I’ve been using James Hoffman’s recipe since I bought AeroPress, and I was pretty satisfied. While being simple, it produced rich, balanced cups of coffee for both light and medium roasts. I was happy with it. But then I started noticing that some light-roasted coffee was too bitter. It rarely happened, but when it did, it wasn’t possible to get rid of that excessive bitterness. When I tried to increase the grind size, I got watery, but still too bitter coffee. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the coffee beans, but then I thought, maybe immersion brewing was just not suitable for them. So, I decided to find another recipe.
I wanted to try a hybrid recipe containing a percolation phase, as I believed it could produce more balanced cups. So I searched on the Aeromatic app and found a recipe from The Real Sprometheus. It has a long percolation phase and quite a short immersion phase. And this recipe fixed my coffee. I got a balanced cup without excessive bitterness and with more detailed acidity. Now, this is my recipe to go, as I think it’s superior to James Hoffman’s recipe.
What’s the recipe? Can you share?
Was thinking about picking up an aeropress for camping, and was just going to start with the James Hoffman recipe, but I’m open to trying something different.
Add 15g of coffee. Then:
00:00 Pour 100g of water 00:10 Let it bloom 01:30 Add 150g of water 01:45 Stir slowly with a spoon front-back, left-right 02:00 Insert plunger and let it steep 02:30 Make a gentle swirl and push gently 03:15 Finish
Source: https://youtu.be/VXPKxowfXDQ
Awesome, thanks! I guess it’s time to order an aeropress.
Picked up an aeropress and gave this a shot. Was a little more bitter than I expected.
Will try again and change a few things, but I think this is a good starting point.
I love the entertainment factor of James but he and Lance both are held up as gods by coffee people when i think a lot of what they produce, especially their “scientific” experiments, are questionable at best.
In roasting we have a similar problem with Scott Rao who most professional roasters think is a fool.
Yeah, Hoffman is great, but he’s not some infallible authority on every brewing method, though people treat him like one. In his video on specialty moka pots, he covers the Bialetti Brikka, the only moka pot that produces crema. He ignores all the very specific instructions that come with the Brikka, like use only 280 mls of water and don’t pre-heat it, then uses a random base rather than the special-sized base that comes with it, and fails to get it to produce crema. I still see coffee snobs claim that the Brikka doesn’t work because of that video.