The AeroPress is a handy piece of coffee-making kit that provides maximum flavour and convenience, wherever you are. If you’re looking to prepare high-quality coffee on the go, you’ve come to the right place. This is our step-by-step guide on how to use an AeroPress.
Grinder
AeroPress
Scales
Kettle
Coffee beans
An AeroPress is a quirky-looking gadget designed to prepare a well-extracted cup of coffee on the go. When plunged, it dispenses a beautifully brewed cup of concentrated coffee.
The tool was first conceived by American inventor Alan Adler in 2005. After growing impatient with coffee making methods like pour over and french press, Adler developed the device to push hot water through coffee grounds, for a robust brew that could be prepared quickly without containing any residual grounds.
Thus, the AeroPress was born — combining two cylindrical chambers and a fine paper filter that produces a clean cup with minimal downtime.
You can use any coffee in an AeroPress that is ground to a medium-fine consistency, a bit like table salt. This helps the coffee to evenly extract without passing through the filter paper when you plunge. For the best results, we recommend using your favourite freshly ground coffee. If you’re not sure where to start, give our handy coffee quiz a try to be matched to your new favourite brew.
We recommend using 60g of ground coffee per litre of hot water. In most AeroPress plungers, this will make around four servings of concentrated coffee. This means that for one cup, you should use 15g of coffee grounds and 250ml of water. However, you can experiment with the exact ratio to figure out just how strong you like your AeroPress coffee.
When you pour your water over the coffee, it should be just off the boil — meaning that you should boil your kettle then leave it to stand for a minute before adding it to the AeroPress. This way, it should be just cool enough to avoid scalding the coffee grounds, which can make the final product overly bitter.
Stirring the coffee before you press the plunger can help to ensure that all the submerged grounds are evenly distributed and their flavour compounds are released. While it’s not an essential step of the AeroPress process, a quick (but gentle) stir can help to make your extracted coffee more consistent in body and flavour.
In order to reveal the full, complex flavour profile of your coffee, you’ll want to leave it to brew for about one and a half minutes before pressing. Any shorter than this and you might not get a particularly flavoursome drinking experience, but any longer and you risk over-brewing the coffee and being left with a more bitter cup.
To properly dispose of spent coffee grounds, you should add them to your food waste, general waste, or compost bin. Used grounds are a great ingredient to add to compost as they can help to break down organic waste and improve your soil quality.
