An Aeropress Recipe For Two

Everyone agrees, the Aeropress Coffee Maker is a fantastic brewing device. It's portable, virtually un-breakable, easy to use and, most importantly, it makes great coffee. Even better, the internet is littered with lots of different recipes to try, from pros and amateurs alike.

As a home barista brewing for yourself, you're spoiled for choice on how to use your Aeropress, but interestingly, there are very few recipes out there that explain how to brew two cups at the same time. Recognising that many lovers of coffee come in pairs, we thought we'd try to help remedy that situation.

It is worth mentioning that this is less of a problem when you're brewing short espresso-style shots. The instructions that come with your Aeropress and the markers on the side will help you with that. One easy solution is just to brew two of those and then dilute. However, a lot of the excitement around the Aeropress is about longer filter-style brews, most often using the inverted method.

This blog post is about how to make two delicious filter-style coffees with your Aeropress at the same time. Purists will tell you that you'll get better results brewing two cups separately and there may well be a small benefit in doing that. But if you want to be able to wake up in the morning and quickly brew some coffee for yourself and a loved one, this recipe should prove a lot more convenient without much compromise on the flavour!

The Approach

If you want to get straight to the recipe, feel free to skip ahead, but for those who are interested, here's a word on this recipe's approach. The main constraint the Aeropress has is its capacity (~250ml). To make enough coffee for two cups, you need more than that.

To achieve this, while producing something very similar to "typical" Aeropress coffee, we're going to brew concentrate and then dilute it. We're going to aim for the same ratio of coffee to water in terms of yield but we're going to make the steep time a bit longer, to offset the potentially slower rate of extraction caused by the higher concentration of coffee in the water.

What You'll Need

We've divided up the list of what you'll need into two sections, the essentials and those accessories which can help you fine tune your brew. You can definitely brew delicious coffee with just the basic equipment. In fact, that initial list is ideal for travelling if you want to brew coffee for two on the road.

The essentials

• An Aeropress (obviously)
• All your Aeropress's accessories (scoop, funnel, paddle, filter cap, filters)
• A coffee grinder
• A kettle to heat your water
• A jug to brew into that can hold ~500ml of liquid
• Some way to measure the volume of what you brew - a kitchen scale works well but you can also just brew into a measuring cup
• Something to time with - your phone will do!

Nice to haves

• A coffee scale
• A timer (alternatively the Hario Drip Scale can weigh & time for you all in one)
• A thermometer

How to Brew Two Cups of Coffee With an Aeropress

Here are the step by step instructions with photographs. You may want to read through everything once before starting so you can just skim through for reminders the first time you try the recipe. Reading the whole thing and brewing at the same time may be challenging!

Step 1: Put your Kettle on to boil with a bit more than 500ml water (aiming for ~93C)

If you've got a digital thermometer, then you can decide to stop your kettle when it hits ~93C or you can let it boil and then wait 1-2 minutes for it to cool down to around that temperature. Our favourite trick is to pour freshly boiled water into a Hario Buono Kettle which brings it to about the right temperature instantly.

Step 2: Weigh 36g of coffee & grind to a medium setting

We're using 2x the amount of coffee you'd use for a regular inverted brew. If you don't have a scale, it should be about two heaping Aeropress scoops. Any burr grinder, manual or electric will do the trick here. We use setting 5 on the Severin Coffee Grinder.

Step 3: Set up your inverted Aeropress and put the coffee into the chamber

Step 4: Set a timer for 2 minutes, press start, bloom with a small amount of water and stir

The aim here is just to saturate all the coffee grounds. You'll form what almost looks like a thick paste. This is to encourage any trapped CO2 to get out of the way and let the extraction happen properly afterwards.

Step 5: Fill the Aeropress chamber almost to the top, leaving room for more stirring

You should have ~1m30s left on the clock at this point. You want to top up the Aeropress as much you can while allowing for spill-free stirring. Stir for 10-15s, really getting the coffee and water moving for maximum extraction. This is particularly important since you're brewing concentrate.

Step 6: Fill the Aeropress to the very top & leave to steep

Now you just let the extraction magic happen for the remainder of the 2 mins you started with (there should be ~1 min left). This is a bit longer than your typical Aeropress steep time because we're making sure to get a full extraction despite the higher ratio of coffee to water. This is a good time to wet your paper filter.

Step 7: Place the filter cap on the Aeropress, flip onto your brewing jug and plunge (should take 30-45s)

You'll need to put the filter cap on just a little before the time runs out to make sure you're ready. Don't rush the plunging process. It may be a little harder because of the amount of coffee in the chamber. Take your time and keep pushing through the hiss at the end until every drop of concentrate is out.

Step 8: Dilute to ~430ml

Why 430ml? We're aiming to get double the yield of a 250ml/18g Aeropress extraction. If you had a giant Aeropress & brewed 500ml/36g, you'd expect each gram of coffee to absorb ~2ml of water so the yield would be about ~430ml (428ml if this were exact).

A measuring cup is an easy way to go here but you can also do this using a scale. The trick is to tare the scale with the empty jug before you press into it, then put it back on the scale with the concentrate. You'll be somewhere around 200g and then you can just fill up to ~430g.

Note: Don't plunge on top of your scale - that's a surefire way to break it

Happy Brewing!

As with all coffee recipes, you should absolutely tweak this recipe to suit your taste, but hopefully you have a good foundation here - this should help you score some points with a loved one and get your own coffee fix, quickly & easily!

How To Make Better Coffee In 2015

As the festive season draws to a close, we're now well & truly into the start of a new year. This is a time when many people think about what they want to improve in their lives - shouldn't your coffee be one of them?

If you're passionate, or even just curious, about coffee (which you probably are as you're reading this post), then improving the coffee you brew for yourself should be top of mind. There's lots of very specific advice out there on how to brew, but in this post, we thought we'd take a step back and touch on some basic principles you should think about.

 

But first...

It really should go without saying... but just in case... the suggestions that follow assume that you're already doing the basics. For the avoidance of doubt, those basics are:

1. Buying coffee prepared by a local, artisanal roaster
2. Using fresh, whole beans and grinding them yourself, just before you brew
3. Grinding those beans with a burr grinder rather than a blade grinder (or any other contraption)

If you're not yet doing any one of those 3 things, stop reading and address that first. Stale and unevenly ground coffee will make it really difficult to enjoy a great cup regardless of what else you do. Assuming that you've got those basics covered, here are our suggestions on how to take it to the next level.

Note: it does not matter what brew method you use, these principles apply across the board

1) Measure

Management clichés aside, if you're not measuring the variables that go into your coffee brewing, you're flying blind. You can't eyeball a difference of 2g of coffee, let alone a 3 degree temperature difference, and those kind of variations can drastically change your cup of coffee.

Measuring your brewing variables will help you achieve consistency and will also help you understand how changes you're making are affecting your cup (see the next point). The things you should be measuring include (in order of importance):

• Grams of coffee (ideally in 0.1g increments)
• Grams or millilitres of water (they're equivalent)
• Extraction time
• Water temperature

All of those variables are fundamental in coffee brewing and can be measured using some pretty basic equipment, most of which you probably already have in your kitchen.

2) Experiment

Once you start measuring your brewing variables and start getting delicious & consistent cups of coffee, don't rest on your laurels. Someone once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The same applies to coffee - your brew's not going to get better by repeating the same process.

When you actually know what your brewing variables are (because you're measuring them), you can start to adjust them to see what the impact is. The fact is that there is no such thing as a Platonic cup of coffee - there's always room for improvement. If you don't test different variables out, you won't get to experience that improvement.

Another important reason to experiment is to try to get the best out of different beans. Anyone reading this is unlikely to be the type of person that drinks the same coffee all the time. Different coffee beans will react differently to brewing variables so when you're trying something new, make sure to take the time to tweak, particularly when the result isn't as good as you expected. It may not be the coffee, it may be your brewing variables.

3) Isolate your variables

Imagine you make one of the best cups of coffee you've ever made, using a particular bean that you're very fond of. Someone asks you what you did differently and you answer that you added 3g more coffee, brewed 4 degrees colder and for 20s longer. Guess what? You have no idea why that coffee's better than it was before.

When you experiment, you need to tweak as few variables at a time as possible. Like a lab scientist, if you're not keeping everything else more or less constant, you can't attribute improvements to any particular change. Perhaps even more importantly, you're not going to learn much from your experiments to make you a better coffee brewer overall.

Be patient - you're going to make and drink a lot of coffees in your life. Take the time to apply a bit of the scientific method to your endeavours and in the long run, you will be a better amateur barista for it.

Any other thoughts?

Those are our thoughts on the principles you should be using to improve your coffee brewing this year. Did we miss anything? Disagree on any of our points? Feel free to leave your contributions in the comment section - we'd love to hear what you have to say!

Michael MacDonald applies scientific precision to Aeropress brewing

Mike MacDonald is just one of those coffee guys that you want to chat to. He takes knowing his stuff to a whole new level - he's the guy you call in when someone has a really technical coffee question. He roasts incredible coffees for Origin Coffee Roasting and he also delves deep into the science of coffee brewing. Mike recently started sharing his knowledge and the results of his research and experimentation in blog posts on Medium - the first of which was Understanding flavour in the Aeropress.

For the scientifically-minded, Mike's article is a fantastic read and for us, it begged an obvious question - how exactly does he recommend brewing with the Aeropress? Well we asked, he showed us, we tasted the results and it became very clear - this was something we needed to share. Below you'll find Mike's detailed, step by step Aeropress brewing guide that he uses to train Baristas. You can use the diagram with the Aeropress components for reference.

Aeropress Brewing Variables

• Use 17.5 grams to 200ml water (this should almost fill your inverted Aeropress to the top)
• Grind to a setting between espresso and filter - err towards the finer side
• The water temperature for brewing should be 85-90ºC (88ºC exactly is better)
• Total extraction time: 1m45s - 1m50s

Aeropress Brewing Process

1. Use the inverted method: place the plunger with rubber seal about 2cm into the chamber so that it has a solid connection and then turn the Aeropress upside down so that the chamber is facing up (see photo)
2. Take the filter cap, place a filter paper in it and run some water through
3. Pre-heat your cup or serving jug with hot water and then discard the water
4. Grind your coffee and add it into the top chamber of the Aeropress - use the Aeropress funnel if helpful
5. Pour the brewing water onto the coffee till about mid-way up the top chamber and start a timer
6. Stir  the coffee, making sure the coffee grounds are all wet, scraping around the sides and especially bottom (just until the grounds are saturated)
7. Now pour the rest of the water in - to about 1cm below the top rim
8. Allow it to brew for 20 seconds ...then gently stir again in a back-forward, left-right motion - 10 movements, 5 in each direction
9. Allow the coffee to brew till 45 seconds on the timer
10. Lock the cap holding the filter into the chamber at the top
11. Carefully turn the Aeropress in one swift motion and place it directly on the preheated cup or jug
12. Plunge straight down with a mild force, until you hear air, then stop (this should take ~1 min so that the total extraction time is 1m45s - 1m50s)