesterol, while those who use a French press see a rise in LDL. I don't know how well these studies controlled the diets of their subjects, i.e. maybe the French press crowd has pizza and ice cream every day. But the researchers concluded that some substance in French press coffee (an oil perhaps? or dissolved solid?) that harms LDL cholesterol is removed or reduced in filter coffee.
Since I saw those articles, I've mainly been using my drip machine, with the French press reserved for special occasions. I have a stainless steel double wall Bodum "Columbia" press, easy to clean up because the whole thing (lid, plunger, body) is dishwasher safe.
