How to Use an AeroPress: The Method and Three Recipes
It looks like a science experiment and brews like a dream. The AeroPress is the most forgiving coffee maker there is — here is the method, plus three recipes to grow into.
Iris Marchand
June 6, 2026
6 min
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The AeroPress looks like a piece of lab equipment and has a small, almost cultish following for good reason: it is the most forgiving coffee maker ever made. It is nearly impossible to brew a genuinely bad cup with one, it survives being dropped, it costs about forty dollars, and there is a whole world of recipes to grow into. If you own one — or are thinking about it — here is the method and three recipes worth knowing.
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The standard method
Start here and you will have a great cup in two minutes. Use a medium-fine grind — finer than drip, coarser than espresso — and a ratio around 1:15 to start. A consistent grind matters more than anything else, so grind fresh.
- Rinse the paper filter, cap it on, and set the AeroPress on a sturdy mug.
- Add 15–17 g of coffee. Pour 250 g of water just off the boil (about 90–94°C).
- Stir gently for ten seconds, then insert the plunger slightly to create a seal.
- Wait until about the 1:30 mark, then press down slowly and steadily over 30 seconds.
- Stop pressing the moment you hear a hiss — that is the air, and going further adds bitterness.
Three recipes to grow into
Once the standard method is comfortable, these three variations cover almost everything you will want. Recipe one — the classic above — is your daily driver. Recipe two, the strong-and-diluted: use 20 g of coffee to 120 g of water for a concentrate, then top with hot water to taste, which gives a cleaner, more controllable strong cup than just over-brewing. Recipe three, the inverted method: assemble the AeroPress upside down, brew without the plunger pulling water through early, steep two minutes, then cap, flip, and press — it gives a fuller body and more control over steep time, and it is the recipe most competition brewers start from.
The beauty of the AeroPress is that none of this is fragile. Change one variable at a time, taste, and adjust. You genuinely cannot break it, which makes it the best brewer in the world to learn the fundamentals on.
- What grind should I use for an AeroPress?
- A medium-fine grind for the standard method — finer than drip coffee but coarser than espresso. For longer steep times or the inverted method you can go slightly coarser. A consistent burr grind matters more than the exact setting.
- What is the best AeroPress coffee-to-water ratio?
- Start at about 1:15 — roughly 16 g of coffee to 250 g of water — for a balanced cup. For a stronger cup, brew a concentrate at around 1:6 (say 20 g to 120 g) and dilute with hot water to taste, which stays cleaner than simply over-extracting.
- What is the inverted AeroPress method?
- You assemble the AeroPress upside down so water doesn't drip through during the steep, brew for about two minutes, then attach the filter cap, flip it onto your mug, and press. It gives more control over steep time and a fuller body, and it's popular among competition brewers.
Iris Marchand
Iris is a former hospitality writer who quit her job to apprentice at a roastery in Lisbon. She has been writing about specialty coffee since 2018.