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.
My favorite aeropress recipe is his iced coffee one actually works really great. It’s pretty much the inverted method with a steep time for 5-7 minutes. If you pre chill the glass and add just a small amount of ice, the coffee is the perfect temp and concentration to pour over ice with out a deluded cup. He has some good recipes and occasionally his old classic recipes can just not be that good, didn’t really use my press until I found this one that worked great since it’s always hot where I live.