AeroPress Premium Review: The Cult Favorite Brand's Plastic-Free Coffeemaker Mostly Hits Its Marks

Coffee snobbery is a satellite of interrelated and occasionally warring tribes. There are airy roast and acheronian roast people, pour-over and espresso people, and fiercely partisan fans of assorted grinders (Baratza brothers unite, we volition lavation our beans successful the humor of the Fellow fellows).

AeroPress radical are among the quirkiest tons connected the farm. Invented by the aforesaid feline who invented the Aerobie flying ring, the AeroPress is simply a unsocial single-serve coffeemaker that uses unit applied by manus to extract a creaseless but richly flavorful cupful of coffee. A well-made AeroPress brew resembles espresso successful its deficiency of bitterness but comes by the cupful alternatively of a shot. Best of all, the integrative instrumentality volition past a decennary and outgo lone arsenic overmuch arsenic 5 Starbucks mochas. The WIRED squad has agelong admired AeroPress; columnist Steven Levy profiled the inventor successful his Palo Alto bureau a decennary agone and contributor Joe Ray is connected the grounds calling the AeroPress “ingenious.”

The 1 evident downside—and sensitivity to this contented volition alteration wide by person—is that the instrumentality is made of plastic. That integrative is repeatedly exposed to near-boiling h2o and a half-bar of pressure. It is worthy mentioning that the integrative AeroPress uses is escaped of BPA, escaped of phthalates, and has support for nutrient interaction from the FDA and EU. But … well, you know.

Heart of Glass

Back successful 2021, the flying-ring feline sold a stake successful AeroPress to a Canadian holding institution that has been capitalizing connected the task by rolling retired a overmuch wider suite of products including large Aeropresses, greenish Aeropresses, wide Aeropresses, and its ain branded metallic filter to rival the ones created by cottage brands that made each the accessories the institution itself declined to offer. (The AeroPress marque metallic filter is large and a clutch summation to the Premium, arsenic volition beryllium discussed below.)

The astir anticipated of those products is the AeroPress Premium. At last, AeroPress offered a brewing strategy that's wholly escaped of plastic. The enclosure that holds the h2o is heat-proof wide borosilicate glass, similar European Pyrex. The conduit you usage to use unit is made of aluminum. The headdress that holds the filter (paper oregon metal) is stainless steel. The plunger headdress that forms a seal with the solid enclosure is made of silicone.

The archetypal tally of the Premium debuted backmost successful October and sold retired fast. After months of backorders, it's present readily disposable straight from the institution oregon from Williams-Sonoma. The Premium's terms has sparked heated debates among AeroPress fans—a tiny people whitethorn beryllium splitting into 2 adjacent smaller tribes—but aft 3 weeks of investigating I've relegated my aged trusty brownish integrative AeroPress to a crate afloat of camping gear.

Metal Militia

It's worthy stating intelligibly up apical that I truly similar AeroPress coffee. I thin to alternate betwixt a fewer antithetic brewing methods (Chemex, Hario, French Press, AeroPress … Keurig) for a fewer months astatine a clip but ever find myself coming backmost to AeroPress due to the fact that of the uniquely cleanable espresso-ish flavor, the easiness of usage and cleanup, and the information you tin brew a cupful astatine a time, meaning your 2nd cupful of java isn't sitting astir getting acold erstwhile your workfellow successful London schedules a 7 americium meeting. But AeroPress brew is uniquely affluent and robust and whitethorn not beryllium for everyone—it's little crisp and much bitter than due espresso made utilizing overmuch much pressure, and it has a thicker mouthfeel than regular drip oregon pour-over coffee.