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I like drinking my own coffee at work, as it's cheaper and more convienient than buying espresso. However, recently I've been finding myself wanting a more long-black like espresso coffee.
How can I achieve this using either a french press/plunger or a gold filter?
I enjoy my homemade French-pressed coffee more than anything I can buy at an espresso shop, though a long black is my preferred choice if I'm away from home.
There are a couple of strengths of the espresso shop's infrastructure which you can emulate on a smaller scale:
Buy good fresh whole beans and grind them right before you prepare the drink.
Use more coffee and/or grind it more finely. More surface area will make it extract more and taste stronger. You can even make it really thick and creamy and add it on top of water for the long-black-like experience.
There's a discussion about minimizing the grounds in your cup here.
I think you are going to have a hard time achieving what you are trying to do with the tools you are describing. Espresso is a very specific brewing method that produces a very specific type of coffee. Trying to mimic that flavor profile with other brew methods will generally fall short. Using more coffee for stronger flavor is one option, but it ends up not being cost effective in the long run. More extraction is an option, but over extracted coffee often has a flavor profile associated with it that isn't desirable as well.
The closest you can get (in my opinion) on a budget is probably an Aeropress. It is fairly inexpensive and makes a very strong cup of coffee using a reasonable amount of grounds that isn't espresso, but also isn't over extracted. The downside is that it's difficult to generate crema with such a brew method.
You might be forced to figure out which aspects of the long black you like, then come up with a brew method that gets you close on those aspects, but is probably missing others that make up the true long black.
Aeropress is definitely the way to go. It's the most "espresso-like" home brew option out there. Here's my favorite recipe: http://yourbestdrink.com/how-to-brew-coffee/
