My morning ritual, like many of you involves at least one large cup of coffee before I’m ready to take on the day. While in the past I’ve always had a standard 12 cup coffee maker on my counter I’ve been eyeing French presses and other smaller scale coffee makers as of late as a way to clean up my kitchen counters. A bit ago I heard about the AeroPress which promises to give the strong flavor offered by a French press without any coffee grinds in the cup so I decided to test out using the AeroPress for the past week for my morning caffeine fix.
How To Use An AeroPress
Before you start making your coffee or espresso you will need to screw off the bottom filter cap to add a small paper filter. Once you have placed the paper filter inside the bottom section of the AeroPress screw it back onto the AeroPress.
To help keep things organized the AeroPress comes with a little black stand to hold all your filters which I found rather handy.
Take the top press piece out of the AeroPress and place the funnel over the top, pour in and one large heaping scoop of coffee or ground espresso.
Place your AeroPress over your coffee mug and begin boiling water. If you have a kettle that lets you set a temperature, set it to around 175F.
As I just have a standard electric kettle I set it to boil and waited a few seconds afterwards for the water to cool before I poured the water into the AeroPress up to the number 2- 3.
Next take the plastic stir stick that comes with the press and mix the coffee around in the water for a few seconds.
Place the top plunger into the AeroPress and very slowly press down about 20-30 seconds after the water has been poured into the AeroPress.
Remove the AeroPress from the coffee cup and your coffee is ready to drink. I found coffee to have less bitterness compared to standard coffee machines.
Overall I was a fan of the AeroPress as it is nice and small and easy to use. Best of all you can get rich flavored coffee without grinds floating in your cup as you would with many standard French presses. The coffee itself was simple to make, once I found the perfect grind for my coffee beans which was between fine coffee and espresso grind. I found if the grinds were too small the coffee would quickly pour through the filter before I could get the chance to use the plunger to press the coffee which resulted in a weak cup of coffee. One huge perk is once you are done pressing the coffee clean up was fast as you can remove the filter cap and all the grinds will fall out as they are pushed to the bottom when you press your coffee.
I would strongly recommend for households that have more than one coffee drinker that you grab one AeroPress per person so no one needs to wait for their coffee as it can only make enough coffee for one person at a time. Meanwhile for avid travelers, I could see the small scale design also being useful to throw in a suitcase to brew coffee in your hotel room.
If you are looking to grab an AeroPress they sell for $30.00 with 350 paper filters, making it highly affordable way to get your daily coffee fix. The AeroPress can be purchased here.
As a hard core java expert, Aerobie gave me a AeroPress to review. All content and opinions are that of my own! Thank you for supporting the sponsors that keep this site going!
