Leveling Up Your Coffee Game at Work
Coffee is the cornerstone of every company – it is the fuel that keeps us awake during the early morning meetings, and then later revives us from food coma caused by eating at that amazing Indian place with the best naan bread around.
Everyone that drinks coffee knows how addictive it is. It is so addictive that when the urge strikes you are willing to drink anything that even resembles coffee and usually the only thing available is that infamous corporate mud water. You’ll drink it knowing that it is horrible and will mess up your stomach afterwards — in fact you will make the same mistake at least six times a day.
What if I told you that there is a way to level up your coffee game without having to invest in an expensive espresso machine?
Welcome the AeroPress coffee maker!
In this blog post I’ll show you how to actually make coffee with this beast. You’ll become a proper coffee hipster who can impress everyone with their mad coffee making skills.
Alright, let’s start.
1) Get some ammunition
The first and pretty obvious thing is to get yourself some quality ground coffee — preferably espresso grind. I personally use coffee beans and grind them myself since that gives you even more aromatic smell and fresher taste than pre-ground coffee. The amount of coffee you need depends on how strong and how much coffee you want to make. I usually grind two measuring spoons of beans which amounts to approximately three table spoons of ground coffee.
2) Draw your weapon
This is what an AeroPress looks like:
Simple, right? It only has three parts (four if you count the filter paper) and costs around 30€. When assembled, the parts together form a sort of mini espresso machine that produces really nice quality coffee. The main principle behind good coffee is correct water temperature and pressure (and good coffee beans of course). Compared to normal coffee machines AeroPress helps you get the pressure up by tightly fitting the two cylinders together and having a solid locking system for the cap with the filter paper.
Onwards.
3) Lock and load
Start by putting the cylinders together so that that there is enough room for the ground coffee and the water and that it can firmly stand by itself. It’s good to know that one fully filled AeroPress can make about two normal size coffees.
Now add the powder and pour in the boiling water. Note though that this is the place to get fancy with the water temperature if you care about making “perfect” coffee (the temperature should be under 92°C according to Breaking Bad).
Next stir the coffee / water mixture a few seconds to get all the flavors out of it.
4) Fire!
We are almost there! Now put the filter paper inside the cap and pour some water into it to stick it in place (one of my co-workers says that you should use boiling water for this to get some “weird tastes” out of the filter paper — I say humbug).
Now that everything is in place, put the AeroPress on top of your mug and start pressing hard. It can take quite a bit of force to get the thing moving. The air pillow will slowly push down the coffee through the filter into the mug.
If you are hard core and drink your coffee black then you are done! However, I belong to those wimps that put milk in their coffee so I’ll continue.
5) Be a wimp
Oh there’s one thing I should have mentioned earlier 😬
While you were making your coffee you should have been preparing your milk too so that your coffee doesn’t get cold while you prepare the milk, sorry…
So, warm up some milk (full fat to be a pro) in the microwave, and then if you happen to have a milk frother make that milk smooth as silk. If you don’t have a milk frother stop reading and go get one — trust me it makes all the difference.
Now that your coffee is already cold because you used too much time preparing the milk heat it up in the microwave too.
Finally add the milk and try to draw a leaf — you will fail (even I haven’t mastered the art of milk drawing yet).
Congrats, you are done! You have successfully made a premium cup of coffee with the help of the AeroPress.
6) Enjoy!
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