AeroPress
AeroPress, the standard recipe
Fifteen grams, 250 of water, two minutes and a slow press. The recipe to learn first, and the three variables worth changing afterwards.
At a glance
- Total
- 4 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Yield
- 1 cup
- Ratio
- 1:16.7
- Dose
- 15 g
- In cup
- 250 g
The build
- Coffee15 g
- Water250 g
Equipment
- AeroPress
- Paper filter
- Scales
- Kettle
- Mug, 300 ml or more
- Spoon
Ingredients
- Coffee, medium grind
- 15 g
- Water at 90 °C
- 250 g
Method
Rinse the paper in the cap with hot water, which also warms the mug. Discard the water.
15sAssemble upright on the mug, with the plunger not yet inserted. Add 15 g of medium ground coffee.
20sPour 50 g of water and stir once so every grain is wet. Wait 30 seconds for the bloom.
30sPour the remaining 200 g in a steady spiral, to 250 g total.
20sInsert the plunger a centimetre to seal it and stop the drip, then leave it alone until two minutes on the timer.
45sPress slowly and evenly, 30 seconds from top to bottom. Stop at the hiss rather than pushing through it.
30s
The recipe is a floor, not a ceiling
This one exists to be repeatable. Learn it, brew it three times, and only then start moving things.
What to change, and what it does
- Grind finer for more body and more extraction; the press gets harder, which is the signal to stop.
- Water hotter, up to 95 °C, for a light roast that tastes closed at 90.
- Longer steep, up to three minutes, when the coffee is old or the grind is coarse. Beyond that you are mostly extracting bitterness.
Change one at a time. The AeroPress responds so quickly that two changes at once tell you nothing.
The concentrate variation
For an espresso-like cup, use 20 g of coffee to 80 g of water at 88 °C, steep for 90 seconds and press. It is not espresso, there is no crema and no nine bars, but it makes a base for a very acceptable milk drink.
Questions about this recipe
- Inverted or upright?
- Upright with the plunger seated a centimetre in loses almost nothing to the drip, and it cannot fall over. Inverted buys a longer steep without drip, at the cost of a flip full of hot coffee.
- Why 90 °C rather than boiling?
- The AeroPress steeps in a closed chamber that holds heat, and it uses a fine grind for the contact time. Boiling water on that combination over extracts and turns bitter.