How to Use an AeroPress: Two Recipes, and Why They Disagree

Grind 11 to 15 g of coffee medium-fine, add it to the AeroPress, pour in 200 g of water just off the boil, and immediately seat the plunger about a centimetre into the chamber. Wait two minutes, give the whole brewer a gentle swirl, wait thirty seconds more, then press slowly and steadily. That is the method James Hoffmann settled on after testing the alternatives, and it is the best place to start.

The AeroPress is unusually forgiving, which is part of its appeal — and part of why there are so many recipes for it that contradict each other.

What the AeroPress actually is

It is a hybrid. For most of the brew the coffee steeps in water, like a French press. Then you push the liquid through a paper filter, which makes it behave like a filter brewer at the finish.

That combination is what gives it its character: the full extraction of immersion, with the clean, sediment-free cup that paper produces. Paper also holds back most of coffee's oils, so an AeroPress cup is lighter-bodied than a French press and largely free of the cafestol that unfiltered methods let through.

The pressure you apply is real but modest. Despite the frequent comparisons, an AeroPress does not make espresso; it makes a strong, clean coffee.

The everyday recipe

1. Put a filter in the cap and screw it on. Stand the AeroPress on a sturdy mug.
2. Add the coffee, then pour in all 200 g of water. Make sure everything is wet.
3. Seat the plunger about 1 cm into the top of the chamber. This creates a slight vacuum that stops coffee dripping through into the mug while it steeps — the problem the inverted method was invented to solve.
4. Wait two minutes.
5. Swirl the whole brewer gently, holding it by the chamber. This knocks grounds off the walls and settles the bed.
6. Wait thirty seconds, then press slowly, taking about thirty seconds. Stop when you hear a hiss.

At 11 g in 200 g this is a light, tea-like cup, around 55 g per litre — the bottom of the usual filter coffee range. Move towards 15 g for something fuller.

The concentrated, original style

Alan Adler, the engineer who invented the AeroPress, began prototyping it in his garage in 2004 and released it in 2005. His aim was a smoother, less bitter daily cup, and his original instructions reflect it: two scoops of fine-drip ground coffee and water at 80 °C, for a short, strong brew.

That style makes a small amount of concentrated coffee that you can top up with hot water for something like an Americano, or pour into milk. A version with weights:

1. Use 15–18 g of coffee, ground fine.
2. Add about 100 g of water, stir briefly, and press after about a minute.
3. Top up with 100–150 g of hot water, or use the concentrate in milk.

It is fast, it fits a mug of milk well, and it is why many people's first AeroPress tasted quite unlike filter coffee.

Why the temperature advice disagrees

This is the genuinely interesting argument in AeroPress brewing.

AeroPress, the company, recommends 80 °C for dark roasts and 85 °C for medium and light ones, on the grounds that cooler water delivers a smooth brew "without the bitterness and acidity that come with using hotter water." Many specialty brewers, Hoffmann among them, use water straight off the boil.

Both positions are reasonable, because they are answering different questions.

Hotter water extracts faster and more completely. A dark roast is porous and gives up its solubles easily — including the harsh, roast-derived bitter compounds — so cooler water keeps it in check. A light roast is dense and resists extraction; brewed at 80 °C it often comes out thin and sour. Extraction runs slower in cooler water, so the brew ends before the compounds that balance coffee's quick-dissolving acids have come out.

So the practical rule is to match the water to the roast. Dark roasts: start around 80–85 °C. Light roasts: start near the boil. Then adjust by taste, using the logic in the bitter and sour guide: sour means extract more (hotter, finer, longer), harsh means extract less.

The inverted method

In the inverted method you stand the AeroPress upside down on its plunger, add coffee and water, steep, then screw on the filter cap and flip the whole thing onto a mug before pressing.

It exists because in the normal orientation coffee starts dripping through the filter the moment you pour, so part of the water barely steeps at all. Inverting the brewer keeps every drop in contact with the grounds until you choose to press.

The cost is the flip itself: you are turning over a tube of near-boiling liquid balanced on a rubber seal, and it occasionally ends up on the counter. Seating the plunger a centimetre into the chamber, as in the everyday recipe above, stops the drip-through just as effectively without any flipping. Use the inverted method if you like it; you no longer need it.

Troubleshooting

If pressing feels like pushing against a wall, do not force it. The grind is too fine for the recipe, and pressing hard can crack the chamber or squirt hot coffee out of the seal.

No single right recipe

In 2008 a few friends in Oslo held a contest to see whose AeroPress recipe made the best cup. There were three competitors and they called it, ironically, the World AeroPress Championship. It has since become an international event, and the winning recipes are strikingly different from year to year: fine grinds and coarse ones, cool water and boiling, short brews and long, regular and inverted.

That variety is the most useful thing to know about the device. The AeroPress forgives a wide range of choices and rewards experiment. Start with the everyday recipe, change one variable at a time, and keep what you like.