I’ve been using a cheap (~$8) digital scale I picked up at a hardware store and I’ll never go back. It’s got horrible accuracy, something like ±1g, but I still find I can get better consistency using it over a scoop. Particularly with lighter roasts those little beans can have wildly different masses. Eventually I’ll treat myself to a coffee scale but this one has been good enough for me to ditch the scoop.
4 Likes
Yeah a while back I picked up a cheap set of scales from eBay that do measurements to 0.1g. Not sure what the accuracy is like but much better than the volumetric scoop.
I figure a dosing bowl would give me somewhere to weigh the beans once I’d scooped them out of the bag. Though my scales do have a cover which I think serves the same purpose.
3 Likes
I’ve just been using the base of the C2 itself. Pouring beans into it isn’t too bad, and pouring from it into the hopper is great (never bounced one out yet). It’s just about perfect for dosing the Aeropress without a funnel though, so that’s my main draw to keep using it.
2 Likes
I’ve never used either of my Aeropress funnels.
Aside from the first cup, me either. It makes a handy spot to hold the stirrer though (also unused). 
1 Like
I am taking a surprisingly large amount of coffee gear (grinder, Aeropress, scales) with me when head over to my folks’ place this Xmas so naturally I’m looking at camera/gear bags to hold it all.
6 Likes
Wow - that’s taking coffee very seriously…
1 Like
Now I want to see the bag packed
3 Likes
I normally throw the Aeropress, coffee and scales in a small box when I head over there but now I’ve got the grinder to add to that as well so I’m a bit nervous about them all rattling about.
3 Likes
I just drink instant… I do have some paraphernalia to make better coffee but I can never be bothered
2 Likes
My dad is like this. We always had a decent drip brewer, and even routinely kept fresh beans around for the weekends. He loves coffee, drinks it every day. Until the pod systems came around he always just made single cups of instant.
I’ve learned I’m someone who craves little rituals. I started making stovetop coffee for myself years back, and the habit kind of stuck. The Aeropress has been a game changer for me, mostly because it’s so dead-easy to clean and use again. I’d definitely be willing to travel with it.
3 Likes
It’s very much about the ritual of it for me as well.
When I started my current job (11 years ago) I joined the “coffee club” which was just a few members of my team who’d get together to make a cafetiere and have a chat each morning. It wasn’t always amazing coffee (mostly Lavazza) but the chat was good.
It survived some of us moving to different teams and different floors of the building but we’d still make the trek down several flights of stairs to where it all started for coffee and a chat.
Unfortunately it didn’t survive the pandemic. Although one of them did pop by my desk today to say “hi” and “bye” before the Xmas break. He asked me what I was doing for coffee nowadays and looked a bit offended when he mistook the tub of ground coffee on my desk for instant. We talked about restarting some sort of coffee club again in the new year.
I keep an Aeropress in the office and have two cafetieres in my desk, I guess for emergencies. There are at least half a dozen other people on my floor who also have Aeropresses so it sort of feels like I’m still in some form of coffee club as we all seem to now know each other. Even the non-weird-coffee-people can’t resist asking about the Aeropress.
I don’t know if grinding my own coffee is going to radically change the taste, but I’m excited about the extra few minutes of the ritual.
3 Likes
Grinding, particularly by hand, has elevated the ritual to levels I cannot properly account for (on account of the ritual being such a esoteric, fiddly thing). I’ve got an infant and a toddler-living-with-infant at home, so grinding is… precarious. But with the hand grinder I can just move into another room and enjoy it—no longer am I bound to the kitchen.
One universal thing I learned from being an audio weirdo: find your diminishing returns ASAP. Nothing returns on coffee quite like freshness, and nothing delivers on freshness quite like grinding your own beans just before the pour [EDIT] within limits! I’ve been buying coffee roasted so fresh that I need to leave a few days of rest! That’s a good problem to have.
2 Likes
My coffee subscription offers a number of grind levels for popular brewing methods but I do sometimes find that their “medium fine” for Aeropress brews very differently to what I’m used to. Maybe roast has something to do with that. Excited to have that variable to play with.
While the time from roasting to grinding to arriving in the post is normally only a few days, I try and line up deliveries so I can start the bag as soon as it arrives. I get through a bag of ground coffee in a couple of weeks but I do notice the change in freshness by the end of the bag. Again, looking forward to having something that’s a bit more stable and maybe not having to worry about a bag turning up early.
2 Likes
There’s very little I can “confirm” when it comes to coffee drinking, but when it comes to fresh beans I can confidently say you’re in for a treat. It’s amazing how fast freshly ground (but otherwise fresh) beans go sour compared to whole bean.
3 Likes
There’s a few places I’ve wanted to buy coffee from that only do wholebean so I’m excited about branching out a bit too.
2 Likes
I can’t imagine not having a coffee grinder. I mean, I’m not taking one camping, but I have had one at home since I went to college. For non-espresso, any grinder is better than pre ground. But a better grinder does improve things (and increases consistency), at least until you hit diminishing returns.
2 Likes
First cup of coffee using the grinder this morning, a light roast from Kenya. Was lovely.
15 clicks on the grinder seemed a good starting point but may experiment over the course of this bag. The freshness was a surprise, was worried for a second that I wasn’t going to get all the water in the Aeropress.
3 Likes
Haha yeah, when the beans are fresh like that they offgas like crazy! My baseline ratio is about 16-17g grounds to 310ml water. I can’t fit it all without a short bloom. I usually fill to about 130ml and swirl while my kettle comes back to a full boil, then slowly finish it off, putting me right to the top. [EDIT] The inverted method is right out for me as an option. Who is drinking these tiny cups?
13-16 clicks for me too, by the way. 13 for the lightest stuff.
2 Likes