The Aeropress is a simple and popular brew method. It's lightweight and robust which means it's a fantastic travelling companion and popular with cyclists and adventure seekers, but also with anyone looking to brew great tasting coffee at the office or away from home.
The Aeropress was originally intended to brew espresso style coffee, but coffee lovers have since found a number of different ways to use it - and all with different results. (The Aeropress Championships are an actual thing!)
In this brew guide we're going to talk you through the inverted method which gives a longer drink - more similar to a cafetiere or filter brew, than a short dark shot of espresso. It's quick, easy and delicious.
Quick and easy.
*If this sounds like a bunch of coffee jargon, it’s because it is. Follow our step by step guide below for the full method.
Weighing water & coffee is key to getting your brew tasting consistently good. (more about this in our Golden Rules blog).
First, stick the kettle on.
The Aeropress fits a cosy 240ml of liquid, for this brew recipe we’re using 200ml of water and 12-14g of medium-fine ground coffee.
If you don’t have scales, a level single shot measure (35ml) will give you roughly 12-14g. đź‘Ť
Grind using a hand or home grinder. You want a medium to fine of “filter” grind.
We rate the Wilfa Svart grinder as a decent home grinder & the Rhino Grinder & Hario Skerton mills are great hand grinders.
Construct your Aeropress by putting the black plunger on the bottom, and the chamber side on top (this is known as the inverted method). The black plunger should be pushed up to the start of the Number 4 marker on the side of the chamber.
Once your kettle is boiled, fill your Aeropress chamber up to the top. Boiling water is too hot to pour straight on to your coffee, so this step gives the water time to cool to a better brewing temperature (92-94 degrees celsius).
If you’re using paper filters, pop a filter into the gauze or cap and give it a quick rinse. This prevents any papery taste from the fitler ending up in your coffee.
Use any remaining water in your kettle to fill up your mug so that it’s nice and warm when you pour your coffee into it.
Pour 12-14g of ground coffee into the hot water in the aeropress chamber (this should be perfect temperature by now). Give it a few stirs and start your timer for 45 seconds.
After 45 seconds, give it another stir, wait another 45 seconds.
Stirring the coffee twice creates turbulence or agitation and means the coffee grounds will extract faster, meaning you get more flavour.
When coffee is over extracted it tastes bitter, under extracted it tastes sour. The secret to a great tasting brew is getting the extraction of flavour from the coffee grounds just right, more about this in our Golden Rules blog we mentioned earlier.
Empty the hot water from your mug.
After 1minute 30 seconds total brew time, pop the cap on with filter inside and flip the Aeropress on to the top of your mug.
Slowly plunge for 30 secs.
Then, all that’s left to do is kick back and enjoy.
Awesome.
The inverted brew method we've talked about in this post gives you a longer drink but still with lots of body and sweetness. If you take your coffee black we'd recommend brewing with a filter roast coffee (as Harrison has done in the accompanying video).
If you like your coffee with milk, we'd recommend an espresso roast coffee with delicious sticky-sweet flavour notes.
Dried Mango, Garibaldi Biscuits & Candied Almonds
For coffee on the move
Necatrine, Pistachio, Almond Butter
Check out this exhaustive blog post from our pal The Coffee Chronicler.
From competition analysis to cold brew pressing to the #MileHighAeropressClub, he’s put it all down here.
The inventor of the Aeropress, Alan Adler, also invented the Aerobie frisbee which totally whoops the traditional disc frisbees. It’s useless knowledge… but it’s yours to keep.
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