Review: AeroPress Premium Coffee Press

Coffee snobbery is a world of interrelated and occasionally warring tribes. There are light-roast and dark-roast people, pour-over and espresso people, and fiercely partisan fans of various grinders. (Baratza brothers unite, we will wash our beans in the blood of the Fellow fellows.)

AeroPress people are among the quirkiest lots on the farm. Invented by the same guy who invented the Aerobie flying ring, the AeroPress is a unique single-serve coffeemaker that uses pressure applied by hand to extract a smooth but richly flavorful cup of coffee. A well-made AeroPress brew resembles espresso in its lack of bitterness but comes by the cup instead of a shot. Best of all, the plastic device will last a decade and cost only as much as five Starbucks mochas. The WIRED team has long admired AeroPress; columnist Steven Levy profiled the inventor in his Palo Alto office a decade ago, and contributor Joe Ray is on record calling the AeroPress “ingenious.”

The one obvious downside—and sensitivity to this issue will vary widely by person—is that the device is made of plastic. That plastic is repeatedly exposed to near-boiling water and a half-bar of pressure. It is worth mentioning that the plastic AeroPress uses is free of BPA, free of phthalates, and has approval for food contact from the FDA and EU. But … well, you know.

Heart of Glass

Back in 2021, the flying-ring guy sold a stake in AeroPress to a Canadian holding company that has been capitalizing on the venture by rolling out a much wider suite of products including big AeroPresses, green AeroPresses, clear AeroPresses, and its own branded metal filter to rival the ones created by cottage brands that made all the accessories the company itself declined to offer. (The AeroPress-brand metal filter is great and a clutch addition to the Premium, as will be discussed below.)

The most anticipated of those products is the AeroPress Premium. At last, AeroPress offered a brewing system that's totally free of plastic. The chamber that holds the water is heat-proof clear borosilicate glass, like European Pyrex. The tube you use to apply pressure is made of aluminum. The cap that holds the filter (paper or metal) is stainless steel. The plunger cap that forms a seal with the glass chamber is made of silicone.

The first run of the Premium debuted back in October and sold out fast. After months of backorders, it's now readily available directly from the company or from Williams-Sonoma. The Premium's price has sparked heated debates among AeroPress fans—a small tribe may be splitting into two even smaller tribes—but after three weeks of testing I've relegated my old trusty brown plastic AeroPress to a crate full of camping gear.

Metal Militia

It's worth stating clearly up top that I really like AeroPress coffee. I tend to alternate between a few different brewing methods (Chemex, Hario, French Press, AeroPress … Keurig) for a few months at a time but always find myself coming back to AeroPress because of the uniquely clean espresso-ish flavor, the ease of use and cleanup, and the fact you can brew a cup at a time, meaning your second cup of coffee isn't sitting around getting cold when your colleague in London schedules a 7 am meeting. But AeroPress brew is uniquely rich and robust and may not be for everyone—it's less crisp and more bitter than proper espresso made using much more pressure, and it has a thicker mouthfeel than regular drip or pour-over coffee.

The AeroPress Premium is a faithful adaption of a design that works very well. You scoop in the grounds, stir them, position the plunger on top to slow the flow for a few minutes to fully extract the flavors, then press. Apply milk and/or sugar and drink.

Unfortunately, I have had some mysterious issues with the Premium in my weeks of testing. Specifically, I have on several occasions had blowouts where the ground beans (I typically use setting 18 on a Baratza Encore ESP—some suggest 12, others suggest 22) squirt wildly out the bottom, on one occasion splattering over my counter and clothing. The AeroPress subreddit (where the Premium is divisive) has a few other reports like this, with various users offering their own theories about why. I've taken to being very careful about how I position the paper filter, but it hasn't entirely solved the problem.

However, I have had great results using the Premium with the AeroPress Stainless Steel Reusable Filter, which I purchased last week. With the metal filter and a lazy version of the James Hoffman recipe (I'm not setting any timers or using Celsius), I've had great results and some of the best AeroPress pours I've ever had.

Pour Places

The only consistent downside of the Premium is that it's far less portable than its predecessor. It weighs 27 ounces, or nearly 2 pounds, and is made of glass that's shatter-resistant but not as forgiving as plastic. The original, in contrast, weighs just 6.5 ounces and can be tossed around with abandon. One of the original AeroPress’ greatest attributes was the fact that you could take it anywhere with you, getting an espresso-ish cup of coffee in a hotel or while camping.

Fortunately, though, I still have an original AeroPress, and now it's tucked away with my camping gear for Memorial Day weekend in the Rockies. While I do prefer to avoid using a plastic device exposed to heat and pressure every morning, I'm fine with it for a weekend trip. If you're an AeroPress fan whose microplastic sensitivity mirrors mine, the Premium and the stainless steel filter are two rare reasons to thank a venture capital firm.