All the coffee hipsters love the Aeropress. They love the fact that not many people have heard of it (and, by definition, if they had, the hipsters would no longer like it). They love the fact that it’s quirky. They love coming up with cool new ways to brew coffee in an Aeropress (“Oh yeah, I used to brew inverted, but that’s so 2010…”1). But most of all, they love the fact that their Tonx or Kopi2 monthly gourmet coffee tastes fucking awesome when brewed in an Aeropress. Whilst it pains me to say it, the hipsters have it right on this one: the Aeropress is fucking tremendous.
Ostensibly resembling something that could be mistaken for a Swedish penis pump (um, or so a friend tells me…) the Aeropress is nothing more than a glorified plunger. The conventional way of using Aeropress is to attach the filter cap and filter to the end of the penis pump outer tube, add a spoonful or two of ground coffee, and a spoonful or two of water on top. Allow to brew for your chosen magic number of seconds, then insert the penis pump plunger, and slowly plunge your coffee through the filter and into your cup. Voilà.
Or so it should be that simple. Whilst these are approximately the instructions that are supplied with the Aeropress, it quickly became apparent to me that during the period where the coffee is brewing, sat on the filter paper and cap, a not-insubstantial amount of watery coffee seeps through the paper and into the cup. Hmmm. Not cool. This is apparently the expected behaviour, but I wasn’t happy. A quick internet search produced a solution – the inverted technique.
The inverted technique is a little more tricky, but to my knackered old tastebuds, yields a better cup of coffee. Start with the plunger inserted in the outer tube, but fully extended. Next, add the required amount of coffee, and then fill the outer tube to the brim with boiling water3. Allow to brew for a couple of minutes, all the while admiring the lack of weak coffee escaping into the cup. Next is the tricky stage: the flip. Place the filter cap and filter on the top of the inverted Aeropress, place an upside cup on top of that, then flip the whole kit and caboodle upside down so the Aeropress ends up right-way-up on top of the right-way-up cup. Now simply plunge a whole mug of coffee through the filter. Delicious.
Cleaning is simple: pop the filter cap off, throw the paper and grounds away (or into your compost bin), rinse everything off under the tap, and that’s that. Amazing.
Once you’ve got the technique down after a few trial runs, it’s a piece of cake, and only marginally more hassle than making a cup of instant coffee. And, for the record, friends don’t let friends drink instant coffee, especially when only £25 buys you one of these bad boys and upgrades your coffee experience by a couple of orders of magnitude. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest shop or e-shop and pick one of these up.
Buy it from Amazon here: Aerobie AeroPress Coffee Maker
- It looks like the last time an inverted brew method won the World Aeropress Championship was 2010. Yes, there’s a World Aeropress Championship. What a time to be alive. ↩
- Disclaimer: I’m a Kopi subscriber, but that’s a confession for another post. ↩
- The bundled instructions claim that plunging a whole Aeropress-worth of water through isn’t as good as plunging a couple of shots worth, and then topping up with boiling water. I couldn’t tell the difference, but I find the fill-to-the-brim method more convenient, so that’s what I use. ↩
What Did You Do, Ray? 