For the first time in months, I woke up to a room temperature of below 30 degrees Centigrade.

“SUZUSHI!” I said to myself. The Japanese word for cool.

It’s finally okay for hot coffee.

So, one of the folks at Coffee Home Brewers shared this app called Aeroprecipe and I downloaded it. I looked it up – it is also a website collecting various ways to use the Aeropress!

Here’s the recipe that first came out, also what I chose to make this morning:

I brought out my trust Hario Mini Slim, the manual grinder I have been using almost daily since 2019.

Since the recipe called for a find grind, I adjusted the nut to 6 clicks. For the Hario Mini, the way to do it is to turn the screw tight to the right (righty tighty), and then count 6 clicks to the left (lefty loosey). The more clicks, the coarser the grind size.

Measured out 12g of coffee beans. I am using one of my old beans. I think this is the Lavazza Crema e Aroma.

I set up the Aeropress to inverted method. What is the inverted method? That’s the one as pictured. Lol.

And poured the 12g of ground coffee in the chamber. Hmm…in real life the grind looked fine to me, but seeing the picture on the screen, it looks like I could go finer. Next time I will try five or four clicks instead of six. The uneven grind size is also evident. This means I need to disassemble the burr grinder and do some hacks to make the grind size more even. There are plenty of YouTube tutorials about this.

Meanwhile, the kettle has registered 176.8F for the hot water. That’s a little above 80C so it’s time to do the brew. This is the first time I am brewing with water temperature this low. I usually do off-boil temps, about 95-98C. I hope my coffee doesn’t turn out as cold as a corpse.

It’s difficult to capture the step by step when your camera and codigo (cheat sheet) are on the same phone! Anyway I followed the steps as close as possible: bloomed with 60g water for 20s (not in picture), stirred 3 times (left photo), then poured the rest of the 140g (right photo).

ACK! I overpoured water by 13g (right photo). I was too busy taking a picture!

It’s time to screw the brew filter on and plunge. I want to show that I reuse my Aeropress filters as long as possible, provided I am using the same beans. My taste buds is not that sophisticated to notice any difference between new and reused paper filter. Also, if the inventor did it, why not me?

I screwed the filter on, then inverted the chamber on top of a carafe and began plunging.

Brewing was overtime by 30seconds. The recipe says to aim for total brew time of 1m30s, but I started plunging at 1m30s. This is what happens when you try to document the process at the same time.

The time registered is not accurate as I’ve been taking photos. I think my total brew time was about 2 minutes. The yield: 121.2g or about 4oz, my preferred serving size for a cup of coffee!

Verdict:

• I’m surprised that the low temperature works! The coffee is not bangkay (corpse). I think also that this method works for medium dark to dark roast because the low water temperature will make light roasts more sour. With a dark roast like what I used, the low water temp makes for a non-burnt taste.
• The strength is good for me. If I had not overpoured I think it would be just right. Although the coffee to water ratio is high, I thought this would be diluted. I’m surprised that the yield was exact for a 4oz serving size.
• The body is also to my liking, as Aeropress brews go, it tastes clean.
• The method may be worth repeating for me, however it’s only for one serving. My morning coffee is usually two 4oz servings!