How I Make My Best Coffee

30/12/2020

I love coffee. Well, I like specialty coffee, if I’m honest, that I brew with my Aeropress, my way.

I got my Aeropress, a few years ago, because I wanted better coffee than I could make with a moka pot, without buying a whole espresso machine. I don’t make coffee every day, but when I do, I want it to be really good.

What I like about the Aeropress is that it’s a manual tool. You don’t need power and it takes up very small space. Most importantly, I have full control over all the variables in the process:

  • Amount of coffee
  • Amount of water
  • Water temperature
  • Brewing time
  • Coffee coarseness (if you grind your own beans with a burr grinder).

With all variables under control, I can make almost any kind of coffee. No, you can’t make espresso with an Aeropress, but you can get close.

Protocol

The style of coffee I’m going for is similar to a cortado. It’s a strong coffee, almost as strong as espresso, to which I add a dash of milk. In Italy, I’d call this a macchiato freddo. In Trieste, we would probably call it a capo in b senza, or maybe un nero e se la ga un poco de latte freddo.

Concentration

The typical recommendation for the basic Aeropress recipe is 70-75g/L. That’s grams of ground coffee per litre of water. The result is, I would say, a typical American coffee.

I want something stronger, in a small volume. After a few trials, I found that the concentration that works best for me is approx. 170g/L. For a small cup, I usually go with 35mL of water and 6g of coffee.

Coarseness

Generally, the coffee should be ground as fine as possible, without giving a burnt aftertaste in the cup. If it does, it means it’s too fine. If it’s too coarse, the taste will steer towards more acidic notes.

This depends, of course, on the coffee quality and the roasting level, as well as on the coarseness. I usually choose lightly roasted beans and I try to aim for a final taste that is nutty, a bit acidic and has some notes of liquorice.

Water temperature

I used to take the temperature and make sure I’d stop the kettle at about 95C. As it turns out, this step is not so critical. Yes, it’s important to avoid brewing with too high temperature. But by the time the water touches the coffee, it’s always below the boiling point, anyway.

Now I just boil the water and try to use it as soon as the kettle turn off. One easier step in a kind of time-consuming way of making coffee ;)

Steps

Quantities for 2 cups. I usually brew 1 or 2 cups at a time, but I reckon you could do 3-4. I usually press the coffee in a large cup and then split it into 2 smaller ones.

  1. Measure 12g of coffee beans. I use a precision scale.
  2. Select grinder coarseness.
  3. Put the beans in the manual grinder.
  4. Boil some water while you start grinding. The water should be enough for the coffee, as well as preheating the cup(s) and the Aeropress.
  5. Pour some boiling water in the large cup and on the Aeropress to preheat them, and on the paper filter to wash it.
  6. Mount the Aeropress in the inverted method (the amount of coffee is too little to use the traditional method, all the water will drip directly into the cup). Put the ground coffee in.
  7. Put the Aeropress on a scale and pour in 70g of water from the kettle.
  8. Stir gently, put the cap with the filter on, and let it brew for 2 minutes. The time here depends on the quality of coffee, coarseness and on personal taste. I found that about 2 minutes works well for the types of coffee I buy.
  9. When the timer goes off, pour the hot water from the large cup into the smaller ones. Press the coffee slowly and push the Aeropress to the very end, to collect as much liquid as possible.
  10. Split the coffee into 2 smaller cups.
  11. Add 15-25g of milk in each cup. It can be hot or cold, frothy or not. Lately I’ve found that oat milk works just as well.
  12. Enjoy!

Yield

I weigh the beans only before grinding: Considering that the grinding yield will be somewhat less than 100%, the coffee that actually goes into the brew might be less than 6g. For the sake of simplicity, though, I consider the grinding yield to be 100%.

Part of the liquid remains in the coffee cake after pressing, and is therefore lost. If we express the yield of the process as (g of brewed coffee) divided by (g of beans + g of water), I found the yield to be approx. 66%.

Bonus: Espresso Martini

Being able to get the best out of coffee calls for a great espresso martini! I like to make a simplified version of the cocktail with just two ingredients: freshly brewed coffee and vodka.

I use a standard Aeropress concentration of 70g/L. The final cocktail will be roughly 1 part coffee and 1 part vodka — I guess you could call it a wet espresso martini?

Steps

Quantities for 2 cocktails.

  1. Brew the coffee following the steps above, except:

    • use 7g of coffee beans and 100g of water
    • brew for 3 minutes
    • there’s no need to preheat the cup
  1. The yield is higher, about 80%, thanks to the fact that dilution is higher.
  2. Cool down the coffee to room temperature.
  3. Put a small amount of demerara sugar and a large chunk of ice in the shaker. Pour the coffee in.
  4. Put 2 measures of vodka per each cocktail. In this case, about 100mL.
  5. Shake!
  6. Strain into two martini glasses and enjoy.