Many of you already know I'm a coffee geek so yet another coffee related topic shouldn't come as a surprise. I've been looking for a really good way to make coffee when traveling and I think I've found it: The AeroPress. No, it's not an espresso maker as the manufacturer claims. And don't follow the manufacturer's instructions to use it. They may know how to make a contraption, but they don't know the finer points of brewing coffee. Follow these instructions instead. I've tried this thing out for several days and it makes an outstanding cup of coffee. It's even possible to replicate the brewing profile of the $11,000 Clover coffee maker that Starbucks recently bought out to use in their stores (now that they have an outstanding coffeemaker they need to work on their beans). Not bad for less than $30. It's so good it may become my everyday brewer.
Down here (the 3rd World known as Argentina), they sell they wind sock/ cloth condom looking things for coffee. Most of the people who brew their own coffee down here do it with these two layered metal contraptions that they put on the stove. It makes kind of a charred coffee soup that even pours out in a nice even sludge. (It's even less appealing than it sounds. They absolutely don't know **** about coffee.) Anyway, the one thing they do realize is that they way they make coffee leaves tons of sediment in the liquid. To help get rid of these (which most people DON'T do), they have invented a little closed wind sock that goes around a small wire with a handle. These things cost about ~US$0.50-US$0.75 and I bought one a month or so ago. The thing does a great job filtering out the soot. Especially because I have a blade grinder rather than a burr grinder. In know time it looks like someone shits in it or a girl didn't know her period was coming and her panties are permanently stained, but it really does the job on filtering the sediment. That's an alternative to a paper filter.
