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Comment by alharith | Hacker News Reader

To brew "the best" which means really to get the best extraction out of the bean for which the flavor profile the drinker enjoys the most (too much extraction results in a acidic, heavy taste, too little extraction results in the dreaded "mud water" light taste)

I've tried them all. The aeropress simply enables you to brew the most consistent cup to your liking, plus all the other benefits Steltek pointed out.

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> too much extraction results in a acidic, heavy taste, too little extraction results in the dreaded "mud water" light taste

It's actually the opposite. Over extraction results in more prominent bitter flavors and under extraction in more prominent sour flavors.

Shouldn’t that be “the aeropress simply allows me to brew the most consistent cup to my liking”? Taste is highly subjective, after all.

A mocha express style Italian coffee maker is super consistent in quality and (for my taste) gives much better flavour. The steam method takes out much of the bitterness compared to a poured coffee like Aeropress.

I think that depends more on the beans. Good light roast beans don't need to worry so much about masking bitterness. If modern craft light roast is not your preference, you will need to care more about bitterness. (NB: Not all coffee labeled light roast is)

And if you really want the flavor of a naturally bitter roast without the bitterness, there's always Chemex. Never my first choice for brewing coffee I actually like, but I have gotten a decent cup out of roasts I usually find unpalatable.

Shorter brewing time lesds to more acidic coffee. Longer brewing time leads to bitter coffee.

Thanks, I mixed those up. Minor details aside, the larger point was, in order to brew "your best" cup of coffee, you need consistency in the brewing method with the least amount of variables (save the other important variables such as quality of bean, roast profile, water composition, water temp, etc). The aeropress gives you that.

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