I’ve been using James Hoffman’s recipe since I bought AeroPress, and I was pretty satisfied. While being simple, it produced rich, balanced cups of coffee for both light and medium roasts. I was happy with it. But then I started noticing that some light-roasted coffee was too bitter. It rarely happened, but when it did, it wasn’t possible to get rid of that excessive bitterness. When I tried to increase the grind size, I got watery, but still too bitter coffee. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the coffee beans, but then I thought, maybe immersion brewing was just not suitable for them. So, I decided to find another recipe.

I wanted to try a hybrid recipe containing a percolation phase, as I believed it could produce more balanced cups. So I searched on the Aeromatic app and found a recipe from The Real Sprometheus. It has a long percolation phase and quite a short immersion phase. And this recipe fixed my coffee. I got a balanced cup without excessive bitterness and with more detailed acidity. Now, this is my recipe to go, as I think it’s superior to James Hoffman’s recipe.

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
    3·
    3 months ago

    I’ve had an Aeropress for about a decade, and for the price I think it’s a great tool to have in the cupboard. It has positives and negatives.

    On the plus side, it’s portable, fast, and makes a single serving.

    On the downside, it’s single serving, and it produces mediocre cups (IMO, YMMV).

    I use mine to make my wife’s once-weekly decaf, and when I run myself out of cold brew and am not in the mood for an espresso drink. Maybe 5x a month. I’m really glad I have it; I’d be unhappy if it were the only thing I had.

    If you do get one, look on YouTube for best Aeropress method. Aeropress runs a competition and declares a winner for best method; the current winner is a rather fussy inverted method - but given the design, “fussy” for an Aeropress really isn’t hugely different in effort from Hoff’s “simplified” method. It’s a pretty simple process and you really have to go out of your way to make it hard, unlike pour-over which can be fractally and infinitely fussified.