The Ultimate AeroPress Technique

- In this video, I'm gonna be talking through my recommended AeroPress technique. Now this is a technique that I think will be a great default technique. You may want to vary from this, you might want to do other things.

I would recommend exploring the world of AeroPresses but this is a technique designed to do sort of the least amount necessary to get to fantastic coffee reliably every single time. A technique designed to set you up for success whenever you brew coffee with your AeroPress.

So let's start at the beginning with the recipe or ratio that I would recommend and this, immediately, has a little bit of choice. I'm using a light roasted coffee and I like a high extraction here that will give me quite a strong cup with a lower ratio.

So I'm using 55 grams per liter or in this brew: 11 grams to 200 grams of water. Darker roasts, you may not want to extract to the same extent so I might recommend 60 or 65 grams a liter and not extracting quite as much from it.

In terms of setting up your AeroPress, not much to do. Pull your plunger out, put a paper into the paper holder, there's no need to rinse your filter paper here, pop it in, lock it in and place it on top of whatever you're gonna brew into.

You don't have to brew into a carafe. You can brew into a mug, cup, whatever you like as long as it's pretty sturdy 'cause you're gonna be pressing on it in a second. Now, let's talk about grind size.

For this brew, I'm actually grinding really pretty fine, finer that I would even brew for, say, a pour over. So getting a little bit closer to that kind of nearly espresso range. If you're using a medium or darker roasted coffee, you may not want to grind this fine.

It will certainly increase your extraction and strength but it may not taste good. So there's no one answer on grind size here. I'm gonna load this coffee into the AeroPress and I'm gonna boil my water.

Now, one more note on water temperature. Again, with lighter roasts, you can go all the way up to boiling and I would recommend that, however, for medium or darker roasts, I would drop my temperature the darker the roast is.

For a really dark roast, I'd be brewing even under 90 degrees Celsius, down maybe at 85. For a medium roast, 90 to 95 might be a sweet spot if you have a temperature-controlled kettle.

Start your timer then you're gonna add 200 grams of water. Try and get the coffee wet as quickly as you can as you pour and if it's all wet just pour in the middle and get up to 200 grams or whatever ratio you're using.

Now, you don't have to use a pour over kettle like this one, a gooseneck kettle. You can use a regular kettle, you could use a pot that you boiled on the stove; it doesn't really matter.

It's just about getting the water in and getting all the coffee nice and evenly saturated. Obviously we're gonna move this off our scale, we're not gonna press on the scale, there's no need for that and we're just gonna wait for two minutes. Here's one I started earlier.

When you get to two minutes what we're gonna do is start to swirl and it's gonna be a very gentle swirl. Make sure that you're holding both the piston and the base of the unit and just give it a gentle swirl. That's it.

You're not trying to create a vortex in there. You're just trying to gently knock the ground coffee that's formed a crust down so it starts to sink to the bottom and then you're gonna wait for about 30 seconds and then you're gonna start to press.

Now when it comes to pressing, I would recommend being relatively gentle. You shouldn't be leaning into this. You should be able to do it comfortably with your body away from the AeroPress. So not pressing too hard at all.

Press gently, press evenly and once you've waited 30 seconds you're gonna press all the way until you've pressed every drop of greatness out of this press, down into the carafe or the cup below. (coffee dripping) For a 200 ml brew for this grind size, that takes me about 30 seconds.

Once you've pressed pull back just a little bit, that'll help prevent drips, turn it upside down. Obviously you can clean up now, pop the coffee out, give it a rinse, give it a clean, reset for the next day and you've got, I hope, a great cup of coffee.

Now, if it's not a great cup of coffee, again, it's gonna be the grind size and maybe the temperature that you're gonna tweak.

If you've got too much bitterness in your cup, chances are you might have ground a bit fine or brewed a bit hot for the coffee that you're using.

If you've got a bit of sourness in your cup, well, the opposite. Feel free to get to maximum temperature and try grinding a little bit finer.

Now this, I think, gets you to a great cup of coffee in the simplest, neatest way possible with no additional unnecessary steps but it's not the one way to brew the AeroPress.

So down below, I've linked to a bunch of other AeroPress recipes. If you want something that is your kind of daily driver, your regular brew method, I hope this is it but if you wanna play and explore and have some fun with an AeroPress which I think is kind of half the point then I would recommend checking out how other people use it.

Explore those recipes. They're all linked in the description box down below but now I wanna hear from you. How are you making your AeroPress these days? What do you like? What don't you like about the AeroPress? Do you still have questions?

Because don't worry, there's another video coming. We'll be looking at both accessories and all of the filtration options for the AeroPress but, for now, I'll say thank you so much for watching. I hope you have a great day. That is good, that is, that is good. I mean, I don't know why I'm surprised.