Monday, September 5, 2011

Aeropressin'

Today, I brewed up some of Thursday's Costa Rican with the Aeropress. My technique involves mixing 14g of coffee with 240g of water in the Aeropress, and brewing for a minute and half. Then I turn it over and press into a glass. I checked the result on my refractometer.

I had the grinder set at 25, and ground directly into the Aeropress:

I boil 240g of filtered water, allow it to cool to about 208, and begin pouring into the inverted Aeropress:


I stir the slurry vigorously when it's about half full, then pour in the rest:

This can be difficult with freshly roasted coffee, as the bloom is larger. Sometimes I need to add in stages to get all the water to fit. Regardless, I start the 1.5 minute countdown as soon as the water meets the coffee.  As this is a full immersion brew, there is no need for a prewet.


The resulting brew had 1.56% total dissolved solids (24% extraction). WAY too strong and bitter, so I dialed down the grinder.  I decided to try 30, which is a bit finer than I had been using for drip. This resulted in 1.31% TDS and a 20% extraction. Pretty darn good.



It's amazing what a seemingly minor adjustment to the grind size can do.

3 comments:

  1. It has been a long time since you've updated. What are you doing with your coffee these days?

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  2. Wow, this is some serious coffee detail. I cannot imagine myself measuring out coffee by the gram at 5:00 in the morning though.

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    Replies
    1. It's not so bad. I usually just do a 16:1 ratio of brewing water to beans. Works for pretty much any technique. keeping the ration fixed allows you to troubleshoot other aspects of your technique.

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