My AeroPress Latte

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A week or so ago I was scrolling around on twitter and came across a tweet mentioning an “AeroPress Latte”. I love lattes, but only really have the equipment for pour over or immersion brew coffee at home… or so I thought!

After 20-30 minutes of Googling and watching Youtube videos on AeroPress lattes, I was overjoyed to find that they are indeed a thing. You can’t actually make espresso with the AeroPress, but you can make a pseudo espresso (concentrated coffee) by using more ground coffee, less water, and a shorter brew time. The rest is just steamed milk + any other goodies you like in your latte.

I’ve spent the week since this monumental discovery experimenting and I think I’ve come up with a half-decent recipe.

Tools and ingredients

Before we get into the recipe, here’s what you’ll need:

1. AeroPress: I use the AeroPress GO! but any AeroPress should do.
2. scale with timer + tare functions: this is for weighing ingredients, and keeping track of your brew-time.
3. kettle: for hot water. I use filtered water heated to ~95c.
4. milk frother: preferably a steamer, but all I have is a frother 😅
5. medium-fine ground coffee: I use some local beans ground between a pour-over medium and espresso fine.
6. 2% milk or a milk alternative: the milk for your latte.

for more info on what I use, check out my coffee setup post

Recipe

The most involved part of the recipe is the “espresso” everything else is pretty easy!

The “espresso”

1. put your paper filter into your AeroPress.
2. place your AeroPress on a cup, place that cup on a scale, and tare the scale.
3. pour 14.5g of ground coffee into your AeroPress, even the bed and tare the scale again.
4. Start the timer on your scale.
5. pour ~140g of water into your AeroPress and stir immediately until theres no dry coffee.
6. remove your AeroPress from the scale.
7. cover the AeroPress with your plunger creating a seal and wait ~20 seconds
8. push down on the plunger for ~15 seconds or until the AeroPress is finished.
9. remove the AeroPress from the cup and quickly clean up.

The milk

1. put your milk into the frother (use as much as you’d like)
2. froth your milk until it has an even layer of foam on top
3. pour your “steamed” milk into the same cup as your “espresso”

The extras

I like to add 1 small pump of vanilla, or cinnamon to the top of my lattes depending on the day. That said, they’re still delicious with nothing but milk + coffee.

Enjoy your latte!

If you try the recipe out, let me know what you think! It’s definitely not a traditional coffee-shop-grade latte, but it’s a lot better than anything latte adjacent I’ve made at home previously.