AeroPress Complete Guide: An Easier Tutorial Than the Manufacturer's Instructions

For professional barista exchanges, follow along with FrontStreet Coffee.

As the newest trendy brewing tool, the AeroPress has been drawing a lot of attention, and the reason is simple: it is genuinely innovative.

Operated by hand and using pressure to push the coffee out, the AeroPress is unlike anything that came before it. Here is how to use a device that is neither a French press nor an espresso machine.

How Many Ways Can You Use an AeroPress?

The AeroPress is a brewer with a great many variables, which means handling the equipment is a whole experience rather than a single recipe. Because it demands more of your attention on timing and speed, everyone ends up with a personal approach, new methods keep appearing, and the perfect extraction has yet to be found.

We will start with how to handle the equipment, then look at the techniques and preferences people develop for themselves.

How to Handle AeroPress Operations

What You Need to Prepare

• A complete AeroPress set
• A sturdy container
• Hot water: around 80°C
• Coffee grounds: medium to medium-fine grind

Note: Thin cups and glass containers can crack under the pressure of extraction, so follow the instruction and use a sturdy container. When you press down firmly, a thick-walled cup is the safer choice.

Step 1: Inverted Method

Until you are comfortable with the brewer, use the so-called inverted method.

The upside-down technique is not in the manual, but you will see plenty of coffee shops working this way. In practice it stops liquid leaking and makes the whole operation far easier, which is why it suits beginners.

Step 2: Apply Filter to the Cap

This is simply an extra illustration. If the filter comes out of the cap, wet it with a little water so the paper sticks to the cap.

Extraction is time-sensitive, so preparing these parts in advance is the secret to a good cup.

Step 3: Pour in Coffee Grounds

Now pour the coffee grounds into the AeroPress. Keep the bed as level as you can, which gives you the conditions for a more even, easier extraction.

Step 4: Add Hot Water, Stir and Wait

With the grounds in, add the hot water.

Once the water is in, stir gently so the grounds and water get properly acquainted, then leave it to sit for as long as you like.

Step 5: Set Up Filter and Container

When the time comes, first fit the filter you prepared in step 2.

Then set the container on top and invert. The coffee is now ready to press.

Step 6: Flip Over and Press

With everything ready, flip it over and press down slowly from above. Press too hard and the container can be damaged, so take it gently.

The centre of force also shifts as you press, so it is best to use both hands and push from directly above.

When the coffee is out, you are done. Leave the AeroPress inverted so no liquid leaks.

How to Make It More Delicious?

The question FrontStreet Coffee gets asked most is simply how to make it taste better.

Since the AeroPress appeared it has grown steadily in popularity and it is still a brewer in development, so how people use it varies enormously. Even among professionals, the waiting time and the pressing speed differ.

Even when explaining how to make AeroPress coffee, it may not be a matter of explaining one single cup - there is no fixed number of seconds to wait, or grams of beans to use, that can be handed to you. The fact that no standard method exists is also the greatest pleasure of the brewer.

Read widely, try different references and experiment until you find your own dose and timing.

That may well be the most delicious way to make AeroPress coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The AeroPress shares its basic logic with the French press: hot water and grounds steep together, then the brew is separated at the end. That means the lessons that apply to immersion brewing apply here too. For an immersion brew FrontStreet suggests a coarse-sugar grind - an EK43s setting of 10.5, or 26 on a hand grinder - closer to small gravel than fine sand. Grind too fine and the water races through the bed, and although that is rarely a problem in other immersion brewers, with a press-style setup fine particles can slip through the metal filter and leave mud at the bottom of the cup.

Where the French press typically sits at a 1:15 ratio (15 g of coffee to 225 g of water, giving a concentration of about 1.1-1.2%), around 90°C water, and an immersion time of three to five minutes, FrontStreet suggests starting at four minutes. An immersion brewer also has no stirring to raise extraction, so a water temperature one or two degrees above a normal pour-over helps make up the difference. Steeped coffee like this is at its best with a medium or darker roast, which expresses sweetness and caramel notes better than a light roast would.

For that kind of cup, FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Candy is a good place to start. It is a Geisha blend built from a Costa Rican honey-processed coffee and a Panamanian washed Geisha, combining the best of Central American flavour. Steeped in a press it gives rose, citrus, grape and dried blueberry aromas, and with milk added it turns into strawberry gummy.

If you want a low-acid cup with heavy body instead, FrontStreet Coffee's PWN Golden Mandheling is the classic choice. As one of Asia's best-known specialty coffees, it goes through three rounds of hand sorting plus one machine sort, leaving even, translucent beans. After a medium-dark roast the beans are large and carry intense spice, caramel, cedar and dark chocolate aromas, and the pressed cup is full-bodied with plenty of oil.