Coffee has always been a necessary yet unromantic affair at my home. It was a quick caffeine fix prepared twice (or thrice) a day. While offering to make someone a cup was definitely a love language, it was a language more comparable to German than French. For anyone wondering filter coffee at the Athrays follows a simple three-step process
Filter out your decoction (around 20 mins before you want your cup)
Heat Milk
Pour Milk and Decoction into a cup
Very simple, very to-the-point, very tasty!
This was not the case when I came to university. Especially not the case when I became friends with a coffee aficionado who lived on the floor above me. Almost as soon as we became friends, I learnt about the AeroPress. The AeroPress is a clean three-part gizmo with similar mechanics to that of a syringe (as per my noob and potentially flawed understanding). One part collects the coffee-water mixture and has a filter attached to the bottom. The other part acts as a piston applying air pressure from the top. What gravity was for filter kaapi at home, air pressure was for Aero Pressed brew at my friend’s hostel room.
Enough of science. Back to storytelling.
While there seemed to exist several procedural similarities in the coffee brewed at home, and that brewed by my friend - the two could not have been more different. In contrast to the choppy three-stage process I mentioned earlier, my friend’s brewing usually began with a weighing scale (for the coffee) and sometimes with the sound of coffee beans being ground. But much like coffee at home, this methodical process always ended with a banging cup of coffee.
One evening with my friend, we started talking about how the inventor of the AeroPress came up with his invention. My friend told me that the Aero Press was invented to simplify coffee brewing. One would wake up all groggy (or get back home, in a comparable state of mind) in the mood for some bean, not as much in the mood for a multi-step brewing process. Cue the AeroPress! All that was required was a reasonably calculated push and you’d have a cup of coffee. “However, what about a second cup of coffee? In case you had a friend visiting your home?” My friend asked me, both of us appreciating the irony behind the sentence. He continued as he readied the AeroPress (AP), “How does one ensure the same push on the AP every time they wanted to brew a cup?”
Following a brief theatrical pause, my friend proceeded to place his forearm on the AeroPress - slowly weighing it down. There it was - a simple, yet constant push on the brew! I myself had the opportunity of testing this hack out when my friend asked me to lend him a hand (no pun intended).
Along with all the caffeine-fueled conversations I have had at friends’, this is a memory that stays with me. Coffee as finely calibrated to its maker as it is to its drinker.
the ending's so neatly done!
loved reading this! Am familiar with the Aero Press but never took the time to find out what made it unique! Thank you for this. I learned something new today!