I’m in a new role at work where I’m in the office every day, 8-10 hours a day which is a departure from the previous role which allowed for more flexibility along with some very early start times due to meetings with Europe and India. The change has brought me to a caffeine lover’s crossroad. Either I get up early enough to warm up my home espresso machine or I make my coffee at the office. I tried for a few days making a 20 ounce Chemex pour-over batch and bringing that to work in a insulated thermos but 4 hour old coffee is just awful even when kept warm. Since I’m not technical enough to make my own cold-brew, a home-setup needed to be formulated so I spent some time last weekend researching AeroPress and how to do this with as few equipment pieces as possible without sacrificing quality.
Here’s my parts-list for the perfect @ work coffee setup:
- Porlex JP-30 Stainless Steel Coffee Grinder $45
- Ozeri Touch Professional Digital Kitchen Scale (12 lbs Edition), Tempered Glass in Elegant Black $20
- S Filter for AeroPress – Ultra Fine Stainless Steel Coffee Filter – $18
- Bonavita 1-Liter Variable Temperature Digital Electric Gooseneck Kettle – $95
- AeroPress Coffee and Espresso Maker with zippered nylon tote bag with bonus 350 Micro Filters – $33
In total, we’re looking at $211 spent on a work coffee setup. It’s a lot to some people and I think there are areas where you could skim such as not getting the stainless steel filter and getting a kettle without a temp controller (half the price). Truthfully, I’m going to return the metal filter s the AeroPress paper filters taste much cleaner and filter out almost 100% of all of the coffee. The kettle I picked specially for 2 reasons. The first, a goose-neck spout allows control when pouring and 2nd, I have a bad memory so I like that I can set the kettle, turn around and answer 2 emails and it holds the temp at 180F (or higher / lower) for 10 minutes. Set it and forget it instead of having to look at a thermometer. If you’re like me, the temp setting is really nice. In fact, I’m taking it home for weekend use as well because I’m tired of keeping a thermometer in my Hario V60 kettle and waiting for the temp to hit an ideal number.
I’ve never used a hand grinder before but I’m pretty happy with it. This model has ceramic burrs, it takes about 90 seconds to grind 16-18 grams of fresh coffee beans and it adds a little bit of a workout which is nice when I’m sitting at my desk.
After a week with this setup, there’s actually nothing here that I’d change aside from returning the metal filter in lieu or superior taste in paper filters. I’ll probably thoroughly clean with soap every 2 weeks but everything looks good just warm water rinsing at the end of each day.
I’m brand new to AeroPress and the quality of the coffee is pretty darn good and the cleanup and compact setup is exceptional. I still prefer the taste of Chemex Pour-Over but I’m not disappointed at all with how the 15 or so cups of coffee have tasted this week.
There are all kinds of alternatives to my setup but I wanted a setup that could fit easily in a small grocery bag and make very good coffee and of course, last a long time (5 years at least) and I think I found that in this setup.