Kyle Steed:
With all these great technological advances swarming around me and an endless amount of information at my disposal, even when I’m sitting still it feels like I’m moving at a million miles an hour without still knowing who I am.
Month: December 2014
What’s So Special About the AeroPress
In more ways than one, I grew up in a fussy coffee home. My parents didn’t want me drinking coffee until I was 16 because they were concerned the caffeine would stunt my growth. Who knows.
My home was also fussy about coffee because my dad only ever brewed with a french press. I grew up thinking that brewing and drinking coffee was a special thing. I still think that.
I’m now 33, and have more than made up for the cups of coffee I missed out on the first half of my life. In my kitchen we have a cupboard dedicated entirely to coffee contraptions: a Mokapot; a stovetop espresso maker; an Espro brand french press, a classic Bodum french press, and a single-serving french press; a vacuum siphon coffee maker; two different styles of V60; the Clever Dripper; a Kalita Wave; an Able Kone system; and, of course, the AeroPress.
They’re all great — each one is unique in its own way and brew method. The vacuum siphon pot is a lot of fun to use on special occasions; the Espro makes a large pot of coffee for guests; Able’s Kone Brewing System looks cool; etc.
But the AeroPress is by far and away my favorite. And I know I’m not alone here.
The AeroPress has become this sort of cult classic, popular geeky way to brew coffee. Everyone with a Twitter account recommends it. There’s even an AeroPress world championship competition. And yet, while you can go to your local hipster coffee shop and buy a french press or a pourover, you’d be hard pressed to find a shop that sells (much less even uses) the AeroPress.
So for something that isn’t found in mainstream coffee shops (or even most “hipster” coffee shops), why all the hype? What makes the AeroPress so cool?
I’ve brewed over 1,000 cups of coffee with my AeroPress. Here’s what I think is the good (and the bad) of the the AeroPress.
- It’s cheap to buy. If you’re getting in to fussy coffee (or if you lose or demolish your AeroPress), a brand new one is just $25.
-
It’s cheap to use. For one, filters are super cheap — a year’s supply of paper filters cost just $4. And secondly, most AeroPress brew methods call for just 16-18g of coffee to brew a cup. There is very little waste.
-
Clean-up is easy. The AeroPress basically cleans itself as you use it. When you’re done brewing a cup, you twist off the cap and pop the puck into the trash. Then rinse and let dry. (Though I will say that I don’t think clean AeroPress cleanup up is quite as easy as with the V60. With the V60 you just toss the filter with grounds into the trash and then rinse the thing out.)
-
The AeroPress is easy to use when you’re away from your nerdy home coffee tools. The markings on the side of the AeroPress are helpful for measuring out coffee and water. Obviously you won’t need the markings if you’re using a scale to measure. But I take my AeroPress camping and on vacation, so I’ll pre-grind some coffee to take with me, and I know just how much water to add to make a great cup of coffee without having to guess or eyeball it.
These are things you probably already know about. What really makes the AeroPress such a great coffee maker is just how versatile it is. There are a lot of ways you can use it.
For my cupboardfull of aforementioned coffee brewing contraptions, each one has only one best way to brew coffee. The AeroPress has at least three different ways to brew coffee: espresso-like, pourover-esque, and french press-ish. Each way is completely legitimate and delicious.
Now, the AeroPress does have some cons of its own. As I mentioned above, it’s not quite as easy to clean as the V60. Also, the AeroPress can’t brew a big pot of coffee — for that, I use my Espro Press (the Chemex is also a fine choice).
In short, the AeroPress hype is real. If you like variety then the AeroPress lets you mix it up. If you mostly prefer this or that type of coffee, you can find a great way to brew it with the AeroPress. Regardless of the coffee beans or the style of coffee you prefer, there’s a good way to brew it with the AeroPress.
The Best Pinboard App for iOS →
Over on The Sweet Setup, we just updated our review of Pinboard apps for iOS. After iOS 8 came out many Pinboard apps took advantage of the new extensions and share sheets. And with the 3.0 update to Pinner, it’s become our new favorite.
The good news is, it was such a close call between Pinner and Pushpin that if you’re still using the latter, I honestly don’t think it’s worth switching. Or, if your a nerd like me and you’ve got both installed, you may prefer to use the extension from Pinner and the app of Pushpin (or vice versa).
Curbi (Sponsor) →
curbi gives parents peace of mind; providing the best solution so the entire family can enjoy the online world as much as the real world.
* * *
A huge thanks to curbi for sponsoring the site this week. curbi is pretty incredible, especially if you’ve got a family of devices you’d like to help safeguard.
And it’s more than just for kids. You can set it up on your own device as well, and use it as an internet content blocker that actually works — so you don’t accidentally get slimed with stuff you don’t want to see and so you’re not constantly entering in a PIN to visit regular sites that iOS doesn’t need to block.
Fizzle’s Review and Plan Guide →
If you run a small business — or are working to build your side-work into a full-time gig — this is an excellent map for how to evaluate this past year’s body of work and how to use those evaluations to better plan for the upcoming year.
The Rough Elements of an Annual Plan →
This is milestone episode of Shawn Today / The Weekly Briefly. For one, this is my last podcast episode for the year. But, more than that, it’s episode 600 of Shawn Today. Wow.
On a personal note, can I just give a huge thanks to all of you who listen to this show each week? And especially to those of you who are subscribing members to the site and who’ve been a part of the 600 Shawn Today episodes over the past 4 years. You guys are awesome.
That said, today’s episode is a good one. It’s about planning for the upcoming year. And it’s not nearly as lame or tedious as it sounds. This is something my wife and I have done for the past 3 years and we look forward to it every year.
Brought to you by:
-
Yosemite: The Apple conference with a view.
-
The awesome members of shawnblanc.net: Their support makes the work I do a sustainable possibility.
The Verge’s Review of the Withings Activité Watch →
The Activité sounds pretty clever. It’s an old school analog watch with new school tech inside:
It’s one part standard wristwatch, one part fitness tracker. It tracks your sleep, steps, and activity. It costs $450. It’s beautiful: made of carefully machined sapphire, calf leather, and stainless steel. It looks like a watch in the most traditional sense.
These are a few of our favorite games →
If you’ll have some free time over the holiday and feel like relaxing with an awesome game on your iPad or iPhone, well, have we got a list for you.
A Review of the Compass Stand for iPad →
Over on Tools & Toys, Josh Ginter wrote an excellent review of the Compass Stand for iPad. The Compass Stand is such an awesome iPad accessory, useful for all sorts of situations — I have a friend who keeps theirs in the kitchen for when they cook and for when they use the iPad to Airplay music in their upstairs living room.
Yosemite: The Apple Conference with a View (Sponsor) →
Yosemite is a conference for Apple designers, developers, and enthusiasts. It will be held next Spring, in the heart of Yosemite National Park.
You’ll hear from some of the most-loved members of this awesome community—people such as Andy Ihnatko, Jim Dalrymple, Neven Mrgan, Serenity Caldwell, and Michael Lopp. You’ll also have opportunities to get out and enjoy the beauty and grandeur of the park. There will be guided hikes, a photo walk with TED photographer James Duncan Davidson, and a Breakpoint Jam with James Dempsey.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime event that will be talked about for years to come. Join us at Yosemite!
My thanks to Yosemite for sponsoring the site this week. This conference is going to be amazing; definitely worth attending.
A Holiday Challenge →
This is my last podcast episode before Christmas, and I wanted to give a challenge for everyone heading in to holiday time off: Rest well.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to come back from holiday vacation with energy and motivation to do your best creative work? Wouldn’t it be awesome to come back feeling fueled up and energized instead of tired and worn out? It’s easier said than done, to be sure.
Brought to you by:
- PDFpen Scan+: Powerful Mobile Scanning and OCR.
Compressing Reality →
Noah Lorang:
When you compress things down to a shareable size, you miss a lot. What you don’t see is the unglamorous parts: the sharpening of the chisels, the unclogging of your glue bottle, or the parts that don’t fit together. You don’t see the days where you are too tired or unmotivated to go down and work on anything at all, or those cases where life interferes and a ‘easy one weekend project’ ends up stretching to six or twelve months. […]
Any creative endeavor is highly non-linear, but the sharing of it almost always skips a lot of the actual work that goes into it. That’s ok; a clear progression makes for a good story that’s easy to tell. But don’t judge your reality against someone else’s compressed work.
Doing our best creative work is never easy. But when we live in a culture where instant gratification is celebrated and stories of “overnight success” are on every headline, it can lead to disillusionment regarding our own work and creative process. We see these compressed, linear stories like Noah is talking about, and we see those as the ideal for our own work. But, as Noah points out, there’s so much to the story we don’t see.
Tom Bihn Blog: An Interview With Shawn Blanc →
I sat down (via Skype, of course) with the folks at Tom Bihn for an interview about the (team)work that goes in to building and publishing Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup.
Our favorite third-party email app for OS X is Mailbox →
Just after GTD apps, Mac email apps have been far and away one of The Sweet Setup’s most-requested reviews. So we asked the inimitable Jason Snell to tackle it.
Our pick? Mailbox.
Airmail is also one of our top choices, especially for folks who prefer more keyboard shortcuts and power-user features. I’ve spent time with Airmail, and it’s pretty rad, but it never totally stuck for me — I kept going back to the default Mail.app. And I had written Mailbox off altogether because it has a much more simple approach. But after Jason suggested it as the best alternative for most folks, I started using it on my Mac and I’m actually very impressed. The UI is very basic and understated, and the lack of most bells and whistles actually is calming — there’s less to think about when it comes to mowing through your email, and so you actually end up doing something about it.
So, thanks to Jason, I’ve moved all my personal email over to Mailbox on Mac and iPhone.