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:
- AeroPress: I use the AeroPress GO! but any AeroPress should do.
- scale with timer + tare functions: this is for weighing ingredients, and keeping track of your brew-time.
- kettle: for hot water. I use filtered water heated to ~95c.
- milk frother: preferably a steamer, but all I have is a frother 😅
- medium-fine ground coffee: I use some local beans ground between a pour-over medium and espresso fine.
- 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”
- put your paper filter into your AeroPress.
- place your AeroPress on a cup, place that cup on a scale, and tare the scale.
- pour 14.5g of ground coffee into your AeroPress, even the bed and tare the scale again.
- Start the timer on your scale.
- pour ~140g of water into your AeroPress and stir immediately until theres no dry coffee.
- remove your AeroPress from the scale.
- cover the AeroPress with your plunger creating a seal and wait ~20 seconds
- push down on the plunger for ~15 seconds or until the AeroPress is finished.
- remove the AeroPress from the cup and quickly clean up.
The milk
- put your milk into the frother (use as much as you’d like)
- froth your milk until it has an even layer of foam on top
- 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.