Additionally, people like to experiment with the kinds of drinks the AeroPress can make. The manufacturer suggests that the AeroPress can make a beverage that tastes akin to espresso, and then users can add the appropriate amount of milk to make espresso drinks, such as lattes and cappuccinos. It can also make tea. I’m not sold on the authenticity of AeroPress espresso drinks, but that doesn’t mean they won’t taste good or that you won’t prefer them to regular coffee. Give it a try! If you like experimenting and using multitasking kitchen implements, this is certainly a device to consider.
Due to the device’s growing popularity, it is widely available on the internet and in brick-and-mortar stores. Many craft coffee shops sell the AeroPress, but you can also get it (as of the time of this writing) at large retailers such as Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Crate and Barrel, and Williams Sonoma.
Also, you don’t need a slow-pour kettle to make great coffee with the AeroPress. It’s designed to drain directly into a coffee cup, so you don’t need extra carafes or servers. It only comes in one size, but the same device can make one to four servings faster than anything else out there (including typical electric coffeemakers). Coffee made with the Aero-Press tends to have less perceived acidity, as it uses a finer grind and a lower brew ratio, both of which up the body and lessen the acidity. If you are sensitive to acidity, you may want to try this device.
AEROPRESS FILTERS
These small, circular discs are manufactured to fit exclusively in the narrow brewing chamber of an AeroPress. They are made of a paper similar to that of the Melitta filter, although AeroPress filters do not sport the perforation that Melitta filters often do. AeroPress filters are sold in packs of 350 for about $8 (your first 350 are included with the purchase of the device) and are often sold at craft coffee shops.
Unlike other paper filters, AeroPress filters stand up relatively well to reuse because their shape makes them easy to rinse and dry. If you do plan to reuse an AeroPress filter, make sure you thoroughly clean it and let it dry completely. Leftover oils and the funk that often follows dampness do not make for good coffee. Lastly, licensed AeroPress filters only come in white; the manufacturer recommends that those of you who want natural brown filters make your own. Using the white filter as a template, you can cut your own out of a brown paper filter of your choice. Metal disc AeroPress filters are also available from third-party vendors.
HOW IT WORKS
The AeroPress is a type of hand press—you might think of it as a giant syringe. The coffee is poured into a brewing chamber along with the water, and then you insert a plunger and press down, forcing the coffee through the paper filter and the plastic, perforated cap at the bottom of the brewing chamber and into your cup. It’s kind of like a French press, but it differs in a few important ways.
First, the AeroPress is designed to use circular paper filters, while the French press has a metal filter. The paper filter allows you to use a much finer grind—and therefore get a much quicker extraction time—than with the French press. This tends to give AeroPress cups a full-bodied, nuanced taste without the silt left behind by a metal filter. Additionally, with the Classic AeroPress Method, the water in the brewing chamber is pushed through the grounds by a pillow of air, not by the plunger itself, which allows for more even pressure.
To clean up, simply twist off the cap, hold the AeroPress over the trash or compost bin, and plunge until the compressed puck of coffee pops out, filter and all. Thoroughly rinse and dry the device, and you are good to go for next time. Every so often, you may need to wash the plunger with hot, soapy water, but this device is low maintenance.
The Abid Clever
No muss, no fuss
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Method on page 224
Designed and manufactured by the Taiwanese company Absolutely Best Idea Development (or Abid for short), the Clever dripper hit the coffee scene in the late 2000s. Unlike other brewers, the Clever only comes in (BPA-free) plastic and in one size. The Clever looks like a standard pour-over device—it is conical in shape and even uses a paper filter (#4 Melitta cone filters work well), but it actually brews more like a French press. Its design is meant to make handmade coffee as easy as possible, and it’s one of the least fussy methods in this book.
The Clever certainly has a user-friendly design. A regular tea kettle, for example, won’t stand in the way between you and a great cup of coffee, as it might with other devices. It’s also designed to drain directly into a coffee mug, so no extra carafes are needed. Cleanup is much easier than with other immersion methods, like the French press, because all you have to do is remove and discard the filter. The Clever is ideal for someone who likes the easy, hands-off approach of immersion methods but prefers the cleaner taste of paper-filtered coffee. It can also be used to make cold brew (see page 227).
One downside is that the Clever is not as widely available as other brewing devices. Most major retailers do not carry it, and although you may find one for sale at a craft coffee shop, they are not all that common. It’s purchased easily enough on the internet, however.
HOW IT WORKS
Although the Clever borrows its shape from cone drippers, it’s still a full-immersion method, with the grounds and water steeping together for the length of the brew cycle. The base of the device is watertight, and the slurry will not drain until you engage the release mechanism by setting it on top of a carafe or coffee cup. Just pour the water into the Clever, wait out your brewing time, and set the device on your cup to drain.
Some professionals feel that the Clever loses too much heat during the brew process. Others feel that the design clogs the filter too often with fines, which extends the contact time and can lead to overextracted coffee. Andreas and I don’t really think the heat-loss argument is well founded. When professionals “cup” coffee, it often sits there, uncovered, for 12 to 15 minutes before it’s tasted, and heat loss is rarely discussed in that context. However, we have found that using finer grounds in the Clever sometimes leaves us with a clogged filter.
The Siphon (Vacuum Pot)
High drama, consistent results
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Method on page 228
For more than a century, people have been using the siphon (aka vacuum pot or vac pot) to make delicious coffee. It all started in 1830, when S. Loeff from Berlin filed a patent for the device, although it didn’t gain commercial success until the 1840s, when a French woman named Marie Fanny Amelne Massot improved the design and patented it under the moniker Mme. Vassieux. Her design paid close attention to aesthetics—the device featured a metal frame that held two vertically hung glass globes; the top one was capped with a crown.
Over the years, the siphon’s design has been tweaked, but its principles have remained the same. Even today, the brewing method itself seems designed for theatrics (or at least a science experiment). You get the impression that the siphon was always meant to be on display, perhaps entertaining guests in a Victorian parlor somewhere. Even though some of the glamour was reduced by the time the siphon was first manufactured and sold in the United States (under the name Silex) in 1910, it has remained an object of wonder and amusement. This is perhaps why it has seen something of a resurgence in the coffee community in recent years.
Today, many siphons are sold by Hario and Yama, two Japanese companies that sell a variety of coffee equipment, as well as a well-established coffee brand called Bodum. They come in a range of sizes, including three-cup, five-cup, and eight-cup models. If you don’t purchase a stovetop model, note that siphons also require a heat source, which is sometimes sold separately. The butane-burner models are more affordable, but companies also make flameless heat sources for the siphon, which run a couple hundred bucks or more. If you opt for a stovetop model, it’s recommended that you also bu
y a heat dispersion plate to set between the device and the burner. The Bodum brand is available at higher-end retailers, such as Crate and Barrel, but you’ll likely need to rely on the internet to find the Japanese brands.
Indeed, a major drawback of the siphon is that it’s quite expensive. But it’s so fun to use! The whole device is a bit delicate and should be handled with care, so if you’re a bit clumsy, this likely isn’t the device for you. Although the siphon is not the most practical of devices, I would argue it’s one of the most consistent methods of making coffee, as much of it is automated—there is very little human intervention beyond choosing a dose and reading a thermometer. KitchenAid makes an automatic siphon, which, while not a manual brewing method, is still interesting.
SIPHON FILTER
Both Hario and Yama siphons require small, circular cloth filters. The Bodum model has a plastic filter built into the machine. Although the cloth filter is reusable, you need to treat the filter with special care if you want it to work properly and last for a while. The first time you use a cloth filter, boil it for a few minutes before you brew with it. After using it, thoroughly rinse it, and store it in clean water in the refrigerator. Then, before each use, soak the filter in clean, warm water for about five minutes. It’s also recommended that you boil your cloth filter every once in a while to keep it fresh. Spoiler alert: if you don’t take proper care of it, your coffee will taste like a dirty sock.
HOW IT WORKS
The siphon uses an immersion method, but it’s quite distinct from other immersion methods. The water is heated in the lower globe by a heat source. The difference in pressure eventually forces the water up through a glass stem into the top chamber, called the hopper. Once the temperature is stabilized (around 202°F) in the hopper, it’s time to add the grounds. It looks like the water is boiling, but it’s not—it’s just agitation from the air that’s also getting sucked through the stem and into the hopper. This is the water that extracts the coffee, and when the brewing process is complete, the heat source is removed, and the pressure changes again, pushing the brewed coffee back into the bottom vessel. The hopper is fitted with the filter, which prevents the grounds from escaping into the bottom chamber. What results is a smooth, rich brew with very little sediment.
Percolator, Alligator
Maybe you are wondering why I have not included the percolator in this book. While it has loyally served the needs of coffee-drinking folk for more than 200 years, it has not served them well. Percolators fundamentally make it difficult to brew decent coffee as they force boiling water through the coffee grounds only to recirculate it multiple times. This often leads to a burnt, overextracted brew. While I do not doubt that some coffee enthusiasts have reined in the percolator beast and made it do their bidding, I don’t think this device is a good one for home-brew beginners.
POUR-OVER DEVICES
The Melitta
The original pour-over device
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Method on page 232
Despite the fact that the Melitta was the first cone-shaped pour-over system created—Melitta Bentz invented the coffee filter in 1908 (see page 52), and the device soon followed—I’ve rarely seen it hanging out on brew bars. You will, however, see other manufacturers’ tweaks on Bentz’s original design, several of which I discuss in this chapter. I cut my home-brewing teeth on this device, and it was the first one that allowed me to taste the different flavors in coffee. The Melitta may not be as flashy or trendy as other devices, but it gets the job done, and its design makes it forgiving.
Melitta products are accessible and affordable, which is a big plus when you’re new to the pour-over game. The six-cup plastic model retails around $10.99 and can usually be found at big-box retailers (as well as the internet, of course). For those of you who are looking for an upgrade from plastic kitchenware, Melitta drippers also come in ceramic. If you’re new to pour over and aren’t looking to break the bank, the Melitta system may be a good place to start.
MELITTA FILTERS
Melitta cone filters (also known as wedge filters) are great for beginners because they fit a variety of devices and can usually be found at any grocery store (and often even drug stores). Before I got into coffee, I remember seeing the distinctive green-and-red packaging everywhere and thinking, “What the hell are these for?” There’s also a good chance you are already using this brand’s flat-bottomed filters in your automatic machine. You’ll find the cone filters in the same grocery aisle as the flat-bottomed ones. If you don’t want to mess with special-ordering filters, Melitta cone filters are a good place to start. A pack of 100 filters runs between $6 and $8.
Circular and wider at the top, the Melitta cone filter tapers to a flat edge at the bottom. Both the bottom and one side of the filter are crimped. To use, take a flat, unopened filter and simply fold the bottom crimp up, then fold the side crimp over. I like to make sure the crimps are folded to lie against opposite sides of the filter. It helps the filter sit in the device and provides extra insurance against breakage (although I’ve never actually had one bust). Open the filter, place it in the device, and you’re ready to go.
Melitta cone filters come in several sizes to match the sizes of the devices—the #2 and #4 are the most popular. Be sure to choose the size that fits your device. Although I have been known to jury-rig filters in a pinch, it’s not advisable. You can’t expect a device to work properly if you aren’t using the appropriate component parts!
Devices That Work Well with Melitta Cone Filters
• Melitta dripper
• BeeHouse dripper
• Abid Clever dripper
HOW IT WORKS
The Melitta is the original wedge-shaped dripper. Drippers must rest on some kind of vessel (a mug or a carafe) and require the use of a filter, which must be purchased separately and inserted into the dripper. When you pour water into the dripper, it makes its way through the coffee bed, through a filter, through a drain hole, and into the waiting vessel. The Melitta’s cone shape is flat across the bottom, and it requires similarly shaped filters. Ribbing along the dripper’s interior walls helps regulate airflow, and there’s one medium-sized hole at the bottom (compared with the single large hole in some other pour-over devices and the two holes in the bottom of the BeeHouse). This design slows down the rate at which water can make it through the coffee bed, a quality that generally makes devices more forgiving. When the device controls a good part of the flow rate for you, your pouring technique doesn’t have to be very nuanced.
The Melitta’s design does seem to make it more prone to fines migration than other devices. Because there is only one relatively small hole for the water to drain through, it doesn’t take much for fines to clog up the works and reduce the flow rate even more. I advise you to aim your pour away from the sides of the device as much as possible.
The BeeHouse
Two holes are better than one (?)
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Method on page 235
Based on the classic Melitta design, the BeeHouse is an updated wedge-shaped cone dripper that comes in two sizes. It very closely resembles the Melitta dripper, but where the Melitta has one drain hole at the bottom, the BeeHouse has two. The ribbing along the interior wall of the dripper is also a bit different, and the BeeHouse only comes in ceramic. If you like to pour directly into your coffee mug, the BeeHouse is an attractive option. It fits most coffee cups, and the base of the dripper features windows so you can see how close you are to maximum capacity. As a pour-over device, the BeeHouse inherently requires more technique than immersion devices, but it’s one of the easier pour-over devices to use. For example, I feel it’s much easier to master than, say, the V60 (see page 79)—it’s probably my second-favorite device, for what that’s worth.
Additionally, the BeeHouse is an attractive option for those who do not want to worry about special filters. The BeeHouse is compatible with Melitta filters (the large can use #2 or #4, and the small uses only #2), which can be found in almost any grocery store. Because of this and its relatively inexpensive price tag, the BeeHouse is a great way to introduce yourself to pour over.
One downside is it’s not available at bigger chain retailers, although it is a bit more common to see them for sale at craft coffee shops than the Clever dripper. There is always the internet.
HOW IT WORKS
The BeeHouse works like a standard pour-over filtration system. However, its design (namely, the two drain holes) restricts water flow more than other devices, such as the V60 and the Chemex (see page 77), which means it tends to be more forgiving of imperfect technique than those other devices. Because the design takes pressure off your pour time, you might find the BeeHouse less stressful to use than other pour-over devices. Grind size is the primary factor in determining the flow rate with a BeeHouse, so feel free to experiment with different sizes and see how they affect your brewing time.
Like with most cone-dripper coffee, a BeeHouse cup is clean, but the longer brewing time provides a chance for sweeter flavors to come through. Some professional baristas feel that some complexity is lost with the BeeHouse and that it is perhaps fundamentally incapable of achieving the greatness of the Chemex or V60. I find, however, that it provides consistent results for the home brewer, no matter what kind of coffee you use.
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