5 ms·
This is exactly my set up! Although I adopted it as a PhD student precisely to avoid those expensive options in the first place. I've just never found any cause
by Emma_Goldman 4y ago
This is exactly my set up! Although I adopted it as a PhD student precisely to avoid those expensive options in the first place. I've just never found any cause to change since.
Aeropress allows you to combine immersion and high pressure with a £25 device that largely self-cleans, and is small enough to travel with. It makes a smooth, rich-tasting coffee.
With electric grinders you pay for the burr, which is what really matters, and then an electric motor. But if you buy a fairly decent hand grinder like the C2 chestnut, you get a far better burr for the same price, and because of that hand grinding is really easy-going and quick. I enjoy doing it every morning.
There are some coffee enthusiasts that create over-complicated aeropress recipes, but the truth is that it was designed for simplicity. What I've found matters is:
1. Small-to-medium grind size
2. Stand upside down to immerse for longer
3. Use 80-85c water
4. Stir
5. Press gently
Obviously the quality and freshness of the coffee beans matters too, and you can vary the immersion time for the strength of the coffee you want.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago>Stand upside down to immerse for longer Don't bother with this. The seal created by the plunger is good enough to stop the flow of coffee. Insert the plunger at an angle so that you push out as much air as possible before straightening it out.
- Emma_Goldman 4y agoI don't see how it's any bother. You have to put the grains and water in with it upside down anyway, so whether you put it onto the mug during or after immersion involves equal effort. In my experience there's some leakage if you just leave it standing for minutes upright.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago>You have to put the grains and water in with it upside down anyway Wait, what? The standard method is to put coffee into the Areopress right way up. Having tried upside down and right side up immersion, I can’t say it makes much difference either way. In which case, I’d rather not have a top heavy vessel of hot water on the counter. It also has the advantage of being able to inspect how the filter is seated before you proceed. I’ve had instances where the filter is not seated properly and excessive agitation manages to unseat the filter. If you reuse filters (and I taste no reason not to), I observe that the filters bunch up a little bit more with reuse. Anyway, I don’t mean to say that you can’t invert things. But taste-wise, inverted brewing may have no clear advantages if you just want a nice coffee.
- mft_ 4y agoAgree - there’s always a modest amount of dribbling, even with a very good condition seal. I’ve never understood the resistance to inverted brewing - with 200g of water, it’s trivial to make it work with minimal-to-no risk of an accident upon inversion.
- dTal 4y ago>high pressure >5. Press gently Does not compute?
- Emma_Goldman 4y agoI did think of writing 'relatively high pressure' to pre-empt this pedantry. Higher pressure than just immersion, much lower than espresso. How hard you push modulates the pressure, but any added pressure is more than in a French press or pour over.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dTal 4y agoI hardly think it's pedantry to point out that if you think higher pressure = better, pressing "gently" is an odd choice. A full grown adult standing with their full weight on their Aeropress can achieve about 4 bar of pressure; standing at the counter, pressing with one arm as hard as I can, I'm unlikely to achieve more than 1 bar. For context, an espresso traditionally requires 9 bar to properly extract. It's doubtful that that even 1 bar of pressure makes any difference to extraction at all. But assuming that it does, and you think that pressure is a good thing - why on Earth would you instruct people to press "gently"? Now you're looking at more like 0.1 bar of pressure. That's definitely negligible, certainly not "high pressure" or even "relatively high".
- Emma_Goldman 4y agoWhat a bizarre and pointless contortion - this is exactly why I now avoid commenting on the internet. I said the aeropress combined immersion and high pressure. What is 'high' is obviously relative, as I just qualified. I did not say the higher the pressure the better, which is obvious enough from the fact I prefer using an aeropress to an espresso machine.
- sdfhbdf 4y agoI don't think there is any more pressure created when making a coffee with an AeroPress than with any other immersion method. The plunger is just to push the liquid through, it doesn't create any additional pressure.
- asimpletune 4y agoIt does create additional pressure. I think the real question is if that pressure is in any way detectable. Think aeropress vs. French press. The pushing in a french press simple separates the particles, while the aeropress is indeed squeezing the water through the filter.
- 7952 4y agoMaybe the pressure isn't directly having an effect. But a side effect is that you stop the brew process after a short period of time and that will have an effect on taste.
- Emma_Goldman 4y agoThere is. What effect that has is an interesting question. Aeropress FAQ: "The AeroPress filter is 2.5 inches in diameter so the area of the filter is 4.9 square inches. If you press down firmly on a scale, it is relatively easy to get the scale up to 25 pounds and then if you press hard on the scale, you can certainly get it up to 50 pounds. Therefore if you press similarly hard on your AeroPress while brewing coffee, the firm pressing will be at 5.1 psi (25 lbs/4.9 sq in) and the harder pressing will be at 10.2 psi (50 lbs/4.9 sq in). Since a bar of pressure is 14.7 psi, the former is .35 bar and the latter is .70 bar." https://www.aeropress.co.uk/pages/faqs https://www.aeropress.co.uk/pages/faqs See also James Hoffman's experiment: https://youtu.be/jBXm8fCWdo8?t=976 https://youtu.be/jBXm8fCWdo8?t=976
- 2devnull 4y agoEspresso requires a multiple of that— 9 bars minimum if I recall correctly.