The Problem with most Aeropress Recipes
There’s few questions a barista dreads more than “Could you grind this for Aeropress? While you can always count on an espresso to use a fine grind and a fast brew time, and a French press the opposite, Aeropress recipes are all over the map, and most are terrible.
First, completely disregard the recipe on the box. No disrespect to the legendary inventor of the Aeropress, Alan Adler, but the whole notion of using lower temperature water to have a less acidic coffee is flawed in several key ways. For one, acids dissolve before the more complex carbohydrates, so lower-temp brews are missing more than just acidity- they’re missing a lot of sweetness too. Secondly, acidity levels have a lot more to do with the coffee origin. (If you don’t like brighter, fruitier coffees, stick with Brazilian and lower elevation Central American coffees.)
But there’s also reason to be wary of many of the more popular recipes circulating out there. Many call for more an absurd amount of coffee, often a 10:1 ratio, or even stronger. While I’m sure that many of these recipes with the right coffee could make an interesting, even delicious cup of coffee, for people in the real world, who are using their hard-earned cash to purchase coffee, I question such an inefficient recipe. If you can make a delicious cup of coffee with 15 grams of coffee, why on earth would you waste another 5–7 grams?
That’s why I’m sharing my fourth place recipe from the 2016 US Aeropress Championship*. Sure, it wasn’t quite good enough to book my ticket to Dublin for the World Championship, but it’s surprisingly versatile and pretty simple. You’ll need an Aeropress, a grinder, a scale, a kettle, and some coffee.
1. Grind 15 grams of coffee
You want to use a medium grind. Not too fine, not to coarse.
2. Place two rinsed filters in the Aeropress.
Double filtration helps keep any sediment out of your brew. If you really want to live life on the edge, you can use three (somehow, we never seem to run out of filters. It’s like they magically replenish themselves.)
3. Briskly add 225 ml. of boiling hot water. Quickly, but carefully, place plunger in Aeropress to create a vacuum.
This keeps the coffee from dripping. You need all the water steeping with the coffee to get the highest possible extraction.
4. At 1:00, remove plunger and gently break the crust with a spoon.
Replace plunger.
5. At 4:00 begin to slowly push the plunger down.
No coffee left behind.
6. Decant and drink.
*The Aeropress Championship was founded as a sort of lampoon of barista competition culture. To use a wrestling analogy, It’s more WWE than UFC.
Have you considered the true reason for not sing boiling water in the Aeropress is the plastic it is made of?
I wonder if it breaks down and releases chemicals or micro polymers at higher temps?
The newer Aeropress are supposed to be BPA free, but in numerous interviews Allen Adler has said his reason for inventing the Aeropress was to make a single cup of coffee with lower acidity.
Wouldn’t using the inverted method with your recipe serve the same purpose….Just curious….Thanks!
There are multiple reasons I don’t like the inverted method. The biggest is sometimes grinds stick to the plunger when you flip it. I also don’t like agitating the coffee so late in the brew. Finally, you’re far more likely to have a brewing mishap!
Hi Michael.
Hope you are well.
I tired you’re method this morning. I am pretty new to aeropress and been trying it out for the last couple weeks. I bought it thinking it would be a new and easy method of making coffee. I travel a lot to China and I wanted to have a good cup of coffee when I am there so I got the aeropress. But from all I read the recipes and methods are so complicated. Water must at this temp or grinds need to at this level. Steep the coffee exactly 27sec ect. Your method seems pretty straightforward and coffee taste good. The only annoying thing I have had with aeropress and that’s following ppls recipes is the coffee gets cold so fast. Boil water and wait 2mins. I am used to drinking hot coffee. Not warming coffee. Does the boiling of water make a massive difference. Thanks again for simple easy to use recipe.
Hey Brandon,
Thanks for your feed back! My main guess is that this is a relatively small amount of coffee, so it will cool down much faster than a larger volume. Some ways to get your coffee to stay hot longer include preheating your coffee cup with hot water or decanting into a good vacuum-insulated thermos. I never recommend re-heating coffee as that creates a lot of unpleasant flavors.