The Aeropress

The brewer that needs zero introduction.

When we think about our favourite brewers, this little beauty is right there in the mix.

Perfect for travel and outdoor adventures, this versatile and extremely capable brewer has the capacity to churn out some incredible, balanced, rounded and super sweet brews.

If you know how to use it.

So today, as part of our How To Brew series, we're going to break down our current go-to Aeropress recipe, to help you get to tasty Aeropress coffee quickly.

There's a lot of complicated and interesting Aeropress recipes out there.

Inverted or regular? Stir or swirl? Bloom or no bloom?

There's just so many ways to play and experiment with this epic little brewer. That's actually one of the reasons why we love the Aeropress so much.

This recipe though, is a little bit different.

We've designed our Aeropress recipe to be simple.

Over the years, we've refined it down to something that's easy to follow, highly repeatable and a reliable way to get to a great Aeropress brew every time.

This is our current daily driver Aeropress recipe.

How To Brew Great Coffee On An Aeropress

  • Our Aeropress Brew Guide

    1. Put your paper filter in the cap, attach the cap to the bottom of the Aeropress and rinse the paper with a little water from the kettle. Put the Aeropress onto a sturdy cup or server that you can press down on safely.
    2. Put 14 grams of fairly fine ground coffee in the Aeropress. See pictures below for grind size guide.
    3. Zero your scales, start your timer, and pour all 200 grams of water straight in. We're not doing a bloom in this recipe, and we also want to get all of the water in reasonably quickly. No fancy pours needed here.
    4. Insert the stir stick, and gently move back and forth (i.e. 6 o'clock to 12 o'clock) 2 times, then left to right (3 o'clock to 9 o'clock) 2 times. Be gentle here, we don't want to add too much agitation.
    5. Place the plunger in the top of the Aeropress and take it off the scale. This just creates a slight vacuum and stops the coffee dripping through.
    6. At 2 minutes, hold the Aeropress and the plunger, and gently swirl.
    7. Use 1 hand to slowly press the plunger all the way down. This should take about 30 seconds, giving you a total brew time around about 2:30.

  • Quick Overview

    Coffee Dose: 14g

    Water: 200g

    Water Temp: 212F

    Grind Size: Fine (see below)

    Total Brew Time: 2:30

    Additional Tips

    Avoid pressing too hard on the plunge. You should be able to push down easily without having to push-push. If you can't easily plunge the whole brew in 30 seconds, you might be grinding a little too fine.

Aeropress Grind Size

One mistake that a lot of people (myself included) make when first getting started with the Aeropress, is not grinding fine enough.

Being an immersion brewer, it's actually harder than you think to over extract an Aeropress brew.

So you can grind finer than you might think, and still get great cups, and higher extractions.

The photo on the left, or above if you're on a mobile, shows you our usual starting point for an aeropress grind size.

Of course, you'll need to fine tune from here as you dial in each coffee. But something like this is where we usually start from with any of our coffees.

This grind size is a lot finer than the grind size we recommend for our V60 pour over recipe, but trust us, you're gunna have a good time.

And here's that grind size one more time, this time with the Brewler. We're probably at around 500-600 microns.

Single Origin Coffees For Aeropress

We recommend these great single origin coffees for Aeropress.

View all

FAQs

Troubleshooting & Dialling In

My brew tastes sour

Sour coffee usually means it's a little under extracted.

There's a couple of ways you can deal with that, but the first thing to try is to grind finer.

Grinding finer means that more surface area is exposed, and the coffee can be extracted more easily.

You could also try increasing your ratio and using more water to the same amount of coffee. But this will also take away some of the body of the cup and make your brew slightly more hollow. That might not necessarily be a bad thing. But if you're happy with everything else about the cup and just want to decrease the sourness a little, then definitely start with grind size first.

My brew tastes bitter

Pretty much exact opposite problem of the sour cup here.

Over extraction is likely the issue.

Try grinding a little more coarse.

You could also try reducing agitation. Maybe stir or swirl a little bit less and see if that helps. You'd be surprised at how much of a role agitation plays in extraction.

Our Latest Aeropress Tips & Tricks

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