I tend to make my coffee with a regular aeropress.
how do
I use the upside down method from James Hoffmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VlT_jUVPc
I’ve been enjoying the callouts feature of obsidian/quartz, so here is one:
Danger
The upside down method is a great way to burn yourself. Do it at your own risk.
The way it works is that instead of placing your aeropress on your mug-shaped object before pouring hot water, you instead place it upside down on the counter (or similar), with plunger facing down, and the side that’ll touch your mug facing up. The benefit is that there’s no coffee leaking into your mug before it’s properly extracted.
If you’re not careful, the plunger will come off when you’re rotating the aeropress, you’ll make a mess, potentially also burning yourself in the process. Always make sure that the plunger is not too close to the edge.
You need:
- 1 aeropress (they’re like 50eur or whatever)
- 1 kettle (any half-decent is fine by me)
- 1 coffee grinder (I use this one but I’m not sure it’s any good. I use grind setting 2.)
- don’t use anything with blades, go for burrs instead. if you can’t do that, consider buying good pre-ground instead, various coffee shops (incl. starbucks) let you just have it ground on the spot when you buy whole beans from them.
- 1 mug or similarly shaped object designed for containing hot liquids. must be wide enough to fit aeropress, but not too wide that you need to press it midair.
- 6 or 12 grams of light roast coffee beans
- amount depending on how much coffee you want to drink. 6g is pretty small amounts of coffee to be clear.
- you should grind this with the coffee grinder (see the linked video for the grind setting)
- 100 or 200 grams of water
- amount depending on how much coffee you picked in last step.
- you should boil this with the kettle
- optional: 1 chopstick or other similar object to stir the coffee grounds. I like metal chopsticks for this as they get into corners well, and I can wash and reuse them all I want.
Then you should:
- put grounds into an aeropress placed upside down (plunger facing down)
- pour the hot water into the aeropress, start a 3 minute timer
- stir with chopstick to ensure that nothing gets stuck at the bottom or edges (wash off chopstick shortly afterwards)
- add the filter to the aeropress lid, twist the lid onto the aeropress
- after the 3 minutes elapses, carefully flip the aeropress and place it onto the top of your mug-shaped object.
- it really helps to grab them both with one hand, put the mug at the top of the aeropress, then flip them both around. this way nothing leaks. watch out for your plunger location.
- press down the plunger while also holding the mug-shaped object with your other hand
- you want to hold down the mug-shaped object in case your powerful vertical forces become lateral enough to overcome the static friction between your mug and your kitchen counter, flinging your mug and hot coffee around the room
- you don’t want to do this too fast, else the result may be slightly worse
Here’s a crappy timer:
(Did you know that with obsidian you can just put html (incl. inline script block) into a markdown file then wikilink embed that? Crazy stuff.)3 minute timer
Link to original(not running)
how bean
I have obtained whole bean specialty coffee from these places before and can recommend them. You’re better off looking up local options though.
- https://mvsm.coffee (Munich)
- Expensive, but generally single origin and ran by people who care about coffee.
- https://www.hermeticcoffee.com (Hamburg)
- They roast to order! Beautiful stuff.
- https://www.cafe-libertad.de (Hamburg)
- Less single origin options.
- https://www.brandmeesters.nl (Amsterdam)
- Less single origin options. Stopped by here to buy coffee while passing by Amsterdam to WHY2025.
James Hoffmann has good videos on the topic of choosing what coffee to get, if you’re having decision paralysis.