Couldn't get to the article even with "web" link, but to hazard a guess: makes good coffee, relatively cheap, don't have to throw the whole thing away after six months when a $0.50 circuit board fries and replacement parts aren't available.
I’ve owned every possible way to make drip coffee at home over the past decade, and Aeropress has three specific advantages to brewing excellent drip coffee that no other method does:
1) It offers pressure extraction by hand, without complicated moving parts or fragility. There is nothing to break on an aeropress.
2) It requires less effort and less time to brew consistently than the other methods. I can pour extract, and clean an Aeropress in the 4 minutes it takes for a dripper to drip, and it tastes the same each time with less precision invested.
3) It can be safely carried anywhere (along with ground coffee) that has boiling water and a mug to press it into, without shattering in your bag. It can be rinsed, shaken dry, and put back into your bag without getting coffee grounds anywhere.
Note that I haven’t used my Aeropress in years because I don’t want the flavor it produces right now (French Press, filtered, approximately). But I could boil water, pull it out of a drawer and use it to make a good cup of coffee in five minutes including cleanup. That’s a high bar to meet.
It seems to me there are generally two trends in coffee. The kind of hipster-y home-brew space, where people use an aeropress or something similar (hand filter, chemex, french press) and spend a bit more on fresh beans and a grinder, and the high price coffee machine, where you spend hundreds to thousands on a machine that can do it all but does not necessarily produce good coffee on its own.
It just seems the coffee industry has succeeded in making people believe that good and easy to produce coffee requires expensive equipment. The many discussions I had where people insisted they needed an expensive machine because 30 seconds hand grinding and pour over in the morning was "just too much" and would not believe that fresh beans from their local roasters are actually cheaper than some pads or pods.
Of course, not talking espresso here, where entirely different equipment is necessary.
> It just seems the coffee industry has succeeded in making people believe that good and easy to produce coffee requires expensive equipment
What are you referring to here? The only expensive coffee equipment I see regularly in people's homes is the espresso machine. But your last sentence implies that's not what you mean. What other expensive coffee makers are people using?
I am talking about pad/pod machines, where the machine is not prohibitively expensive, but of course a lot compared to a hand filter or other simple coffee making device, and the coffee is of course ridiculously expensive.
Around here (Germany) many people also have coffee machines that automatically grind and brew the coffee. At a few hundred euros they are again not prohibitively expensive, but most people still feel they need them to get one or two cups of coffee a day.
I just met far to many people who believe if your machine costs several hundred euros and your coffee comes out of a pod it must be better than anything you brew by hand and of course brewing by hand takes infinite times longer. Maybe people are more reasonable where you are? Or you just know more knowledgeable coffee lovers than I do. ;-)
Yeah, not sure. I'm in Australia and people here tend to take espresso pretty seriously. I generally either see stove-top coffee makers or espresso machines.
There are probably a lot of people that use pod-based machines, but perhaps just not among my friends. (Personally I think pod-based coffee should be banned for environmental reasons.)
Those are certainly the reasons it's popular in my house.
And if I remember correctly, CoffeeGeek at one point had it ranked so high that the cheapest coffee machine above it in the rankings was something like $1000.
Can't read it, but I do own an aeropess and you nailed it. Similar/better quality compared to a French press, but easier to clean. Costs like 30 bucks, comes with like 200 filters. Breaking it would require significant and directed effort.
It's also portable. I can throw my Aeropress and a brick of Cafe Bustelo in my suitcase and make coffee wherever I go..as long as there's a microwave or tea kettle. =)
I have an aeropress for making coffee at work. It is quick and easy to use and it is very quick to clean but the main reason for me is the process. I get my cup, filter and press from my desk, fill the porlex grinder with some beans, then I stand in the kitchen nearest to my desk (very open-plan large office building) and grind the beans. Every time I grind the coffee people walk by and comment on the nice smell. I enjoy the process, I enjoy the sound of the manual grinder and I enjoy taking the time to perform the task after sitting at a keyboard for so long. I make the coffee (upside down) and watch other people go to the onsite cafe and buy a $5 coffee which takes longer to order than I take to make mine. I find it tastes great and is considerably better filtered than a french press. I have had this a fair few years now but I know I am approaching my 700th cup as I bought it with 2 packs of 350 paper filters and I will soon run out.
5 stars, would buy again.
( At home I favour a Bialetti Moka stove-top. )
I like my aeropress, and used to use it with beans from my local roasters.
But as of late I've switched back to just making regular ol' drip coffee in a cheap coffee maker with Chock full 'o nuts coffee.
As easy as an aeropress is compared to other quality brewing methods, I still find the drip machine much easier -- load up the filter and water, walk away, come back and pour a cup. (Plus, I can't seem to get my aeropress not to also pee down the side of the mug as I press it down)
Somehow, my coffee experience hasn't degraded at all. No, it doesn't taste the same, but to me it's still totally fine, and almost always a better coffee than the drip I get from most coffee shops.
Amazing coffee in an aeropress is just a white whale for me.
Feels like we've jumped some sort of chasm or shark here:
"The AeroPress is the coffee version of Linux, the geeks’ preferred computer operating system. It is not pretty, not especially easy, but it is effective and almost cool."
I was starting a business importing roasted coffee from Europe to the US a few years ago. I asked my roaster in Paris what machine he recommended. His suggestion was over 1,000 euro.
Smiled, and said my wife won't sacrifice counter space.
He came back with Aeropress and i've never looked back. Near espresso flavor... I do double size - 16 grams fresh ground (using a Porlex) with 6 grams of water:coffee.
Also use the "upside down" hack and permafilters (the finest screen one).
As someone whose counter space is "wasted" on a rather large espresso machine, let me just say, you need to try better coffee. Especially if you're "starting a business importing roasted coffee". You have no way to test if your product is any good otherwise.
