Aeropress® the original press
Don’t you just despise a morning person? With their up-at-the-crack-of-dawn determination reminding you of your failure to welcome the new day before the sun is even awake. This screams pretentious. And as much as you try your utter best to be a cheery early riser, your biological clock has other plans for you. As your 5a.m. alarm clock moans, your reflex arc (the part of your nervous system that protects you from imminent danger, i.e. early mornings) involuntarily tears your arms out from under the duvet covers and hits that snooze button. Your body could do with a come kind of chemical aid to resurrect itself from sleep. An aromatic warm beverage in a cup to make this space in time more bearable.
Ah, coffee.
Of course, I’m not talking about your typical home espresso machine – and with it the sweet chorus of coffee beans grinding as you create an orchestra with your coffee grinder calling the entire neighborhood to life. We aren’t talking about your French press coffee plunger either, because let’s face it, who has time for that when you are half asleep? What I’m referring to is the unique AeroPress coffee maker.
Remember the 1970s when Alan Adler revolutionized the frisbee by creating what is known today as the Aerobie flying disc? Well, in 2005 it was the same Stanford University engineering genius who invented the Aeropress brewing device. Why wouldn’t you trust a man with the ability to make formulas and diagrams to build a better coffee maker?
This unique brewing method invites a duel brewing approach to coffee making. What makes it so different is that it combines immersion and pressure-based brewing in one. By fully immersing freshly ground coffee in hot water and stirring it, you allow more flavour to be absorbed and seeped into the water. Then, after that the coffee is plunged using air pressure, and even more flavour is extracted – all of this in less than one minute! Because the brewing time is shorter, the coffee isn’t as bitter and has a higher pH balance which means your coffee is less acidic. It’s basically like a coffee making syringe. You even have the option of brewing your coffee in two different ways, the traditional (an easy method, endorsed by Alan Adler) and the inverted way (a full immersion method where the coffee maker is flipped upside-down). Why? Because two methods are better than one.
Let’s not forget the importance of grind size. In order to make the perfect cup of coffee with your AeroPress, you have to understand coffee extraction. The reason there are different grinding sizes is to avoid over or under extracting your coffee. Under extraction means that you have not extracted enough flavour from your coffee which results in sour, acidic and sometimes salty coffee. Over extraction is when you’ve extracted too much coffee, leaving it overpowering and unpleasant
In Part 2 we’ll get into more of what Nacho Libre calls…”tha neety greety” but off-the-bat, out-of-the-box you’ll battle to make a bad cup with even the simple instructions on the box. So in an era of doing whatever it takes to have the new best thing, all the while trying to be “woke” (if you haven’t heard, woke is the new millennial term for being cool – like really cool) why not try the AeroPress? Some days I make coffee, other days coffee made from an AeroPress coffeemaker makes me.
The AeroPress® has fast become the cult brew method of coffee lovers in South Africa and abroad.
Features:
- Easy to use
- Portable
- Faster 2-3times faster that pour over dripper / french press / syphon
- Less sediment than Italian mocha pots & French press.
- Versatile.