I struggle to function in the mornings without a cup of coffee. To be honest, it also has to be a good cup of coffee. Instant just doesn’t cut it. A few years ago my little stovetop espresso pot gave up and I had to find an alternative. I think I stumbled upon the Aeropress by seeing it in a posh coffee shop (maybe Prufrock) but had also seen lots of friends mention it online. It cost about £25 and comes with a nice case and various attachments, all of which are pretty useful. The basic idea is to mix hot water and ground coffee in the barrel, and then force the coffee through a small paper filter using the pressure created when you push down on the piston of the Aeropress. Very simple and very effective.
Aeropress is made by Aerobie, Inc which started life in Palo Alto, California as a vehicle to sell engineer Alan Adler’s inventions. Before the Aeropress came the Aerobie flying disk which I remember as a kid — I think high sales were mainly down to it being so easy to lose because it flew so far. But in the mid 2000s Adler solved his own problem which was that he didn’t like that he had to make 6–8 cups in a drip coffee machine when he only wanted one. The design came pretty quickly to him, they started churning them out, coffee lovers thought it was great and the company is doing better than ever.
The full kit for coffee making for me these days is actually a Pact subscription, a deLonghi burr grinder as well as the aeropress. I also introduced them to the BGV office and have probably sold quite a few as I make coffee for visitors and they ask ‘what’s that?’. I now sound like a proper salesman but the best bit is that is that it’s so easy to clean. The ‘puck’ of coffee grounds just pops out when you’re done and you only need to give it a quick rinse.
So there you go — a great piece of kit I use every day at a fraction of the cost of expensive machines — a wonderfully designed gadget.
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