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Comment by wh313 | Hacker News Reader

My Aeropress coffee maker. It feels more convenient than a french press, and much cheaper than an espresso machine.

Also a bidet. Americans really need to start using it more.

Honestly, I’d prefer my coffee maker to not do double duty as a butt washers, but maybe I am funny about these sort of things

I'm sure they have separate ones for bidet usage and coffee usage.

Why? The boiling water disinfects the device when you make your coffee, no sweat.

Think of it as home-made kopi luwak.

Doesn't it have to process through the civet intestine though to get the effect?

This would just be a little poop infusion which could definitely add a little robustness and richness to the mix. Sort of an earthy tone.

> Doesn't it have to process through the civet intestine though to get the effect?

Home-made recipes are not always as good as the real thing.

I think in space it comes in handy. But best not make coffee again after that.

Coffee enemas are coming back into style

You say that now, but just wait until you splash yourself clean with an Aeropress while sipping an espresso.

As an espresso snob, I'm going to go with a Breville Double Boiler machine. Many espresso machine snobs used to crap on Breville as being "consumer grade", but they really succeeded with their Double Boiler machines, especially their more recent models that make it easy to descale the boiler at home.

The BDB includes features that can cost literally 5X as much on Italian machines (stainless steel boilers, a preheating tube that pulls brew water through the steam boiler first, an electrically heated grouphead, etc.) but it still has fantastic temperature stability.

I owned a Breville Dual Boiler for a few years, was always happy with the coffee it produced, and I thought it was very good value for the price... until it failed in a manner that caused it to constantly trip a GFCI. I brought it back to the shop where I bought it (who service all varieties of espresso machines), and they told me that Breville won't sell them parts for repair. I then contacted Breville, and they wanted me to ship it back to them for maintenance, at a cost of several hundred dollars. So I wound up with one of those much-more-expensive Italian machines, which has now seen daily use for a few years and not needed anything more than a replacement group head gasket (which cost $10 and any idiot can replace one at home).

I used my fathers Rancillio Silvia for 10ish years after he used it for about that long. It’s still good but I have upgraded. It had a US$70 service after about 15k coffees and was still fine at 20k. It’s got a little surface rust on the drip tray. Fantastic machine.

This pales compared to some machines though - I was recently reading about someone has a ‘60s Faema e61 that has made nearly 5 million coffees.

https://www.home-barista.com/advice/faema-e61-original-vinta...

Don't disagree, and I realize this isn't the solution for most people, but home-barista.com has some excellent forums on how to make the most common repairs yourself.

For a tripped GFCI, dollars-to-donuts you had a leaky o-ring on your boiler, which was letting steam into the innards of your machine. The replacement parts can be acquired very cheaply and there are great YouTube videos on how to do the repairs.

With the BDB there are a couple of primary failures after a couple years (failed o-rings, pump or solenoid that needs replacement, new grouphead gasket), which have fortunately been well-documented in online forums and YouTube.

Lance Hedrick (latte art champion YouTuber guy) raves about the BDB and would be my top choice if I don’t already have another model.

In addition to being great and having features of more expensive machines it can be trivially modded for flow profiling. You can now do what decent/slayer/lever owners do and pressure profile. Ok maybe it doesn’t quite compare to those but they are a multiple of the price, and now you can do the coffee shots, turbo shots, blooming shots and all that fun stuff.

If mine breaks down and I’m not in the mood to spend $5k on a machine id get the dual boiler.

100% agree, we bought ours a couple of years ago along with a separate grinder and it’s absolutely amazing. We bought the espresso machine for half price which was a steal (approx $950AUD instead of $1800). Literally never buy takeaway coffee anymore, most of the time if we do end up buying coffee out its far inferior to the coffee we make at home with fresh locally roasted beans. Definitely has paid for itself, make 1-2 coffees a day since December 2019 with no issues, and it’s very to clean.

Aeropress is great if you like to experiment. I've long since given up on it and settled for the simplicity of using a moka pot.

Bidets are something I take for granted. It was only during the covid toilet paper shortage that I became really grateful we had them.

The Nanopresso is also excellent.

I used an Aeropress for years and then switched to the Nanopresso.

https://alternativebrewing.com.au/products/wacaco-nanopresso...

The Nanopresso gets a crema which is remarkable for a fairly cheap, portable device. I have one at home and one at work. They are good enough that they keep me away from cafes.

Both the Aeropress and the Nanopresso are so well designed.

Oddly enough, my answer would be Secura's french presses. All metal, no seals. Just works...seemingly forever.

I have a Secura french press, and while it works well, I seem to have to use so much coffee to make a reasonably strong brew. I've been sticking to some no-name steel version of a Bialetti moka pot for a few years now.

Yeah, it's a very basic soaking method. You either have to add more grinds, or wait longer. I grind up about 60g for 2 large cups of coffee.

It works for me because I don't mind letting it sit while I prepare lunch. If in a hurry, you can keep stirring it to get slightly faster results.

Wow 60g would take me 20min on my cheap hand grinder.

Been using an aero press for years, but the seal wears out. Need to press very carefully or the air goes out the top instead of the bottom.

I almost listed this as mine. The design is still really good for the cost. Ease of use / cleaning / disposing of grounds is a smart design. I accept that the seal will wear, I actually think not over-engineering the seal and making it triple the price adds to the design.

It's not too hard to get a replacement rubber seal, and easy to swap in the new part.

They say it will last longer if you don't store it with the seal compressed in the tube, but I always leave it like that and it still lasts years.

If you just push it all the way through, the tip of the seal won't be compressed. No effort to do it like that.

I don't really understand why you'd do that though, do you not rinse the press after every use? Just stow it with the pieces separated unless it's in "travel mode" no?

Well, the beauty of aeropress is that you don't have to rinse the inside of the cilinder every time. It cleans itself. Most of the time I just clean the rubber. Also, storing them separated takes more space in the cupboard.

replacement seals are cheap $6

Do you know if you can get a real one on Aliexpress? I’ve looked at replacements but wouldn’t want to get a fake that will leech at high temps. I’m not in the US.

It looks like a one-cup French press - what I missing that makes this better?

> what I missing that makes this better?

The main part is that you unscrew the filter piece, so you can just push out the puck of coffee then rinse / dry through the tube. This makes them much easier to clean and dry than a french press where you have to send a jet of water through the bottom in case you had a bit too much coffee, then need an implement to actually reach the bottom of the device. Also makes it easier to throw the grounds into a dedicated (or semi-dedicated e.g. organics, composting) bin without the additional rinsing water.

The second draw is that it's paper-filtered by default, there are metal filters but the paper filters mean way cleaner cups (less residue going through). This also provides a wider and more flexible grind-range.

The third draw is that you filter directly into your mug, or bottle (if the mouth is wide enough), and can e.g. filter onto ice cubes for iced coffee, so less option for miss-pouring and mess.

The fourth draw is it's all plastic so it travels really well, and because the plunger is hollow you can stow things into the plunger (e.g. many hand grinder will fit), so it also makes for a nice travel / hiking device.

Seconded. I've been nomading for much of the past 6 years and having an AeroPress + Hario hand grinder means I can always make good coffee. It's compact, easy to clean, and as long as you're using good beans, somewhat difficult to brew a bad cup.

They appear functionally similar, but the coffee made is very different. A standard french press requires a coarse grind and you can only adjust extraction by changing the steep time. The Aeropress pushes coffee through a paper filter with an airtight seal. You can vary both grind size and steep time. Not only that, but you can vary extraction across the brew by very slowly pushing the coffee through the filter. (This is a very important feature of pressurized brewing methods such as espresso.)

These controls allow you not only to better tune for different beans, but to successfully make different styles of brew for a single type of coffee. (For instance, you can adjust those variables to successfully make a shorter, more espresso-like brew or a taller, more pour-over like one from the same coffee beans.)

Whoops I said this too before I saw your comment. It's so great!

It's well designed and convenient but I threw mine in the trash last week. Putting hot liquids in plastics is a bad idea for reproductive health.

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