If you want good, easy, fast and portable coffee by the cup this is the product for you.
Positive Product Points
-Cheap -Easy to Use and Clean -Quick Hot Coffee -Nearly Indestructible -Portable -Most important...Good Coffee
Negative Product Points
-Not very Aesthetically pleasing...a coworker even said it "looks like a breast pump."
Detailed Commentary
Okay so I ran into this little item the other day at a local trendy upscale grocery store and was intrigued as it was only $30, but I wasn't sure about it as I had never seen anything like it.
Then when I was researching the $11,000.00 Clover 1s (I am from Seattle and saw a Clover at a coffee shop and wondered what it was), I ran into the following article Click Here (www.coffeegeek.com) on this site. This article by Mark Prince compares the unbelievably expensive Clover 1s with the amazingly cheap AeroPress and how they use similar brewing techniques.
Since I am not Howard Schultz and cannot afford to buy Ballard based Coffee Equipment Company (Maker of the Clover 1s), much less afford the $11,000.00 price tag that coffee houses (such as Stickman Coffee, Zoka, Stumptown, Elysian, Intelligentsia & Cafe Grumpy) pay for the Clover, I instead purchased the AeroPress (by the maker of the Aerobie-how weird) as it was not a big risk at $30.00.
I just today received the AeroPress and my first cup of coffee from it, as well as the 2nd and 3rd, were great. I am looking forward to trying the suggestions from the above article and plan on buying a Gold Cone filter this week and cutting my own metal filter disk out from it so that I will not lose the oils and sediment that the paper filters out. I am a French press lover and hence like the sediment and extra oils.
The way I have prepared the coffee so far is according to Mark Prince's suggestion in the above article. I ground the coffee in a blade grinder for about 12-15 seconds (by feel slightly more coarse than for espresso), added 202'ish degree water (boiled in the microwave in a Pyrex), stirred the grounds for 10 seconds, let sit for 10 seconds and pressed for 10-20 seconds, then topped off my cup with hot water (from our companies 'Culligan' style water cooler/heater) for a very hot, rich and robust cup of black coffee. My Espresso Vivace's-Vita Blend was delicious and almost as good as the americano at their walk up location on Broadway.
I am really looking forward to tinkering with the variables and seeing the different flavors that I can get from quality coffee beans.
Buying Experience
I used Amazon.com because it was the cheapest. I got the AeroPress, an extra 350 paper filters and free shipping for the price of the AeroPress at Sur La Table, Metropolitan Market or City Kitchens.
