Aeropress
This thing makes a really good cup of coffee fast. It's well made, compact, and clean up is easy.
The AeroPress is 2.5 inch diameter syringe with a paper micro filter mounted across the bottom. It sits on top of a common coffee mug for brewing. You put in fine ground coffee measured with the included scoop. The scoop is about 1.5 times bigger than the ones you might get with regular a drip coffee maker. You put in hot water at the recommended 175 degrees which is cooler than other methods. You stir for 10 seconds and push the plunger in. Compressed air pushes the coffee out in 10 - 20 seconds. What you have in the cup is concentrated coffee. If you dilute it about 50/50 with hot water you get the strength of a regular cup of good coffee. It tastes great!
I have a French press, a vacuum brewer, various kinds of drip brewers, a good espresso machine, and I roast my own coffee. Since I got my AeroPress two months ago I favor it for all my coffee except espresso. It's not fair to call the AeroPress concentrate espresso as the manufacture does but that's a minor point.
-- Frank Cox
Aeropress
$28
Available from Sweet Maria's
Manufactured by Aerobie
Favorite (15)
adx442
We have several of these in our extended family. It works wonderfully well, and the final product is delicious. We buy and roast our own beans, so we're picky about coffee ... this is the espresso version of a French Press. We cut the espresso with hot water to make Americanos rather than drinking it straight.
It's so easy to use that we made coffee along the side of the road on a trip to Montana with a camp stove to heat the water. Aside from boiling the water, it took about 6 minutes to make four twelve-ounce mugs. While we were camping, we made at least 4 cups a day with this for two weeks. No failures, no complications, nothing short of perfect coffee every time.
Cleanup is also easy ... the grounds are compressed into a very solid "pellet" that you can quickly eject into a trash bag. Rinse the parts with a half cup of water, and it's ready to store.
Replacement filters are extraordinarily inexpensive for a specialty product. We got 300 filters for about 4 dollars from Amazon. This is a fantastic product if you like coffee. The only downside is that it uses a LOT of beans (no more than other espresso machines, though).