Discover the AeroPress

The AeroPress is a great way to take your favorite coffee on the road or enjoy at home. This device is extremely versatile, light weight, and compact making it an ideal way to take your favorite coffee on the road. If you have purchased one, you know it comes with a tried and true recipe for making great coffee. Because this brewing device is so versatile you can experiment with a mode range of techniques to get a great cup of coffee. To come up with your own great recipe play with these three variables, grind size, brew time, and water temperature.

First find a grind size that you want to use. The size of the grind will help determine brew time and water temperature so it's important to start here. A fine grind will extract fairly fast, and coupled with hotter water will allow for a short brew time. Think espresso. A course grind, will take longer even if the water is a higher temperature, more along the lines of a French press.

Once you have a grind size, determine the brew time. The brew time will be determined by water temperature and grind size. Remember that finer grinds take less time. Also don't forget the plunge time, the time it takes to depress the plunger and extract the coffee. Try to shoot for a 30 sec plunge time. Less makes the coffee muddy, more time makes it more of a watery mouthfeel. A note on plunging when you get to the end and you hear the air starting to hiss, you can choose to stop here or continue till the air stops. This final stage of AeroPress is unique as it allows you to add many of the essential oils and grind fines from the coffee by allowing the hiss to complete. This adds a lot of body to the cup, so stopping short can lighten the body and brighten your cup.

When your coffee is done, you can choose to add a final step. This step is bypassing, or bypass brewing. Essentially this is adding water to the cup after brewing. This allows you to get the flavor of a strong brew without the heavy mouthfeel. A few other tips, experiment with your coffee. look at what you have and brew to the character of the coffee. Don't limit yourself to a specific brew recipe unless you found the perfect brew.

Here are few recipes from some AeroPress brewing championships.
Recipe 1
25g coffee, with a grind profile between French press and filter.
150g of 89°C (192°F) water.
Brew for 2:15.
Press for 30 seconds.
Finish before the three-minute mark and then add hot water until you have 200 g
of coffee.
 
Recipe 2
35 g of coarsely ground coffee (slightly finer than you would use for a Chemex).
At 0–15 seconds, pour 150g of 84°C (183°C) water.
At 15–35 seconds, stir.
Put the cap on the top with a pre-wet filter.
At 1:05, flip the AeroPress and start pressing.
At 1:35, stop pressing; you should now have around 90 g of coffee.
Add 160–200 g of hot water.

Recipe 3
Use 30 g of coarsely ground coffee (setting 8 on an EK-43).
Pour 220 ml of 83°C (181.5°F) water.
Stir carefully.
Dilute with 40 ml water.
Stir again and enjoy.
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Recipe 4
Traditional/standard AeroPress orientation.
26 g of coffee, ground to the coarse side of drip.
94°C/201°F water.
A stainless steel fine filter, plus 2 paper AeroPress filters; the paper
ones should sit above the metal filter so that they’re next to the coffee.
Rinse and preheat the AeroPress and filters.
Add coffee and 200 g hot water, then stir vigorously for 10 seconds.
Rotate plunger into place at the top but do not press.
At 2:00, press slowly for 30 seconds. Stop if you hear a hiss.
Add 75g hot water to the brew.

Coffee old fashioned cocktail
 One of my favorite cocktails is the old fashioned. This cocktail goes back so far that finding its creator is practically impossible and for the most part the recipe has remained unchanged since the early 1800’s. The recipe starts with whiskey (bourbon or rye), sugar, bitters, and water (ice is commonly used now). The orange peel, and various combinations of muddled fruit were added post prohibition.

The old fashioned has been redefined many times over the years, and the modern coffee old fashioned is one modern variation of this classic cocktail. To make this variation it's important to select ingredients that will complement the cocktail and not over power the others.

Choose a whiskey
Selecting a whiskey can be a daunting task. there so many choices that trying to write about would take a blog post or two on its own. So, do some searching and find something you like. My only recommendation is that you choose something with enough strength that the sugar, ice, and coffee don't overpower it.

Choosing a coffee
Choose a coffee that has been roasted dark. You can use either cold brew or hot brewed, but I like cold brew concentrate. The concentrate packs a lot of flavor and in my opinion best suited for this task as you will not be using a large amount of coffee in the beverage.

Choosing a sweetener
An old fashioned is traditionally made with white sugar. If you want to take this drink to another level, try using brown sugar. This will add some depth of flavor and they really compliment the coffee and whiskey. But you really can try just about any type of sweeter, honey, real maple syrup, coconut sugar, etc. If you don't like taking the time to mix the drink to get the sugar to dissolve, make a simple syrup beforehand with one-part sugar and one-part water. You can also try making a syrup with the hot coffee, if you are making the coffee fresh.
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To make the cocktail
Ingredients

1. 2oz of Whiskey
2. 1oz of coffee
3. 1/2 tsp of sweetener
4. 3 dashes of bitters
5. Add if desired, Ice, Orange peel, maraschino cherries

Directions

1. Add sugar and bitters to your glass and stir
2.  Add coffee and whiskey and combine
3.  Add ice if desired
4.  Add orange peel and cherries

Cheers!

Water the base for great coffee.
Water makes up almost 99% of your cup of coffee. So, in order to have consistently great coffee having a water source that is of a good quality, has a consistent mineral profile, and a reasonable total mineral level.

Most tap water in the United States has been filtered and cleaned to provide us with good quality drinking water, but due to location and the processing of our drinking water mineral content can vary and additives like chlorine can have an adverse effect to our cup of coffee.

To ensure good quality water, use a filter. A good filter can remove chlorine and many harmful and unwanted elements from the water and ensure a great cup of coffee. A step up from a filter would be a reverse osmosis machine, but they are costly. Another option would be using bottled water. The last option is using distilled water and adding the minerals to provide the flavor for your brew.

A filter can remove most of the unwanted stuff in the water you use to brew, and is the one of the more important and cheaper options for brewing at home. If you want to take your water to another level get it tested by a lab on a regular basis and start playing with the mineral amounts dissolved in the water. The three main minerals that can help effect the taste of your coffee are magnesium, calcium, and bicarbonates.

Magnesium effects how well chemicals can be extracted from the ground coffee. It will bring out the acids and stronger flavors of the coffee. It's drawback is if the levels get to high, over 500mg/l, it may have an adverse effect taste. Calcium helps draw out sweetness in coffee. Too much calcium can lead to a chalky taste and lead to lime scale build up in your water heating and brewing devices. Bicarbonates help control acidity and makes our coffee more palatable. Like calcium to much can lead to coffee that does not taste good at all.

To ensure a consistent mineral profile in your water you can always add some minerals if the levels are low or add distilled water to dilute your water if there is too many minerals in your water. A mineral level that is too high will make getting a good cup of coffee very hard. Not to mention that limescale build up and equipment that will need frequent deep cleaning to remove the mineral build up.
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Good luck finding the best water for your coffee!

Blending coffee at home

Blending coffee is done in two ways combining the raw beans and roasting them together or roasting the coffee separately and combining the beans afterwards. To combine beans at home the beans are combined after roasting. All one needs to do is buy a few potential bags and start mixing. So here are some tips to help get you started.

First start with some good quality coffee beans. Then come up with a plan and how you want to mix them. It's best to start with just two coffees and then progress to three. It's probably easiest stay with three or less, but if you want to try more go for it. Make sure to keep a record of what you blend and how much goes into each batch in case you want to repeat it later. Use weight to determine how much you are adding of each coffee as volume.

Here are a few basic blends to experiment with
1. Take a light roast coffee and add it to a dark roast. Start about 50/50 and then work from there to get a cup that you like. I tend to favor a more acidic cup, but if you don't start at 30/70 light to dark.
2. Take two or more different origins, roasted similarly and combine them. Play with the ratios and find a cup you like.
3. Find different roasts of the same origin and combine them together. As with the others play around with the ratios to get that perfect cup.
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So, get out and blend some coffee! Remember to have fun!

The French Press
 
Of all the different gadgets that can brew coffee, the french press is probably the most versatile. You can use a french press to make hot coffee, cold brew, and tea. If you have an insulated or double-walled pot, your french press can keep liquids hot or cold for long periods of time.
 
Hot coffee. If you are making hot coffee, use a coarse ground coffee. Check out the grind chart to get an idea of how course you grind your beans. Put the coffee grounds in the french press and add hot water. You can measure the grounds and water and adjust the ratio to get a cup that you like. Start with 55g of coffee per 1000ml of water and adjust from there. Let it brew for approximately 4 minutes before lowering the plunger on the french press. Experiment with ground size and amount of grounds and water. You can adjust the brew time as well to find a great tasting cup
 
Cold brew coffee. You can use the same grind for cold brew as you would for hot coffee. In other words, you want a coarse grind! Start with 128g of coffee to 512ml of water and let it sit for 12 to 24 hours. You can adjust the ratio of coffee and water to make stronger concentrate or reduce it to drink it as is. As with hot brewed coffee you
can adjust the brewing time to affect the brew strength.
 
Tea. Brew loose leaf tea much as you would coffee: put the leaves in the french press, top with hot water, and let it set for a few minutes (length of time will depend on the type of tea). When the tea has steeped long enough, press slowly down on the plunger to filter the leaves out of the tea. Pour and enjoy!
 
When you're evaluating french presses, look for one you can keep clean. Also consider durability and how well it will keep your beverages hot. I have tried a few french presses, and my favorite is 32oz stainless steel model made by coffee gator.

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