Aeropress: The New Rite
It is like a vernacular liturgy.
Just load up the column, the way we used to pack a chromatographic column. But this time, you're using ground coffee, not silica. Even the skill of adding the fluid to the solid phase seems similar. But the Aeropress is different. There's a microfilter at the bottom of the column, for a start.
With the Aeropress, you add warm water add around 80°C to the coffee. You can even add cold water to the coffee and then top it up with hot water. Too hot, and you'll burn the coffee, extracting bitterness. Too cold, and you probably won't extract much.
Then you put the plunger in and steadily compress, until the slurry becomes a packed mass (a 'puck') and the crema is oozing out at the bottom of the column, where the detachable filter is screwed in.
Collect the brew. Savour it. And also, in passing, savour the ease with which you can unscrew the filter, pop out the puck (it makes that sound too, when 'pucked'), and wash up in less than a minute. Ready for another round.
But first, contemplation of what has been wrought. Simplicity and complexity, and the enlightenment of the bean. Ahhhhh.
Just load up the column, the way we used to pack a chromatographic column. But this time, you're using ground coffee, not silica. Even the skill of adding the fluid to the solid phase seems similar. But the Aeropress is different. There's a microfilter at the bottom of the column, for a start.
With the Aeropress, you add warm water add around 80°C to the coffee. You can even add cold water to the coffee and then top it up with hot water. Too hot, and you'll burn the coffee, extracting bitterness. Too cold, and you probably won't extract much.
Then you put the plunger in and steadily compress, until the slurry becomes a packed mass (a 'puck') and the crema is oozing out at the bottom of the column, where the detachable filter is screwed in.
Collect the brew. Savour it. And also, in passing, savour the ease with which you can unscrew the filter, pop out the puck (it makes that sound too, when 'pucked'), and wash up in less than a minute. Ready for another round.
But first, contemplation of what has been wrought. Simplicity and complexity, and the enlightenment of the bean. Ahhhhh.
Labels: Coffee
etched with acid at 10:24:00 am
3 Comments:
Heavenly, isn't it?
I once got an unusually large amount of 'crema', but I haven't been able to reproduce that result.
I've been experimenting with reverse Aeropressing. Put the plunger in to about '3', without the filter on. Stand the press upside down on the plunger.
Preheat with warm water, empty it, then lob ground coffee in. Add 80°C water to the 1 mark or higher. Stir, watch for crema. Wet the filter and filter cap, then screw the cap on.
Put a mug on top of the inverted apparatus. Revert (haha, correct use of term). Aeropress normally. But this time, the crema is trapped on the filter side and will come through copiously!
Ah, the air pocket and the reversion perhaps? Although the prop at Highlander showed me the reverse method, I haven't tried it yet. Sounds like fun.
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