The AeroPress grind

An AeroPress is a clever piece of kit for brewing coffee, combining French Press, Pour Over, and Espresso brewing methods, and is a great alternative to a higher priced coffee maker.

If you’re interested in learning more about the method (both ‘normal’ and the ‘inverted method’), you’re going to want to visit our full length explanation over here. Once you’re set up with how to brew AeroPress coffee, the next question you might have in mind is this: how do I ensure my ground coffee is suited perfectly to AeroPress? When it comes to grind sizes, there are some tricks we’ve learned that will get the most out of your kit and coffee, whether it ends up as a cold brew or americano. We’ve got you covered.

An AeroPress grind for coffee beans should be the texture of ground sea salt, or what we usually call a ‘medium grind’.

It combines the coarse grind and surface area required for a great flavour to avoid weakness, but the fine grind needed to ensure the AeroPress can actually get the best out of the beans.

In addition, if your grind is too fine (closer to an espresso grind), it will put too much pressure on your filter paper, potentially breaking it, and ruining the brew. It’s one you want to get right!

If you are looking to grind the coffee yourself, the best way to pave the way for a perfect cup of coffee with your AeroPress is a great grinding mechanism.

We recommend an electric one, as there is far less room for error and you are usually able to achieve a much more specific grind size than when going manually. Equally, a lot less effort goes into pressing a button and letting it do its thing!

Don’t fear though, blade grinders can also get you a good quality grind. If you are using a blade grinder, we recommend creating an artificial ‘pulse’ throughout the process by quickly grinding and stopping, as opposed to consistently going at the same speed. This gives you a bit more control over the grind size and avoids overdoing it to create too fine a grind.

All of our single origin coffee beans are available pre-ground for AeroPress, but if you’re after our recommendations, our King Canute Ethiopian coffee provides a medium to dark roast with beans perfect for the grind setting we’ve suggested. It’s a single origin (like all our beans) sourced from Mustafa Abakeno, a smallholder owning 18 acres of land in Western Ethiopia, and will provide a stewed plum, vanilla and black pepper cup profile with an almond cream and dark chocolate body.

We recommend storing your ground coffee in an airtight container in a dark, cool space, like a kitchen cupboard. Keep it away from strong scents and flavours (probably not in your spice cupboard!) or anything that might be damp (so also not in the fridge!). If well sealed, your ground coffee should last a few months – though the absolute best flavour will be with you for the first one or two weeks after the coffee grinding process.

You’ll be looking at about a 1.13% caffeine content per scoop, which is on the lower side. As per our article above, you want about double the ratio of hot water to coffee when using your AeroPress.