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The Aerobie AeroPress

When the Stanford professor Alan Adler sat down in his garage workshop in 2004, he didn’t set out to reinvent coffee brewing. Or even to make a statement about the value of single-origin coffees, clean brewing, or the purported health benefits of drinking coffee that hasn’t already been exposed to air. Adler is best known as the inventor of the Aerobie, a flying ring that can soar through the air nearly 300 feet. He was merely looking to find a way to make a single cup of coffee quickly, without bitterness or complexity. What he ended up with was the AeroPress, a simple, elegant, now-iconic device that has since won the hearts of coffee lovers the world over.

In 2005, the AeroPress was brought to the masses by a company best known for throwing toys out of planes. Its inventor, Alan Adler, seethed at slow-brewing, inconsistent coffee­makers, so he approached his task as if engineering a newer, better way to make just one great cup. The AeroPress produced a strong, smooth brew quickly and cheaply, delivering a taste that once required fancy machines. Instantaneously, the humble gadget was making barista-level coffee possible for most anyone.

Might consider it an unusual combination – an engineer from an aerodynamics division designing a coffee brewer. However, with Adler’s eye for ingenuity and ease of use, he came up with a brewer that gives the user a lot of control over the brew. Today, there are worldwide AeroPress competitions where coffee geeks show off their AeroPress recipes; not bad for an amateur passion project! 

AeroPress is made of BPA-free, food-grade plastic, and the simple tube shape of its cylindrical body, plunger, and cap looks basic on the off-chance that you mistake it for something else. But the simplicity of the pour-over mechanism combined with the material choice makes it a portable and sturdy device. The plastic is light and nearly indestructible, which explains why it has become a lifelong companion for campers, backpackers and crazy-busy baristas looking for a quick, sure-fire cup.

While the materials are simple, every element is important for making a balanced cup of coffee. The action of plunger applies air pressure, forcing water through the coffee grounds and a small paper or metal filter that sits in the bottom. This gentle press-brewing process is not as aggressive as drip coffee machines or French presses, which can sometimes extract too many undesirable solids from the grounds.

 The wonderful thing about the AeroPress is that you can make your cup as intense (in the espresso sense) as you like, or a gentler, American-style drip brew. You add any quantity of coffee (with any grind) to any volume of water you want, allow the coffee to sit in the water for 1-2 minutes, and then plunge it into the cup. The coffee is clean. It’s smooth. The good beans come through.

With its ease of use and cleaning, its presence in kitchens and even offices around the world is now ubiquitous, including some high-end cafes. And needless to say, it uses no electricity and produces little waste, crucial considerations in an increasingly ‘green’ environment.

 Despite its plain appearance, the AeroPress has had a huge influence on modern coffee culture: it appeals to experimenters and nerds alike, all while letting friends in on the secret and making great coffee accessible in even the humblest kitchen. Any café willing to serve AeroPress alongside a pour-over and a nice shot of espresso has become a venue where that collaboration between artisanal coffee and accessibility can happen.

 It says a lot about how both customers and café-owners are thinking differently, that less is more, and that you can achieve extraordinary results with simple, consistent techniques. If big machines were once seen as the mark of a coffee shop worth visiting, more and more businesses are learning that the AeroPress can brew coffee every bit as good as the heftier machines. It shows that you don’t have to invest big to brew a coffee that makes people come to a standstill and enjoying a long moment. 

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