A modern advance on the French press coffee maker
" The coffee it makes is something like espresso, but considerably less bitter than normal espresso relative to its strength."
—Oolong
Oolong's writeup (currently above this) gives an excellent outline of how to use the Aeropress. I want to expand on it with a little history and a couple of suggestions for how to get the best out of it.
The equipment was designed by California engineer and inventor Alan Adler; disappointed with the control over his coffee from other devices, and wanting something simple and reliable, he set out designing a new piece of equipment, the first prototype being made in his garage, as is tradition.
As Oolong has mentioned, making coffee with this is simply a matter of adding coffee grounds to it, adding close-to-boiling water, stirring or swirling before leaving to stand for a moment and then pressing the plunger to extract the coffee into a cup. In this way it has elements of French-press style infusion, filter pourover and an element of espresso. That said, the pressure developed does not allow for a true espresso shot, but with care one can get something approaching espresso strength if not body.
Hacking the Aeropress
Various tricks can be employed to overcome limitations of the system or improve the brew. The best-known involves the "inverted method", in which the maker is inverted, the grounds being poured in on top of the plunger. Boiling water is then added, the filter and cap are carefully attached and the whole thing is gently and carefully swirled to distribute the water and coffee. Finally a cup is inverted over the whole, and it's all turned right side up before finally plunging. It should go without saying that there are dangers o this method as you're now handling a delicate piece of equipment that could open up spilling boiling water over you, your clothes, the kitchen and possibly the cat. This would be a Bad Thing. Be very careful to hold all the components together as you urn it over. You have been warned.
The above method overcomes one of the weaknesses of the Aeropress, namely that once you've added water and inserted the plunger, some of the coffee is going to start to drip into the cup. This can result in a slightly weaker brew, but brewing inverted maximises the contact time of the water with the grounds. Other mechanics are available to gt around this, notably several replacement components for the paper filter, each of which prevents coffee flow until the plunger is depressed. These metal filters are not expensive, and many people swear by them, but I'm cash-strapped enough that I don't buy one.
Finally, you can tweak the outcome by extending the infusion time. I've moved up from the recommended two minutes to approaching four. Infusion methods are pretty forgiving, and your coffee will be stronger, sweeter and a little more full of body.
Finally, a word on longevity. I have had my 'press for a month, dropped it twice on a tile floor from waist height and it has survived. I've a friend who's taken his on several backpacking camping trips, where it's bound to get some rough handling. He's had his for over a year and says it's still going strong. Lastly, it's very portable, takes up little space and needs only hot water and coffee to work. I'm going to take mine on the trip to Seattle for Thanksgiving and give it a whirl on the train. I'm not alone in supporting this method, eiher. In a recent poll, 2.47% of respondents here are using Aeropress; a couple of people are also considering swiching.
$ xclip -o | wc -w