The AeroPress is a great coffee maker and it was designed to make coffee a particular way – but as people have experimented with it there has been a wider range of ways to use the AeroPress. People now vary the time that they let the coffee stand, the grind of coffee that they use, the mix of coffee and water in the AeroPress chamber and whether to use it straight up as it was designed, or to flip it over and make coffee the Inverted way in the AeroPress!
This post is going to focus on the quick and easy way of making coffee that was the original idea – we will follow up on posts with other methods, but not in this one!
The AeroPress was designed for you to be able to make coffee ‘quick and easy’ in literally about 30 seconds once the water is ready.
Simply placing the paper filter in the mesh filter holder and screwing it onto the bottom chamber of the AeroPress is the main preparation. Oh, and placing the bottom chamber over your coffee mug too!
AeroPress was designed to make espresso style coffee – and so placing an AeroPress scoop of coffee grounds (fine ground, but not powdery) puts about 15g of coffee into the device – you can weigh and measure if you’re at home, but if out and about the scoop is a pretty good approximation.
Then simply pour in water (at about 85 degrees celsius) to the number 2 level indicator (as this is a double shot measure).
Next step is to stir for 10 seconds – this mixes the coffee grounds with the water, and ensures that the water is extracting the coffee from the grinds.
Straight away you can put the upper chamber into the lower tube and gently press down for 20 seconds till the plunger gets to the bottom. You may be too keen in your pressure, and this is likely to impede your progress as the device somehow seems to fight against you – a slow, gentle, consistent press seems to give the most effective progress.
That’s it!
Your coffee is now in the cup – in an espresso style measure. You can add water to make an Americano, foamed milk to make a Cappuccino, or use other methods to prepare your drink the way you want it.
The AeroPress is super simple to use and really does produce consistently good results. There are other methods of using the device and we’ll come back to those, but mastering the device for the method it was designed is an essential starting point in our eyes.