Anyone got AP tips? Ive been using it for a while and have kind of cracked a recipe that works well enough, but its still a bit hit or miss, and if i try and change anything it mostly goes horribly.
what does āgoes horriblyā mean? I find the aeropress pretty forgving, I weigh my beans and I basically just eyeball the water and donāt use a timer or anything and itās more than consistent enough for me
Describe the flavor of the horrible coffee, e.g., āitās bitter,ā āitās sour,ā āit tastes like Starbucks.ā
Mostly it goes too bitter. Its black instead of brown. Its over extracted.
Yeah sounds over Xād. What kind of coffee? Grind size, brew time, water temp?
Im not asking to fix my specific brew. Like i said. Ive got something that works. Im looking for general tips for Aeropress. what works for you, what to check for, etc.
Try steeping in warm water and add boiling to get the temp up after you press. Make it stronger than normal so you can bring the temp up and strength down to your liking. I donāt do this every time, but the cups are super smooth when I do.
If itās hit or miss then something in your process is off. You should be able to replicate cups almost exactly if itās the same coffee. Go back to extraction basics and try to figure out where itās breaking down. If you have a fixed grind size, brew time, and water temp then it would be unusual to get much variation.
150 sounds insanely low, even for the Aeropressās recommended brewing temperature. Is there some reason you canāt grind coarser and brew at a proper temperature with AP?
Could be that your grinder is producing too many fines. IME this is really common with dark roasts because carbonized beans tend to āshatterā during grinding. I suspect this is why people claim to prefer lower temps for darker roasts. For city/city+ Iām trying to get all of the acids into the cup (or my nose) and that requires high temps.
Iām into coffee for the acidity. Need high temps to get all of it. My ideal coffee profile is something like ācandied green appleā or ābubblegum rose.ā
Maybe Iāve mentioned this before but hereās a random tip: if your grinds tend to be messy, measure out your beans in a cup, dip your finger in water, then use it to stir the beans before grinding. It will eliminate the static electricity that causes grinds to cling.
Iāve been keeping better notes this year (I started logging my cuppas in a spreadsheet on Jan 1st), a few things Iām noticing:
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I usually brew ~8oz with the aeropress, when I make a bigger cup to take with me in a travel tumbler, I just double the beans/water and the resulting cup almost always tastes significantly worse (some combo of too much charred, bitter, muddy flavors)
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longer brew times in the aeropress are really working out well (Iāve gone from an average 60 seconds to 120-150 seconds)
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Comandante C40 was harder to find than PS5 (I actually scored one) around Xmas, so I decided to just repair my grinder. Not only was the motor bad, I noticed that a flange had snapped off the upper burr holder further compromising grind quality. Ordered those and a few spare parts for backup and did the repair. Grind quality is good again so I obv went right back to the gesha lol.
needed a new travel mug, picked this up
So far I like it, nice size (I got the 12oz) and the construction is really nice.
they have a version that has a āsplash guardā that I guess makes it less likely youāll slosh coffee all over yourself while riding in a car or whatever, but itās narrower and you canāt fit an aeropress into it so I got the āregularā fatter version.
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I actually like this design a lot, especially with the ceramic inner. Iāve been through a lot of travel mugs, all of them bad.
it kinda sucks, because the āmoveā version with the splashguard fits into a cup holder, but is too narrow for aeropress, while the regular one fits aeropress but doesnāt have the guard and doesnāt fit my cupholder which I thought was pretty generous (2006 honda accord). I can set the cup likeā¦ on top of the cupholder and it sort of stays put but I wouldnāt put it there with the lid off.
I guess the only good solution is a tapered, tall cup thatās wide at the top and quickly narrows to a standard diameter. :(
I guess using a thermos is old-fashioned.
Holds about 16 ounces and I fill it with coffee then drink it throughout the day at work. Itās normally finished by late morning though.
Of course work from home allows me to drink coffee without one. So itās gathering a bit of dust.
I just think of a thermos as a bigger travel mug, thereās really no fundamental difference.
I donāt need anything bigger because I work from home, and when I do travel (which used to be very frequently) I just buy coffee on the road as needed and donāt want to lug around yet another Thing.
Ah yeah Iād have to get the Move then. I still havenāt seen a travel mug with the correct internal flaring design which is something Iād snap buy. Hell, itās hard to find a regular coffee mug that has it. Out of all the mugs Iāve owned (dozens), I always found myself going back to this one specific mug:
You can see that the bottom of the chamber is rather tall and narrow, but it flares out to a thin lip at the top. I wrote about this before and made an MS Paint illustration:
I think cup design is one of the most overlooked aspects by specialty coffee people. Some exceptional coffees Iāve brewed tasted incredibly boring in regular mugs yet really came to life in a bone china tea cup, my preferred vessel aorn. My favorite for travel is the wax paper Starbucks-style cups but I stopped using them due to recycling issues.
The snifter / nosing glass design is probably optimal with the round bottom and hourglass shape, but Iāve only seen these in double-walled borosilicate (notoriously fragile) or metal which affects the flavor afaict:
ok, this thing is bullshit, right?
if this makes any difference at all in blind taste tests I would be absolutely shocked
itās not surprising weāre seeing more and more audiophile-style scams, at least the prices of the coffee scams arenāt really that bad (if this thing were an audiophile tool it would cost $3500 instead of $35).