The cable that came with my cheap scale is borderline e-waste. The resistance of that abomination is many times higher than with any USB cable I’ve ever measured, so it’s pretty clear which corners were cut in production. I wonder how bad the battery is though… Better be careful when charging it.

From the perspective of chemical equilibriums, there is a clear difference.

In a normal V60, the solid bed is constantly fed with fresh water, while the permeate is also removed at roughly the same rate. This means, that it’s unlikely that the grinds would even come close to an equilibrium with the water phase. If you want to maintain maximum rate of extraction for all compounds, this is the way to do it. In the short term, it makes sense to do so, because that’s how you make delicious coffee. However the longer you keep irrigating, the less useful it gets.

Immersion brewing leads to a situation where different compounds will begin to approach an equilibrium. If that happens, the rate of extraction will slow down, which can be good or bad depending on the compound you’re talking about.

Fortunately though, sugars tend to extract rather quickly whereas compounds responsible for bitter notes require more time. The problem is, I don’t really know if any of them will come close to an equilibrium in immersion brewing.

In theory, there is a difference. Can people taste the difference? Probably some can. Can I? Don’t think so. If you’re really good at tasting, and you care about differences like this, then go for it.

I know that I enjoy my fruity specialty coffee, and it’s clearly different from the popular light roast available at my local supermarket. Is the difference really worth 5x price? Not every day, since the difference in taste and quality isn’t really that big for me.

Similarly, you have to assess can you even taste the difference. If you can, is it really worth it to you. The only way to know for sure, is to make a cup with each method, and compare them side by side.

Since it is very expensive, many farmers have resorted to unethical production methods. It’s nearly impossible for you to know how it was produced, so there’s a pretty good chance the coffee you can get your hands on came from a farm where the civets are not treated anywhere near as well as you would hope.

You can also do americano style with the AP. If I’m brewing to 3 people at once, I make the coffee very strong, and then dilute it with milk or water to make it just right.

About 75 €/month at most, but that would require drinking only specialty coffee. Normally I also have a bag of cheap supermarket coffee, which I use for experiments and training. Really good specially coffee costs about 80…100 €/kg, while good light roasted fresh supermarket coffee costs about 14 €/kg, so that can easily bring that monthly expense down.

Since I drink a little bit of both, I think the overall cost is somewhere around 30…40 €/month.

AP filers are really cheap, so they contribute only cents to the monthly sum. Can you really taste the difference between two filter types? If so, can Chemex really justify the higher cost?

In addition to what everyone else has already mentioned, I would like to point out that tasting is a skill you can develop. It’s possible to taste the difference between two methods or recipes, but if you haven’t developed that skill, it’s very hard to tell if a particular change or consistency even matters. Without this skill, you won’t really appreciate the time and effort you put into making coffee in a particular way.

I drink about two cups a day (400 ml in total), and I definitely get a headache if I drop my caffeine intake too suddenly. If I was adapted to drinking much less, then I might be able to go an entire day without noticing anything, but at the current level, it’s just not going to happen. Did James mention how much coffee do the participants normally drink every day? If they are all in the 1 cup club, these results are only exploring one extreme of the scale.

And you would need to include exteme cases to make the effects visible. Having two cups a day might not be enough, and 4 might just approach the limit. People who drink like 10 cups a day should stand out in a study like this.

That was a great video! James takes these things rather seriously when compared to other coffee people. For example, there are lots of people who say you should rinse the aeropress filter or stop pushing once you hear the hiss, but James said those things don’t matter, so why bother with extra steps like that. The same idea applies here. There are lots of strange but appealing ideas floating around, but many of them are not worth your time.

Last time I had a sore throat, I drank a lot of hibiscus (sort of like tea, but not even close). Obviously, I still had to fuel my caffeine addiction so I did have my usual coffee too, but most of the time I had a warm cup of hibiscus with me. Whatever you end up drinking, make sure it isn’t too hot, because that’s going to make everything worse. Hibiscus appeared to work just fine for me.

We should have hired him to make a scifi movie about how humanity fixed the climate change.

LOL, I recall seeing HD sunglasses somewhere roughly 15 years ago. That was the period where everything had to have an HDMI port. I guess someone must have made an HDMI compatible toaster too.

I’m using my moka pot on an induction stove that goes from 1 to 9, and there’s also a P setting for max power. Normally, I just use P or 9 to make the water boiling hot. Then I leave it at zero and assmble the whole pot. After that, I set it to 2, and wait. Letting the water cool down just a little at zero heat is important. If you keep the stove at 2 while assembling the moka pot, you’ll get the water flowing way too fast, and you’ll get under extracted weak coffee.

There’s a reason for doing it this way. If you heat the water with number 2 power, it’s going to take way too long. If you give it more heat, it will obviously heat up faster, but it will also increase the flow way too much. On top of that, you’ll also get steam running through the grinds, and that tends to bring out all the bitter notes very quickly. Therefore, doing the extraction at the lowest heat possible is the way to go. Since the moka pot doesn’t have a pressure gauge, it’s very difficult to tell when would be the ideal time to reduce the power. In order to avoid that problem, I recommend boiling the water before assembly.

I’ve only used a steel moka pot. How is it easier than one made of aluminium?

Haven’t done a lot of pour over coffee, so my ideas might be inaccurate in that regard. I still use a moka pot from time to time, and have experimented with that enough to compare these methods to some extent. However, the AeroPress is my main method of choice.

control

Based on what I’ve observed, I think the key feature of an AeroPress is control. You can use any grind size, any extraction time, and any temperature below boiling. None of these variables are tied to one another in any way. With other methods, they are tied, so you will find yourself using one variable to control another, which isn’t ideal.

grind size and extraction time

With a pour over, you have to make the grind size big enough, or your paper will clog up. Clogged up paper will result in a long extraction time, which might not be what you want, so in a pour over you are essentially using grind size to put some limits to the extraction time. You can use coarse grind and pour very slowly to have more control over the result, but you can’t use fine grind and expect to have the same amount of control. Besides, pouring extremely slowly isn’t for everyone. With the AP, fine grind isn’t a problem, because you’ll be using the piston to push the water through the paper. Even if the paper is totally clogged up, because you used super fine Turkish grind, you can just push the water through anyway.

yield

Pour over method is still worth considering, because it allows you to irrigate the grinds with fresh water all the time, which maintains a high rate of extraction. However, you can also push that too far, which will result in bitter coffee. With the AP, it’s harder to screw up like that, because the grinds are constantly in contact with the water. Once enough has been extracted to the water, extraction rate will naturally slow down. That makes AP a more forgiving method. However, if you really want to maximize yield, pour over might be better for you.

temperature

Pour over and AP allow you to use whatever temperature you prefer, but the moka pot doesn’t. When the water is hot enough to produce steam, the pressure will begin to push the water through the grinds. High temperatures like that are good for efficient extraction, but they are also dangerously close to producing bitter coffee. It’s very easy to screw it up with the moka pot, whereas pour over and AP are far more forgiving in this regard.

strong coffee

I have never tried to make extra strong coffee with the pour over method, so I don’t really know how well that would work out. The moka pot and AP are really good at making strong coffee, although they can also be used for making normal strength as well. In this regard, they are quite flexible.

number of drinkers

The AP and moka pot have volume limitations, whereas a pour over allows you to just pour more and continue extracting. The AP is also ideal for making one normal cup at a time, but it can also be used for making 3-4 cups of strong coffee. The same philosophy also applies to the moka pot. Ideally, you would load the basket full and fill the water reservoir to make several cups of strong coffee - that’s what it’s designed to do. However, you can use less grinds to make normal coffee for a smaller number of people. The AP also allows you to make tiny experimental batches. This is really good if you want to compare different types of coffee, but you don’t want to drink too many cups. With the inverted method, you can easily make 100 ml batches instead and compare those with each other.

It seems that the older models had a problem that was fixed. So, the tip needs to be tweakws a bit.

If you have an older model, store the pieces separately in order to prevent the rubber from being under constant compression. If you have a newer model, push the piston all the way in until the end of the piston pops out the other end. Oh, and that is only possible if the cap isn’t screwed on. That piece needs to be stored separately anyway.

Interesting. I’m using the AP Go, so maybe the normal one doesn’t extend all the way through.

Edit: just checked how my normal AP works. It’s basically the same as the AP Go, but I guess this is a fairly new model, so there may have been some changes.

Are you using an older version?

Pretty much the same with an AeroPress.

Just push the piston all the way in, and the rubber clicks when it comes out the other end of the cylinder. This way you can store it in a compact package.