Two Years With the Aeropress: An Honest Review

I've owned my Aeropress for two years. I've made roughly 700 cups with it. It cost $40. Here's what I actually think — the parts the marketing doesn't tell you, plus the parts where the marketing is right.

Photo: Sean Benesh on Unsplash

I'm allergic to product reviews that read like they were written the day the package arrived. The first week with any new piece of coffee gear is honeymoon-glow nonsense. The interesting questions only show up around month four: does it still get used? Has it broken? Have you started resenting it? Have you bought a backup because you can't imagine living without it?

Two years in, here's where I've landed.

What it's actually good at

Forgiveness

The Aeropress is the most forgiving brewer I've ever used. Wrong grind size? Still drinkable. Water 10 degrees off? Still drinkable. Stale-ish beans? It'll mask that better than any pour-over will. This matters more than you'd think when you're half-awake at 7am and your fine motor skills haven't booted up yet.

For comparison, my V60 is unforgiving in a way that feels almost punitive. Get the pour speed slightly wrong and the cup goes from "balanced" to "sour and thin" with no middle ground. The Aeropress just... gives you coffee. Reliable, drinkable coffee, every single time.

Cleanup speed

Fifteen seconds. Push the puck into the trash, rinse the chamber under the tap, done. No soggy filter to scoop out, no grounds to dig out of a French press mesh. This is the single biggest reason it gets used every day instead of sitting in a cabinet. Friction kills habits, and the Aeropress has almost none.

Travel

It's plastic, basically unbreakable, and small enough to fit in a daypack with the bean grinder, a small bag of beans, and a folding scale. I've made coffee in hotel rooms, at trail heads, in conference green rooms, and once on an Amtrak tray table. None of these would have worked with a glass French press or a ceramic V60.

The 1:10 to 1:15 sweet spot

The standard recipes online — 17g coffee to 250g water, 90 seconds steep, 30 second press — produce a cup that lands somewhere between a heavy pour-over and a weak espresso. It's a uniquely Aeropress flavor profile that doesn't really exist with any other brewer. Some people love it (me) and some people miss the cleaner cup of pour-over (also fair).

What it's actually not good at

Volume

Maximum useful output is about 250ml of brewed coffee per press. If you want a 16oz mug, you're either making it weak or pressing twice and combining. If you have guests, the Aeropress is genuinely impractical — making four cups takes 12 minutes. For a household of one or two, it's perfect. For four or more, get a French press or a Chemex.

The "clean" cup

If you're chasing the bright, tea-like, aromatically-clean cup that pour-over enthusiasts rave about — the kind of cup where you can clearly identify "blueberry" and "bergamot" notes — the Aeropress is the wrong tool. The paper filter helps, but the immersion brewing extracts more body and oils than a pure-percolation method. The cup is rounder, heavier, and has more "mouthfeel," for better and worse.

Some Aeropress devotees use the inverted method with metal filters to push the profile further toward espresso-like. Others use the standard method with two stacked paper filters to push it toward V60-like. Neither hack quite gets you there. If you really want a clean cup, buy a V60 instead.

Wear and tear (a small surprise)

The rubber seal on the plunger has a finite lifespan. Mine started getting harder to push around month 16. The replacement seal costs $5 and takes 30 seconds to swap, but I didn't know this was a thing for the first 18 months. If yours starts feeling stiffer than it used to, you don't need a new Aeropress — you need a new seal.

The "Go" version

Quick aside: don't buy the Aeropress Go thinking it's just a smaller travel version. It's a different brewer with a different chamber size. The brew profile changes, recipes don't translate cleanly, and the included mug is too small to actually drink coffee out of. Get the original Aeropress and put it in a small bag if you travel. The Go is a solution to a problem the original doesn't have.

The recipe I've settled on

After two years of experimentation, this is what I make every morning. It's not the most interesting recipe — it's the most reliable one.

• 17g of coffee, ground medium-fine (slightly finer than table salt)
• 250g water, 88°C for light roasts and 92°C for darker
• Pour all water in 15 seconds
• Stir 3 times, gently
• Steep 90 seconds
• Press over 30 seconds — slow and even, not forced

That's it. No inverted method, no fancy timing. The forgiveness of the Aeropress means this same recipe works with light Ethiopian, dark Sumatran, and everything between. I keep the recipe constant and let the bean do the talking.

Who shouldn't buy one

If you exclusively drink milk drinks (lattes, cappuccinos, flat whites), the Aeropress isn't the right tool. The output isn't concentrated enough to stand up to milk the way espresso does. You'll be disappointed.

If you serve coffee to multiple people most mornings, get a French press or a Chemex. The Aeropress is fundamentally a single-serving brewer.

If you're chasing a competition-grade pour-over experience and are willing to put in the practice time, the Aeropress will feel like a compromise. Get a V60 and a gooseneck kettle and treat brewing as the meditative practice it can become. The Aeropress is the opposite philosophy — it's coffee as utility.

Two-year verdict

I would buy it again tomorrow. At $40, it's the highest dollar-for-dollar value in coffee gear, full stop. It's the brewer I'd recommend to a friend who's tired of supermarket pre-ground but doesn't want a "hobby." It's the one I bring on every trip. It's the one that's still in daily rotation after two years and 700 cups, while my V60 sits on a shelf and gets used twice a month when I want a different vibe.

The Aeropress is not the best brewer in any single category. It's the best at being good at all of them simultaneously, every day, without drama. That's a different kind of "best."

/ Read more on HexRoast

The full head-to-head comparison is on the main site

This was my long-term Aeropress review. If you want the full Aeropress vs French Press vs V60 head-to-head — extraction profiles, taste tests, and a decision matrix for picking the right brewer for your kitchen — the deep comparison lives on HexRoast:

→ Aeropress vs French Press vs V60 · hexroast.com

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