AeroPress and Gevalia Kaffee Espresso Roast

I fell–I know–for a commercial not too long ago that claimed off the shelf Gevalia house blend tasted better than Starbucks off the shelf house blend and I decided that I should try it with my new AeroPress so that I wasn’t missing out on anything. I’m not sure how much of a difference this makes, but I chose the espresso roast because I wanted to make something espresso like.

On the first press, I shot for the stars and tried to make a strong double espresso.

• 30g of tamped cofee in an upright AeroPress
• Water 30 seconds off the boil to just above the 2 mark.
• Wait 10 seconds then press.

It required a bunch of pressure to push through, so I thought I had done well in getting a high-bar press going and that I’d be close to espresso. Unfortunately, while it looked good, the coffee tasted really strange. There was some kind of sour-y acid tasted that lingers around after every sip. It’s not due to the strength of the coffee, because I love strong coffee, but I’m not entirely sure.

The second batch, I used Stumptown’s inverted method with just one scoop. This turned out much weaker than the first, as expected, but that weird taste is still hanging out in the background somewhere. I can’t describe it as sour, but it’s something strange.

Ok, so now I’m completely wired because I tried to figure this all out in the span of 30 minutes.

The third batch is what I’m going to have to stick with for Gevalia. This time I used Stumptown’s inverted method with 30g of coffee with about 95g of water. It didn’t taste great, so I diluted it a bit by adding some more water. This became drinkable and while the weird taste is still back there somewhere, it definitely doesn’t bug me each time I take a sip.

Now to go run around the house a few times because my hands are shaking.