The Inverted AeroPress Method
Stand the AeroPress on its plunger and nothing drains until you decide. It costs you one slightly nervous flip and buys you complete control over the steep.
At a glance
- Coffee : water
- 1:13
- Active time
- 2 min
- Total time
- 5 min
- Makes
- 1 cup
- Serve
- Hot
- Kit
- AeroPress
Ingredients
Note: The inverted chamber holds a little less than the standard orientation, because the plunger is already partly in. Aim for 220 g at most.
Method
-
Set it up upside down
Push the plunger into the chamber by about a centimetre, then stand the whole thing on the plunger so the open end faces up.
Check it is stable before you pour anything into it.
-
Coffee, then water
Tip the 17 g in through the funnel, pour the water in, and stir gently three times to wet everything.
-
Steep for two minutes
Nothing drains, so you can leave it as long as you like. Two minutes suits a medium grind.
Rinse a paper filter and seat it in the cap while you wait.
Steep 2 minutes -
Cap it and flip
Screw the cap on tight. Put your mug upside down over the cap, hold both together firmly, and turn the whole assembly over in one movement.
A little coffee will drip through as soon as it is the right way up. That is normal.
-
Press slowly
Thirty seconds of steady pressure. Stop at the hiss.
Press 30 seconds
Why this works
In the standard orientation the paper is at the bottom of the chamber and gravity starts pulling water through it the moment you pour. Over a ninety second steep that is only a trickle, and seating the plunger stops most of it. Over a four minute steep it is a real loss, and worse, the coffee that drains first is the most extracted, so you cannot control the ratio.
Inverting removes the problem completely. The seal is at the bottom, the open end is up, and nothing moves until you flip.
That buys you the long steeps. Three, four or five minutes with a correspondingly coarser grind gives a rounder, less bright, heavier cup than the fast standard method, closer in character to a Clever dripper. It is also the orientation most competition recipes use, for exactly this reason.
The tradeoff is the flip, which is a chamber of near-boiling water balanced on a mug. It is not difficult but it does want a firm grip and a bit of attention. Screw the cap on properly, hold both pieces, and move decisively rather than slowly.
Variations
- Long and gentle: 15 g to 230 g, coarse grind, four minutes.
- Concentrate for milk: 22 g to 110 g, two minutes, then build a latte on it.
- Cold: brew at 20 g to 150 g and press onto 100 g of ice.
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Questions
Is inverted actually better?
For steeps over two minutes, yes, because nothing escapes. Under two minutes the difference is small enough that the standard method is the sensible choice, since it cannot spill.
Will it spill when I flip it?
Not if the cap is screwed on properly and you hold the mug against it. Do the first few over a sink. If the cap is cross-threaded it will leak, so check it seats flat.
How far in should the plunger go?
About a centimetre, enough to seal. Any further and you lose chamber volume for no benefit.