Re: Aeropress?
It might well be worth splitting this topic to create a new topic on filter.
I have to say that I just dont get the seeming lack of enthusiasm for filter coffee. CS members seem to have nothing but reverential oohs and aahs for cupping, vac pot and clover, yet few people seem to have any time for filter, which produces a similar cup.
Filter is quite popular in the US of A, including coffee professionals. They have a much easier time getting very high quality green coffee than we do here, so I think that its worth at least giving them some consideration. Not to mention the surprising number of roasters and other coffee industry dudes here who surreptitiously enjoy drip. At the end of the day, closing your mind to it only really deprives you of anything.
I think that to some extent I might just have different taste preferences from other people. I used the aeropress quite extensively when Veneziano added it to their range and I wanted to work out how to use it to be able to advise my customers. I thought that the inverted method to make a long black type drink was the best, and was quite good if thats what you were after.
I agree that aeropress brings out more body than drip; the gravity feeding limitation of drip means that you only get so much stuff in the cup. However, I think that neither aeropress nor french press are really able to capture the array of flavours, or, at least, to reproduce the flavours with as much clarity. It may well be that this isnt coincidence; perhaps it is the absence of whatever compounds create body that allows the more subtle flavours to speak up louder. Its like tasting the top of a cupping bowl compared with the bottom. Again, Im not saying that one is better than the other, Im just saying that most of the time I enjoy being able to really appreciate the different flavours that coffee has to offer.
... best three cents per cup I ever spent ;P
Thanks for that, Ian. Last time that I googled, nothing came up.
If you were using that much coffee, you must like coffee with a very high brew ratio. Filter is not a good way to brew this style of coffee and your experience perfectly illustrates what I have been saying - different people have different preferences.
There is an excellent chart around that shows the effect on flavour of changing the amount of coffee that you use here
One of the first things that I did when I got my pourover drip brewers was to stick a thermocouple in the top, thinking that I wanted to see how bad those pieces of junk were. I was forced to eat my words when the temperature drop across the brew turned out to put most espresso machines to shame. When I get some time, I guess that I should take a few photos.
That is totally incorrect. You can control the brew temperature by changing the temperature of the water that you pour in. You can control the grind and dose as for any other brewing method. With some brewers, you can have a steep time before the main brew starts.
To give you an example, today I thought that the coffee that I was drinking was a bit peppery and slightly bitter. A simple grind adjustment three notches coarser fixed that. I am looking forward to learning more from Lingles book, when I get it.
What the Aeropress allows the user to do that drip does not is to force the extraction to terminate when they want. If you prefer the flavours that you extract from the early part of an extraction, chances are that you will appreciate this feature of the Aeropress. You can also increase the steep time by using the aeropress in the inverted method. Other than that, you can control the variables in exactly the same way as you can with a filter brewer.
Cheers,
Luca
It might well be worth splitting this topic to create a new topic on filter.
I have to say that I just dont get the seeming lack of enthusiasm for filter coffee. CS members seem to have nothing but reverential oohs and aahs for cupping, vac pot and clover, yet few people seem to have any time for filter, which produces a similar cup.
Filter is quite popular in the US of A, including coffee professionals. They have a much easier time getting very high quality green coffee than we do here, so I think that its worth at least giving them some consideration. Not to mention the surprising number of roasters and other coffee industry dudes here who surreptitiously enjoy drip. At the end of the day, closing your mind to it only really deprives you of anything.
Judging by your post it sounds like you dont have much time for the Aeropress, which is fine. Though Im kind of wondering how often you may have actually used one. People who do use it regularly seem to be very satisfied with the results, and as you say, its whats in the cup that counts.
Personally, I too prefer having a long black when using the Aeropress (a couple of times a day). As for drip coffee, I find it doesnt provide anywhere near the spectrum of body or flavours the Aeropress can offer using different grind settings and coffees.
And BTW, 350 Aeropress filters for $6.00 works out at roughly a third of the cost of what youre buying at safeway.
I bought a bodum kona around a year ago and found the gold mesh weave to be suspectly similar to the swiss gold mesh (id go as far as to say identical except for the little bodum insignia), but im pretty sure a simple google search yields a number of online traders who sell for around $25, but you dont get the cool bodum caraf!
THe thing that bugs me about the cone drip is how wasteful of coffee it is - you probably need about 50 grams of coffee to get a decent cup - so what you save in gear you spend in coffee.
There is an excellent chart around that shows the effect on flavour of changing the amount of coffee that you use here
Also, there is a risk that, as the water drains through, some of the coffee will be overextracted and some underextracted, and the water cools dramatically along side all that coffee.
It is basically impossible to control the process.
To give you an example, today I thought that the coffee that I was drinking was a bit peppery and slightly bitter. A simple grind adjustment three notches coarser fixed that. I am looking forward to learning more from Lingles book, when I get it.
The Aeropress allows the user to control some of the variables to get the extraction rates right.
Cheers,
Luca





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