A very simple yet excellent coffee making device
I own probably a dozen or more coffee making devices. One of my favorites is the AeroPress.
About a year ago, I authored a whole series of coffee 101 posts about my thoughts on coffee. At that time I mentioned the Aeropress, but it's worth mentioning what it is and why I like it so much. It's simple and cheap. You can pick them up for about $20-26 on Amazon. At first look it may seem like a small French press, but it's really quite different.
I often like to try new coffees. I always use very freshly roasted coffee. In this case I'm using Blue Jaguar Espresso from Redbird Coffee roasters. The coffee was roasted on 12/17 which was 6 days ago. For most coffees, especially when brewing espresso, 4-8 days out of roast is generally the sweet spot. I wasn't overly impressed with this roast for espresso. Although it wasn't bad, I've certainly had better. It may not be the coffee's fault. It might be my machine, my grinder, the brew temperature, my method, or my own subjectivity, but for whatever reason this coffee wasn't doing it for me, at least with espresso. From experience I know that just because a particular coffee doesn't respond well to one brewing method, doesn't mean it won't to another. On the Redbird web site for this coffee, they list the Aeropress as the 2nd most preferred brewing method, so out comes my Aeropress. Although the Aeropress is billed as an espresso maker, it isn't an espresso maker. However, it is somewhere in the middle between espresso and drop coffee in that it utilizes a very short brewing time (10-50 seconds) and the coffee is under increased atmospheric pressure during extraction.
So I set my grind level on my grinder for my Aeropress mark. The Aeropress gives you a bit of feedback on the grind level. If you grind too fine, it takes too much pressure to force the plunger down. If you grind too coarse, it takes too little. In this way you can regulate how much pressure it takes to extract by adjusting your grind level and to some degree affect the finished product. You can also vary the water temperature and even the extraction methods. There's all sorts of variations you can do with the Aeropress, which is why I love this device so much. However, today I'm keeping it simple. My grind level is somewhere between espresso and drip or in other words leaning towards a fine grind. My water temperature is 200F, and my steep time is 30 seconds before starting to plunge.
The results were fantastic and much better than with my espresso machine. The cupping notes were quite close to what I found. I generally prefer very high altitude coffees. I'm not sure which coffees they are using in this blend other than Honduran which is listed on the web site, but my guess is they are somewhat lower in altitude. I'm reasonably sure Sumatran is included as it has a fairly distinct flavor which seems to be present in this coffee.
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