If you look at the recent Aeropress competition winners here, just about everyone is dosing 30g or higher (for single serving, I presume). I read Aeropress is quite capable of high EY (20% or above), so I found the very high dosing trend interesting and was wondering if there's a particular reason behind it. Are they deliberately sacrificing extraction yield just to get only good flavors at high enough concentration?

As a new Aeropress user, I've been having trouble achieving both good flavor clarity AND cup strength at the same time (I get one or the other, but not both), so I've been researching and the high dosing trend in the published recipes caught my eyes. I drink lightly roasted fruity East African coffees mostly. No issue with flavor+strength with Americanos from Robot using 15g dose...just trying to use Aeropress time to time because it's quite a bit faster (for two cups it's 4 min vs 12 min, so yeah).

Caveat, my palate is not very refined to pull flavour notes, but I am getting great tasting coffee. Everyone I make coffee for has stated such as well.
I dose 18g+/- for Robot doses. and 16g+/- for Aeropess. For the same coffee I will grind about half a turn coarser than Robot setting on my M47 Simplicity. I make the Aeropress with about 200g of water, then dilute down into a decent/normal sized coffee mug, not sure how much more water it ends up being.

I've experimented with dosing higher and grinding coarser for the Aeropress. It comes out bolder but feel like its wasted beans for the result and enjoy the lower doses fine. When I get a coffee I haven't had before I'll play with that a bit more.

May I ask what kind of coffee you brew with Aeropress? Fruity light roast or something more chocolaty and darker?

The gambit, I'm game to try most anything, and do. The medium South American coffees are easier to get something really tasty from though.
In my opinion, of course tastes are personal.

Competition is all about making your coffee stand out. You may not use the same methods day-to-day that you would to win the competition.

hobomotorhome wrote:The gambit, I'm game to try most anything, and do. The medium South American coffees are easier to get something really tasty from though.
In my opinion, of course tastes are personal.

Thanks. The reason I asked is that according to Ad Astra's take on immersion vs percolation , the immersion brew (e.g. Aeropress, FP) extracts fruity acid flavors relatively slower compared to the percolation brew (e.g. espresso, drip). So if you cut your brew at say 20% EY on both using the same coffee, you would wind up with more fruity acid flavors on the percolation brew. To match the same fruity acid flavors, you would have to A) achieve higher EY (and risk bringing out unpleasant flavors), or B) stay at low EY but dose higher. This seems to jibe with what I'm experiencing and the competition recipe trend. This would not be an issue, or less of an issue, for darker roasts where there are not much of the fast extracting fruity acid compounds to focus on. Don't know if I'm making sense lol.

yakster wrote:Competition is all about making your coffee stand out. You may not use the same methods day-to-day that you would to win the competition.

No doubt. But I still find it interesting that they all chose to use a very high dose when there are many other variables to mess with. Don't they have a penalty scoring system for having to dose so high? If not, they should!

I use the Aeropress to make coffee for Vietnamese iced coffee. I use medium dark roast, like Red Bird Blue Jaguire. I do the inverted method and use 25 gr of coffee and 150 gr of water at about 185 degrees. I a stir bloom for about 10-15 sec and then let steep for 2 min. Of course then I pour over about 2 tbsp of sweetened condensed milk and pour over a cup of ice. Nice, strong, sweet and thick.

yakster wrote:Competition is all about making your coffee stand out. You may not use the same methods day-to-day that you would to win the competition.

If everyone is dosing at 30g then they are not really standing out are they? I get however there are trends and the 30g might just be the new thing. Back in 2013 Jeff Verellen made a low water temp method at 80c popular that I think has died off. Jeff may have re-discovered this but if everyone read the instructions that came with their aeropress it has always said to use 80c so he certainly wasn't the first as the method was hiding in plain sight. These trends come and go and then resurface again. I make a habit not to follow competition methods as they tends to be too ambitious and have other goals in mind than just making good coffee.

DamianWarS wrote:I make a habit not to follow competition methods as they tends to be too ambitious and have other goals in mind than just making good coffee.

Enter this recipe by coffeemmichael...

I have had the same experience- that for some reason I prefer at least 20% more bean weight when using an aeropress. I don't know why. The resulting coffee is very good, both for dark and medium light roasts.

I have found that the factory instructions are very hard to beat, other than my preferring the inverted method. I use 170F for dark roasts and 185F for medium-light (tested a wide range of temperatures, each time readjusting the grind to suit).

In my experience the Aeropress is fairly forgiving in terms of making drinkable cups, but quite fussy if you want the best from it. I found I needed very tight consistentcy in temperature, pour method and agitation.