Mike Rivers

There have been several recommendations for the Aeorpress here, so I bougut one at my local Sur La Table store to try. After about 10 cups to give it a fair chance, I'm returning it today. Here's the scoop:

The good:

• It indeed makes a pretty decent cup of coffee. It's not the best I've ever had, but plenty good enough for morning in a hotel room and better than most in-room coffee makers that actually work (though "better than " wasn't a goal here, just "no worse than.")
• It's not too big and clumsy to pack. If I stuff a pair of socks inside, it hardly takes up any additional space in the suitcase.
• Since the are grounds as a fairly solid lump, I don't feel guilty about making a mess in the trash can for the housekeeper nor worry about clogging a drain with grounds. It's not difficult to clean up.

The meh:

• It's busy. Parts to assemble, water to heat, water to pour. I have to pay attention to making making coffee throughout the whole process. I can't just load in the coffee and water, flip the switch, and come back to it a few minutes later and have coffee ready.
• If the water isn't hot enough, it doesn't make very good coffee. This isn't unique to the Aeropress but is true with any coffee maker. The problem is that with the Aeropreess, the hot water needs to be transported to it from somewhere else and can lose heat fairly quickly.
• Depending on the existing in-room coffee maker, I may need an additional vessel for heating and/or carrying the water to the Aeropress. Many of the cheap hotels where I stay have only 6 oz styrofoam cups along with the coffee "service.," I carry a real cup to drive from, but if I have to heat two styrofoam cups in the microwave, that exceeds the quotient of monkey business,
• The scoop is 50% larger than a standard coffee scoop, Maybe one reason why it makes better coffee than more plebeian coffee makers is simply that it makes it stronger. There's additional cost involved, plus I get fewer cups out of the container of coffee that I normally carry and I don't want to carry a bigger container.

So I explored the option I really wanted to avoid, and that's to use instant coffee. The Starbucks Via free samples that I tried when they were introducing it made perfectly acceptable coffee, but it's pretty expensive. I don't count the cost of the coffee maker, but I was hoping for a solution that was comparable to what my present system costs on a daily basis.

I'd heard good things about Nescafe Classico instant, and a stop at my local Latino market turned up a small travel-friendly sized jar for a little over $2. The Safeway had Folgers Classic in single-serve packets (like the Via) for 88 cents for a pack of 7, so I did a shootout. The Nescafe was different, but as good as a fair-to-middlin' cup from a working hotel room coffee maker. The Folger's wasn't horrible, but let's just say I could tell if the restaurant replaced their coffee with Folger's for the day.

So the interim solution is to continue bringing my ground coffee and flat bottom filters and also pack the small jar of Necafe Classico instant for hotels where I can't get a working coffee maker. That should cover most bases, though I may need to use a "doesn't make a good cup of coffee" coffee maker or styrofoam cups in the microwave oven to heat the water.

I'll report progress after my next 2 week multiple hotel trip coming up in January.