• 15g medium-fine ground coffee coffee (15 on Baratza Encore)
• Water at 92c
• Level coffee in Aeropress
• Bloom with 70g water
• Swirl Aeropress
• Wait 45 seconds
• Pour additional water to 250g
• Wait until timer reaches 2 minutes
• Slowly press until 3 minutes total time

I hope these tips for your Aeropress help improve your daily brew! Always go for taste, regardless of what is "right" or "wrong." Breaking rules is completely OK and should be practiced to see if you're missing anything! Let me know below if any of these tips work for you!

Cheers

Gagne Blog Post:
https://coffeeadastra.com/2022/08/01/...

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0:00 what's up everyone Lance Hedrick here 0:01 and today I've got three air press tips 0:04 for 0:05 [Music] 0:08 you airpress is arguably one of the most 0:10 beloved Brewing devices on the market it 0:13 made its debut around 20 years ago and 0:15 has still captivated the pallets of 0:18 people around the 0:20 world there have been scads of recipes 0:23 posted online that have been competed 0:25 with in different championships and so 0:27 it can be a bit overwhelming for you at 0:29 home to kind of figure out what works 0:31 best for 0:32 you today I'm going to give you three 0:34 tips that will help you dial in your 0:37 coffee to your taste 0:39 preferences now these tips might be 0:42 against some of the commonly understood 0:43 ways of approaching the Aeropress so I 0:45 asked that you have an open mind as we 0:47 go through this to see if they make 0:49 tasti your cups for you cuz that is what 0:51 we are here for tasty 0:53 cups I'm not going to be doing my 0:55 recipes on here because it is slightly 0:57 different we're focusing on 1:00 the 1:05 OG one of the claims to fame of the air 1:08 press is you can make an espresso like 1:09 beverage with 1:10 it because of this a lot of people have 1:13 turned to pushing really hard in a way 1:15 that emulates I guess a pump or a lever 1:18 on an espresso 1:19 machine the harder you press on your air 1:22 press the more colloids and undissolved 1:25 compounds are going to get into your 1:27 final 1:28 cup so my first tip is actually to push 1:32 much more slowly I know that some of you 1:35 might be like that's G to take even 1:37 longer but the difference is 1:41 massive I pushed through in 6 seconds or 1:44 so a really quick powerful push just to 1:46 show the two different sides of the 1:48 equation this one I spent about a minute 1:50 just slowly pressing through 1:53 it the ideal filtration unit in an air 1:56 press in any extraction is the coffee 1:58 bed itself when you push really hard you 2:00 are forcing a lot of things that 2:02 otherwise wouldn't make it through to 2:04 make it 2:07 through then what we're going to do is 2:09 pour the resulting liquid through V60 2:12 paper filters and what you're going to 2:14 see will kind of demonstrate exactly 2:16 what I'm talking about so again this one 2:19 was the hard press this is the one where 2:20 we push really hard in order to maybe 2:23 get a thicker body which we definitely 2:25 were uh able to achieve because we saw 2:27 that cloudy Brew but it's also going to 2:28 have more stringency more bitterness and 2:31 a less enjoyable texture in general 2:34 because we're going to have we're going 2:35 to have a much more rough experience due 2:37 to all of those things that have made it 2:38 through the filtration units I ain't got 2:40 time for that look at that choke it's 2:42 just dripping at a very slow rate 2:45 because the majority of that has been 2:46 fully 2:47 clogged lots of things have been caught 2:50 in that filter lots of fines lots of 2:52 particles in general and likely a lot of 2:55 colloids that have been stuck inside the 2:57 filter that would not be ideal on the 2:59 pallet 3:02 now we will do the slow pressed one so 3:04 let's start the timer and we'll have a 3:06 little spillage but it's 3:09 okay all 3:15 right there we go 34 35 seconds and we 3:20 have the filter is completely gone 3:23 there's a little bit at the very tip but 3:26 that's just going to be difficult to get 3:27 out without any contact points maybe if 3:28 we put it on on the side it'll 3:35 go slow 3:38 press similar to a V60 in the sense that 3:40 the flavors are really clean really 3:42 clear but it's really juicy it has a 3:43 much nicer mouth feel than what you 3:46 could ever get on something like a V60 3:48 or an origami or an ory or something 3:50 like 3:52 that this one obviously has a much 3:54 thicker body but it's rougher on the 3:56 tongue it's kind of like um it has 3:58 drying aspects about it it has a little 4:00 AR stringency on the Finish still a 4:02 decent cup don't get me wrong but 4:03 definitely this is my preference it's 4:05 much more sparkling much more clear much 4:07 more clean in 4:11 general granted this one had you know a 4:14 bit more contact time because we were 4:15 pressing so slowly the bit that was left 4:17 was having more exposure to the slurry 4:19 but in reality these are similar 4:21 extraction yields and you just have one 4:24 that tastes a lot better than the 4:26 other the next tip for better air 4:29 presses is actually something I didn't 4:31 do in the first one cuz I didn't want to 4:32 ruin the surprise but it's actually to 4:34 bloom your 4:37 coffee blooming doesn't matter nearly as 4:39 much when you're doing the inverted 4:40 method but that's a less and less common 4:42 practice nowadays because of the 4:44 potential injury whenever you're doing 4:45 that but when you do the typical air 4:48 press having a bloom and having no Bloom 4:50 have a big big difference you will 4:53 notice if you pour it all in at once you 4:55 have a lot of liquid that drips through 4:56 into that Final Cup now that liquid is 4:59 going to to be severely undere extracted 5:01 very teal likee not much coffee in it at 5:03 all and that's because in order for 5:05 extraction to really occur those grounds 5:07 need to be saturated quite well okay 5:10 we're up to the four now I would put the 5:11 plunger on and we move it over all right 5:14 so we have 20.5 G so let's get a little 5:18 swirl on 5:20 there I'm takeing samp the grounds need 5:23 to be saturated in order for diffusion 5:25 to begin to occur because they need to 5:26 be degassed the water needs to actually 5:28 get all the way into the grounds before 5:29 you're able to really start to extract 5:31 the yummies if you want to get to taste 5:33 Town it takes a little time this time 5:36 I'm going to bloom it for about 45 5:37 seconds and Pour It Up just shy of 5:39 number four to take into account what 5:41 may have dropped into the 5:42 cup when you do a bloom you have some 5:45 minimal amount of water that goes 5:47 through but because the bed absorbs 5:49 roughly twice its weight in water you're 5:51 able to actually use a lot of that water 5:54 to get that saturation point up and 5:56 allow the diffusion to occur when you 5:58 pour the rest of your water 6:00 in so as you can see there are still 6:02 droplets because the it the the grounds 6:05 aren't so efficient to be able to suck 6:06 all up all that water immediately so 6:08 some does make it through but then after 6:10 about 45 seconds We'll pour the rest of 6:12 the water in and we'll stop it at that 6:13 20.5 G or as close as we can 6:21 get all right so we stopped it at 21 6:23 it's quite 6:25 close not ideal because when measuring 6:27 concentrations you want it to be 6:28 identical but I think this is good 6:30 enough for our 6:32 purposes this one was at 6:34 3.56 whereas the previous one was at 6:38 2.10 that is a huge increase in the 6:41 amount that was able to get into that 6:42 Final Cup meaning we're not diluting the 6:44 beverage as much we're getting more of 6:46 that extraction early on so you're not 6:48 having to waste a lot of water diluting 6:49 your Brew you can have a more efficient 6:51 extraction with that blooming 6:56 phase you may still prefer a more a 6:59 weaker extraction which is absolutely 7:01 fine I'm not someone that advocates for 7:03 26% extraction but just know that you 7:07 can use less water for more flavorful 7:09 Brew if you're using the 7:13 bloom now the final tip is probably the 7:16 most counterintuitive and it's because 7:18 it's been drilled in your head for so 7:20 long that it's going to be hard to shake 7:23 off it deals with grind 7:27 size oh on our grinder 7:30 this range is for espresso this range is 7:32 for mocha poot on the other end this is 7:34 French press this is kimx a lot of times 7:36 you see people adding aor press range 7:39 which is on a the very fine side of 7:43 things Alan Adler the inventor of the a 7:46 press didn't even grind that finely he 7:47 went a lot cooler and a bit coarser but 7:50 over time people started to go really 7:52 fine because they were trying to emulate 7:54 espresso with the a 7:56 press I'm not saying that finally air 8:00 presses don't taste good but what I am 8:02 saying is a lot of you get stuck in this 8:04 mindset that it must be really fine for 8:06 it to be an air press that's simply not 8:08 the 8:10 case the courser you go the more even 8:13 the flow through that coffee bed so with 8:15 every Brew method I always recommend 8:17 people to start as coar as you can 8:18 really go and then you go finer and 8:21 finer until you land on The Sweet Spot 8:24 the more fine you go the more potential 8:25 stringency the finer you go the flow 8:27 through the puck might be more and more 8:29 un 8:32 even it's not bad to let that sit a 8:35 little bit longer in fact Jonathan G A 8:37 friend of mine has a 10-minute air press 8:39 recipe that a lot of people really like 8:42 think about coffee cuppings you people 8:44 don't even start sipping those till the 8:45 10-minute marker anyway as an immersion 8:48 Brew sits for a long time especially 8:50 because there's no real percolation 8:51 going on it's not going to affect the 8:53 extraction that much Beyond minute 8:55 marker 3 because what is capable of 8:58 being extracted wants to come out pretty 9:00 quickly especially depending on your 9:02 grind size and your water 9:05 temperature a little bonus one is I also 9:07 recommend not going super 9:10 hot and I recently posted a video right 9:13 here of a weird AER pressed recipe where 9:15 you're using 78 to 80° water and it 9:18 tastes really great I never really go 9:21 over 95° even with the lightest of light 9:23 roasts on an air press and there A lot 9:25 of times it's only around 90 or 91° if 9:28 not even cooler than that and what I 9:30 find is a direct correlation between 9:32 that and the perceived 9:35 bitterness I will put Jonathan G's blog 9:38 post below about what is causing EST 9:40 stringency based off conversations 9:41 between himself and S 9:44 SM everything that I kind of try and do 9:46 is to reduce bitterness reduce harshness 9:49 reduce that accurate perception and 9:51 reduce 9:56 astringency wonder how it tastes now 10:00 I like to do 15 G of coffee I like to do 10:03 250 g of water just like on my 10:06 V60 I might up that amount of coffee to 10:09 16 gram for maybe medium roasted coffees 10:12 and up to 17 gram if you like darker 10:14 roasted 10:18 coffees you can go coarser obviously and 10:20 I do on occasion especially if it's 10:23 maybe a really old coffee or a really uh 10:25 processed coffee this is a washed coffee 10:27 so I go a little finer than my usual 10:30 I do around 92° C if you're at medium 10:33 maybe go to 88 if you're at dark maybe 10:35 go to like 82 to 84 and just play around 10:38 with that first things first I always 10:40 like to level the bed in here if you 10:42 just dump it in and start pouring you 10:44 can have a much shallower part on one 10:46 side of the bed which can allow water to 10:47 immediately get into that cup we want to 10:50 make sure as much water as possible is 10:51 retained in that bed during our bloom in 10:54 fact if you have a mellow drip or 10:56 something that can allow you to just 10:57 barely like wet the on the top and it'll 11:00 go through the bed more slowly that can 11:02 be a really good thing you can kind of 11:03 swirl it to help even out the the the 11:06 wetness of the bed but I'm going to pour 11:08 nice and slow let the water stream kind 11:10 of break up before it hits the bed so it 11:12 doesn't penetrate as deep that way I can 11:14 control kind of how much water is 11:16 getting through into the mug during that 11:19 balloon I like to give it a swirl just 11:21 to make sure everything is nicely wetted 11:24 as you see we had some drops coming 11:25 through once I swirled it but it pretty 11:27 much stayed in there before the swirl 11:28 occurred 11:29 now as you notice I'm not getting the 11:31 kettle back up to Temp I'm not very 11:33 worried about temperature with aor press 11:35 once we do that push through it actually 11:37 AIDS in some of that like emuls 11:39 emulsifying and it forces through a lot 11:41 of that liquid retain ratio that could 11:43 be in the grounds we're getting a a 11:45 pretty pretty solid extraction with this 11:46 with this Brew method so at 45 seconds 11:49 I'm going to pour up to 11:51 250 I do a kind of little circle just to 11:53 make sure all the grounds are integrated 11:55 and I just kind of pour in the center 11:57 nothing super fancy on the pour itself 12:01 getting it up to 250 relatively 12:04 quickly there we are and then I just set 12:06 the plunger right at the top to kind of 12:08 stop the drops coming through move it to 12:11 the side because you don't want to press 12:12 onto a scale and I give it a little 12:15 swirl just like so now I'm going to wait 12:17 till the 2-minute mark So we had 45 12:19 second Bloom then with all the water in 12:21 we let it sit about a minute 15 you can 12:23 of course go longer than this if you 12:25 don't feel like it had adequate 12:26 extraction it won't extract a ton more 12:28 after 2 minutes but it will continue to 12:30 extract certainly so overall it'll be 12:33 about a 3 minute process from the first 12:35 drop to the final go so as you see I'm 12:38 barely pushing at all it's almost just 12:40 the weight of my hand just barely 12:41 pushing which allows for more clean and 12:44 even flow through the coffee I do not 12:47 press through the HS the more you press 12:49 at the end the more the potential string 12:51 of particles can get into your 12:53 cup pull this up a bit so it stops it 13:00 we have our cup of 13:03 coffee it's absolutely 13:06 fantastic Do not sit there and try to 13:09 push all of your weight into the air 13:11 press go nice and slow try that out I 13:13 like it you may not and that's 13:15 completely 13:17 okay try giving your air press a bloom 13:20 go to the normal way of Brewing it where 13:21 you have the air press right in the 13:23 decanter Bloom it for a bit if you're 13:24 not already doing that and then pour to 13:26 your target weight I then like to 13:28 immediately put the plunger in so that 13:30 no more is dripping out as I like to 13:32 have that kind of immersion percolation 13:34 kind of blend and then slowly press 13:37 through don't go so fine try out some 13:40 coarser grounds it's not going to give 13:41 you as much resistance but you're not 13:43 pushing hard anyway cuz we're trying to 13:44 maintain the Integrity of the bed we're 13:46 trying to lessen the amount of those 13:48 particles that can get through the def 13:49 Final Cup which can obfuscate your palet 13:52 make just a much tastier Brew all 13:55 around give these three tips a try let 13:58 me know below if it works for you if you 14:00 want to try out the recipe have at it 14:01 just remember there are variables that 14:03 you can control in order to optimize it 14:05 for your specific 14:07 coffee if you enjoy what you see please 14:09 you know hit the like hit the Subscribe 14:11 check out my patreon down below all of 14:13 it is super helpful to the channel and 14:14 to the work that I do here regardless 14:17 I'm going to enjoy this something tasty 14:19 and I hope that you grew something tasty 14:21 today and 14:27 cheers that's see this one's 14:30 nice I didn't hold it long enough that's 14:32 what you're looking at isn't it yes damn 14:35 it sorry