Everybody loves the Aeropress.
But if there’s one common complaint about the brewer it’s this:
“If only it could make more than JUST one single cup at a time” 😔Well, today I’ll explain how you can achieve it with the Supersized Aeropress recipe.
The Aeropress was envisioned as a single-serve coffee maker, but Alan Adler, the inventor, always was a big proponent of using the bypass technique to make multiple cups at the same time.
Bypassing simply means brewing a stronger cup coffee and then diluting by adding hot water. It’s the same principle used when making an Americano.
Bypassing has also been used frequently among the winners of the Aeropress World Championship.
However, I was never a big fan of it.
From an extraction point of view, it just isn’t efficient. I would always feel like I was wasting coffee when doing it.
2023 Update: Aerobie has just announced the forthcoming release of an XL AeroPress
Enter the Extra Large Aeropress
So I started to experiment and found out that it’s possible to brew large servings for two people with the Aeropress.
In fact, it’s so easy that I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone else write or talk about it before.
(The technique is inspired by Eldric Stuart’s Aubade recipe, however, he uses it in a rather different way).
I’ll try to give you as precise instructions as possible in the video and in the notes below, but this is more of a technique rather than a ‘recipe’ so you’ll have to dial it in at home.
Update: Since publishing the article, a few people have asked me why I move the plunger in the ‘unusual’ way during the first part of the brew.
Actually, the reason is quite straightforward: I want to push the water through the puck, without dislodging the filter or causing unnecessary agitation. If you push the plunger down a bit more than an inch, or pull it up straight (rather than at an angle), the vacuum could cause all sorts of problems.
Supersized Aeropress Recipe for Two
- 26 grams coffee, relatively fine
- 400 grams of soft water (adjust the temperature to the roast level of the coffee – for light roast use water close to a boil)
- Preferably, use the Aesir filter. Alternatively use two or three regular filters. Of course, you can also a metal filter disk or a single regular filter, but for improved flavor clarity I’m a fan of using extra filteers.
- Rinse the Aeropress and filter with hot water. Make sure that the rubber gasket also gets wet. (This will help you later).
- Add coffee to the Aeropress in a standard position.
- The Bloom: Pour a around 50-60 ml on top of the grounds, and rotate the cylinder to help saturate all coffee. Wait 20 seconds, then add the rest of the water.
(Pro tip: If you don’t have a digital scale, you can use the INSIDE of the plunger to measure. If you fill it to the top (minus half an inch), you have precisely 200 ml.)
- Now, the recipe gets different from everything else out there: Add the plunger, but DON’T push it all the way down. Instead, plunge one inch, then pull the cylinder to the side. Lift it gently in a circle-like motion until you’re back at the top of the plunger. Repeat the process. Keep going until you have pushed all the water through. (Check out the video for a better explanation of this step).
- Fill the plunger with water again and add it to the cylinder.
- At this step, I usually put the plunger back in, pull it up slightly to create a vacuum seal, and wait for a minute.
- I then press down very slowly in a typical fashion. It should take about 45-60 seconds to press down.
Congratulations! You have just brewed two cups of Aeropress without bypassing!
Sidenote: For the video, I’m using the Aeropress Go, which has a slightly smaller capacity so the recipe is adjusted to 23 g to 350 grams of water instead.
👉 Check out more cool AeroPress recipes here.
Aeropress Multiple Cups: Go Deeper
- New Gasket: The method works very well with the newer style of the silicone rubber gasket that Aerobie has switched to in recent generations. The old rubber gasket was more grippy, which made it a lot harder to pull up without displacing the filter. You can purchase a new gasket from Aerobie for $3.50, if you don’t want to spend money on a whole new device.
- Filters matter: I’m a big fan of the special Aesir filter, which is thicker. If you use a single, regular Aeropress filter, you might dislocate it when pulling up the rubber gasket unless you’re very careful. A metal filter also works well for this recipe, since it will stay in place. The downside is that you don’t get the ‘clean’ paper taste.
- Experiment: With the first plunge, you extract a lot of the acidity, and with the second plunge, you extract body and sweetness. You can play with the different ratios of these components by making the first extraction shorter, and the second longer. I have also tried adding a bit of cold water to the first extraction to avoid bitterness.
- Stay Consistent: I like to add water two times only, but you could also do it 3 or 4 times. The reason for going with 2 x 200 ml (or 2 x 175 ml for Aeropress Go) is that it can be quite difficult to be consistent with timing and agitation if you make the recipe more advanced than this.
faq
Yes! I also find it wasteful to use bypassing, and that is why I created this method here. You can easily brew 400 ml (13.5 fl oz) with this method.
No, this method works fine with the standard Aeropress. However, it will make things a bit easier if you have one of the newer models with a smoother silicone seal.
The primary constraint of the AeroPress is its capacity of 250ml. However, if you want to learn a simple way to brew two cups at the same time, then check out this recipe.
