6 AeroPress Hacks We Learned From The Inventor

Tips and trick to question your AeroPress brewing. We collected them when filming with the inventor of the AeroPress, Mr Alan Adler.

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# Music

[colfaxschuyler]

Late to the party, but it's still a party.
Just an a simple observational note: A nerdy work friend got me one as a gift, the year they came out. It was so good that I got one for work.

We wound up with an IT work-nerd coffee club. We'd meet for coffee, and 4 or 5 of us would run the Aeropress at a time, at least 3 times a day. We'd run our mug's worth, and rinse the filter and hand the press off to the next in line.

I wound up being the coffee club steward and kept the logs, and I tested the "re-usable filter" properties. We just kept on re-using filters, until we would occasionally have a blow-out or a tear.
We kept one same filter in operation for over 5 weeks. That's about 400 uses on a single filter.

I have had to replace the original home press because one thing or another gave out, I'm about to replace the current one because we're getting slippage between the barrel and the plug. This will be the 3rd press for home, but I think it's a great deal having two presses last almost 20 years.

After-thought: Based on our normal mug size, at home we run two scoops (two "shots") for a 16 oz mug's worth. I've never really liked going over that - say, for 4 shots, because it felt like a lot of water winds up being trapped in the grounds. For us, 2 is the magic number.

[bruce_c_in_nz]

My comment has nothing to do with the coffee. I so much like the way you present, Aleš. You seem to be very present, and free of ego. Your eyes convey to me that there is someone intelligent at home behind them, and your whole face seems to be always on the edge of smiling. The fact that you talk a lot of sense, give a lot of useful information and don't waste words is of course a bonus. I'm a fluent native speaker of (British) English. Although you speak with an accent it is one that is very pleasant to listen to, and your English is very fluent. To summarise, I enjoy how you say anything as much if not more than what you say, and your essential "beingness".

[azshooter]

7th: Let your Aeropress cool down after use for at least 5 minute so you can push out the grounds in one piece - nothing sticks to the plunger face this way.

[alanredversangel]

I like to imagine that Alan Adler secretly dislikes hipsters.

[Notpoop]

this thing is a beast. i struggled a bit with it at first because i was pressing way too hard and struggling to grip it in a comfortable manor. once you have used it and emptied the puck out you really get an idea of how much pressure this little thing makes inside. you really don't need to press hard at all. just like he said in the video, pressing hard makes it take longer because it compresses the coffee against the filter and blocks the water coming through

[brotherderek]

I have tried many different methods and ratios with my AeroPress, but nothing beats the original in my opinion!

[lorupa]

Now I want to drink that 60g concentrate undiluted 😂

[rasqual]

It would be worth rinsing a filter, and then subjecting the rinsed filter to the same test you did with the unrinsed filter in this video. No one seems to have bothered thinking about whether one would need to rinse a filter for 5 minutes to get enough taste out of it to avoid it tasting like the unrinsed filter did in this video. ;-)

[dcfromthev]

the microwave trick sounds nice, but only works accurately if the initial temperature of the water is exactly the same. This temp changes throughout the year as the weather changes, and there are other variables like whether you ran hot water through the sink recently for example.

[brianharder]

"The water is drier"....You're killing me!

[frozerekmeyata]

Another hack I came up with some time ago is that you can put your coffee into the press as normal, place it over a cup, then very slowly pour the water in covering the grounds repeatedly in all areas, as you are pouring the water in notice that the coffee is slowly dripping through into the cup...guess what you're doing? you're making pour over coffee! You don't have to use the plunger at all, of course true to pour over coffee it does take more time then pressing it through because you have to slowly pour the water over the grounds but it comes out the same taste that you would expect a pour over to have.


Another hack I did was that since I own a French Press and the AeroPress is similar, I tried as an experiment once to let the water set with the grounds after stirring it for 5 minutes just as I would with the French Press then push the plunger through, I thought the coffee tasted a bit better after I treated it more like a French Press.

[HelderBarreto]

You missed to say that after using the aeropress and before keeping it we should press it until the end (without the cap) so that the plunge lasts longer. If we keep it with the plunge stuck into the walls of the aeropress, it adapt to it's inner size. This way it will be more and more loose.

[dojomojomofo]

I seem to be in a rare group, reusing a steel mesh filter for years on end.

[MrSoulDevelopment]

This is a great video!! Awesome tips. The 1L brew option and the final tip for pressing slowly really hit home for me. Love it.

[Tushlik]

Great video in right time, when everyone stays at home and need home-made coffee, thanks!

[cdgonepotatoes]

A trick for getting 80°C on an electric kettle without temp control: after a couple seconds where the heating gets at its noisiest, turn the kettle off. The noise is caused by the water in contact with the heating element trying to boil and some tiny bubbles of steam form, but these are then immediately cooled down to the sorrounding water which still isn't to boiling temperature, this happens at around 70°C and when the noise pitches down the water is already at 90°C.
You'll be going mostly by gut feeling since water amount, shape of the heating element, wattage and even shape of the kettle will throw it off but extreme precision isn't really needed in a daily coffee, could always whip out that thermometer of yours to check if you got close in fewer tries.

[airbmacndeehoc]

I rinse paper filters with water (partially to rinse away residual paper flavor but) mostly so that the absorbency is already fully saturated and, therefore, the filters will not absorb the initial part of the extraction.

[johnsmith-qmmr]

I'm not sure of that, " just add more coffee to get more servings" I feel this entirely changes the profile of the coffee.

[george.carlin]

I use Aeropress for 7 years. I made prob. more than a thousand cups of coffee. It's still running. This is the best 29.95 (yes it was 3 bucks cheaper when I bought it in 2012) I've ever spent on something that works that long. I always wash and reuse my paper filter, it can be used for 2-3-4--5 times with absolutely no problems. I have to say that making 4 cups with lots of grounds isn't working as good as splitting grounds in two and making two pushes --> 2 cups each push. However, it depends on how fine your grinder is set to. If it's a course grind then pressing 4 cups can be done.

[pedxing]

I had no idea that you did the Aeropress Movie! Great work. I'm always skeptical when someone tells me how to use my Aeropress, but its hard to not listen to Alan's insights on these things. ;)