The AeroPress Premium Review

Summary

In this video, James Hoffmann dives into a detailed review of the AeroPress Premium, priced at $150, exploring its design, brewing quirks, and whether it justifies its price tag. The AeroPress Premium stands apart with its dual-walled glass and stainless steel components, promising a blend of aesthetics and functionality. However, James grapples with its premium positioning, discussing its heavier and fragile nature, and questioning whether it strays too far from the original AeroPress's core charm of being light, travel-friendly, and affordable. Moreover, the review highlights a unique brewing temperature retention, a step-down puck design, and a candid exploration of microplastics concerns, leaving viewers to contemplate if the fanciness is worth the cost.

Highlights

• James Hoffmann reviews the AeroPress Premium, exploring its fancy design and brewing techniques. 🧐
• The new AeroPress is made of dual-walled glass and metal, aiming for a touch of luxury in your coffee routine. 💎
• Priced at $150, it challenges the original's lightweight, bulletproof charm, leaving frequent travelers to ponder. 💼
• James experiments with its brewing quirks, noting a slower initial brew temperature but better heat retention. 🌡️
• Despite fancy materials, does it elevate coffee taste? A blind tasting leaves this question lingering. ☕🤔
• Concerns arise over microplastics, adding another layer of complexity to the AeroPress Premium debate. 🌍
• Is it worth $150 for a fancier brewer? James's indecision reflects the dilemma faced by coffee lovers globally. 💸

Key Takeaways

• The AeroPress Premium is a fancied-up version of the original, with dual-walled glass and metal, offering a premium feel. 💎
• Priced at $150, it's heavier and less travel-friendly compared to the classic AeroPress, which might not charm the minimalist traveler. 🚫✈️
• Offers a unique brewing method with excellent heat retention over time, but is it a taste game-changer? That's up for debate. ☕🤔
• The switch to premium materials sparks discussions on microplastics, adding a surprising twist to the review. 🌍😮
• James leaves viewers pondering whether the extra bucks for a shinier AeroPress truly add to the coffee experience or just the aesthetic. 💸✨

Overview

James Hoffmann embarks on a curious journey reviewing the AeroPress Premium, a $150 addition to the AeroPress family. What makes this video intriguing is not just the product itself, but James's initial reluctance to review it, encapsulated by the ongoing debate about its worth. With dual-walled glass and metal components, the Premium version brings a touch of luxury into the daily coffee ritual. Still, one wonders if this opulence overshadows its core identity as a simple, affordable brewer.

As James dives deeper, he highlights the Premium AeroPress's unique brewing characteristics. The brewer boasts peculiar thermal retention capabilities - starting at a lower peak temperature but holding heat longer, potentially enhancing the brew with extended steeping times. Moreover, the design's step-down puck could lead to slightly higher extractions, rendering a subtle, yet possibly negligible, flavor enhancement. These observations lead to thought-provoking discussions on practicality versus luxury in coffee making.

However, the review takes an unexpected turn with the introduction of microplastics into the conversation. The shift to premium materials instead of classic plastic has made microplastics a hot topic, sparking debates over safety and environmental impact. Despite these contemplations, James ponders if the $150 price tag for aesthetic and marginal functionality improvements is genuinely justified, leaving viewers to make up their minds about this premium coffee experience.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to AeroPress Premium This chapter introduces the AeroPress Premium, a new coffee brewing product from AeroPress, priced at $150 or £180 in the UK. The presenter starts by acknowledging mixed feelings about reviewing this product due to internal debates about its necessity. The demand for the AeroPress Premium is attributed to two types of consumers: those who appreciate the standard AeroPress and desire an upgraded, more luxurious version and those who prefer a non-plastic, more substantial and elegant version.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Reasons for Making the Video The chapter titled 'Reasons for Making the Video' discusses the rationale behind creating a video concerning AeroPress coffee makers. It highlights two main groups with interests in AeroPress: the first group simply wants to incorporate it into their coffee brewing routine, while the second group is concerned about the presence of plastic, specifically microplastics, in their coffee-brewing equipment. The video aims to address these different perspectives, albeit acknowledging the redundancy for the first group as they already understand the AeroPress. Additionally, the creator has reservations about discussing the topic of microplastics, indicating a reluctance to delve into opinions on the subject.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Testing Reveals Interesting Quirks The chapter titled 'Testing Reveals Interesting Quirks' discusses the process of making a video about a particular product. The maker feels compelled to create the video due to interesting and peculiar quirks discovered during testing, especially in comparison to other AeroPress models. The chapter emphasizes the unique brewing method of this AeroPress, which differentiates it from others. It also touches upon unintended consequences that arose during testing, promising a detailed explanation of these outcomes. The primary focus of the chapter is to highlight and explain these distinctive characteristics.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Overview of AeroPress Premium The chapter provides an overview of the AeroPress Premium, discussing its design, user experience, and interface aspects. It includes a demonstration of coffee brewing with the Premium, comparing its unique brewing method to other AeroPress models. Additionally, there's a blind taste test with the AeroPress Premium, a regular AeroPress, and an AeroPress XL to evaluate differences in taste and quality, questioning the significance of these differences. The chapter concludes with a discussion on microplastics, highlighting the weight and build of the AeroPress Premium.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Analysis of Materials Used The chapter "Analysis of Materials Used" discusses the different materials used in a brewing device. It starts with the little cap, which is made of stainless steel, noted for being heavy and a heat sink, though it won't significantly affect the brewing process. The main brewing chamber is dual-walled glass, chosen because it is the only transparent alternative to plastic that allows visibility into the brewer.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Brewing Process Comparison The chapter discusses the differences in design between a new brewing device and a conventional AeroPress. The newer model is narrower and taller than the standard model, which affects its fragility and internal volume. Despite being labeled as having the same capacity (300 ml), the actual capacity of the new device is 371 milliliters. The implications of these changes on the brewing process are also considered.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Thermal Properties The chapter discusses the thermal properties of a new design, focusing on changes that enhance performance. The key conceptual elements include an increase in size, which equates to more capacity and a slight weight increase. Essential components like the silicon piece remain, ensuring a good seal during operation, crucial for maintaining thermal properties. Additionally, the use of aluminum instead of denser materials serves to reduce the overall weight, while still allowing compatibility with standard AeroPress filters, despite a slightly narrower diameter.
• 04:00 - 04:30: Impact of Design on Brewing The chapter 'Impact of Design on Brewing' explores personal preferences related to design, specifically the author's dislike for the sound of metal on glass despite others finding it satisfying. The discussion highlights subjective experiences of design elements in the brewing process, although it explicitly notes that durability or glass damage is not a concern for the author.
• 04:30 - 05:00: Comparison with Conventional AeroPress The chapter compares the traditional AeroPress method with personal improvisations to enhance the coffee-making experience. It emphasizes the subjective nature of brewing coffee, suggesting it's more about personal preference. The speaker references previous videos about AeroPress techniques to provide further insights into improving the brew. They encourage viewers to explore different methods to achieve a more enjoyable and potentially better-tasting AeroPress coffee.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Blind Tasting Setup The chapter 'Blind Tasting Setup' explores the intricacies of a new brewing method compared to the traditional AeroPress. The narrator expresses a need for caution when handling a metal apparatus on a glass jug, emphasizing delicacy over the casual approach taken with the AeroPress. A key factor discussed is the brew temperature, suggesting that this new method might result in a greater temperature loss.
• 06:00 - 07:30: Blind Tasting Results The chapter discusses the results of a blind tasting experiment. It starts with a commentary on glass and metal materials and their effect on brewing temperature compared to a conventional AeroPress. The narrator explains that both materials tend to draw more heat from the brewing liquid and they conducted experiments by preheating them. It was observed that even when preheated, these materials lose temperature initially. However, it was found to be an overall minor detail as a certain interesting heat transfer phenomenon occurred during the process.
• 07:30 - 09:30: Discussion on Microplastics The chapter discusses the impact of preheated units on the brewing process of coffee using an AeroPress. It explains how preheating affects the thermal mass and temperature stability of the brewing process. The transcript notes that while the initial peak temperature in a preheated unit might be slightly lower than conventional methods, it retains heat better and eventually reaches a higher brewing temperature after a few minutes, improving the overall process. The chapter hints at comparisons with a conventional AeroPress, suggesting that preheated units may lead to better brewing results over time.
• 09:30 - 10:00: AeroPress Community and Pricing The chapter explores Jonathan Gagne's AeroPress technique which involves a long steeping time of around 10 minutes or more. The prolonged steeping allows for greater extraction, although it slows the brewing process significantly. The chapter explains that longer steeps can yield hotter brews as compared to conventional methods, which provides an interesting aspect to brewing. A short demonstration of a different, quicker brewing process is also shared, involving a two-minute steep, a swirl, and a press after 30 seconds.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Final Thoughts In the final chapter, the speaker discusses their initial apprehensions about pressing a metal against glass. They reassure that while it's easy to press hard, in practical scenarios, it's unnecessary and unlikely to cause issues. The speaker emphasizes the importance of pressing just enough to extract the best flavor without compromising taste. The chapter hints at an intriguing topic to be discussed further.

The AeroPress Premium Review Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 - Today we're gonna take a look at this. We're gonna review the AeroPress Premium, the newest brewer from AeroPress, coming in at $150, or in the UK, £180. To be honest, I didn't wanna make this video. In fact, there's a lot of discussion amongst the team here about whether we make a video at all about this whole thing. And I'll tell you why. 'Cause there's two kinds of people who want the AeroPress Premium: The first type like an AeroPress and they want a premium version. They want something that isn't made of plastic because they want something that feels weighty and solid and fancy and nice, because fancy and nice are nice things to have
• 00:30 - 01:00 as part of your coffee brewing routine. Then there's the other group who want an AeroPress Premium because they don't want plastic in their brewer, because microplastics. The first group, well, it feels a bit redundant. It's still an AeroPress. So what can I really tell you that you can't see for yourself? It felt like, can I offer something of value here? And then for the second group, I don't want to talk about microplastics. I don't want to think about them. I don't wanna have an opinion about them and I certainly don't wanna share an opinion about them.
• 01:00 - 01:30 But in making this video, my hand feels a little bit forced. So I will. But later. Now you could argue, why then make this video at all? Well, turns out in testing this thing, there are some interesting and peculiar quirks about the way that it brews that are different to other AeroPresses. That was interesting. It felt like something worth sharing. Then there are also these unintended consequences. I'll explain what I mean by those as well. So what I'll do, the first part is I'll walk through this thing, just show you what the deal is, what it's made of,
• 01:30 - 02:00 and how it's put together. Talk through the UX UI aspect of it. We'll brew some coffee with it, obviously. I'll talk about the slightly unusual way that it brews compared to other AeroPresses. And then, it's pretty important, does it make a difference? We'll brew this and a normal AeroPress and an AeroPress XL and I'll do a little blind tasting to see if I can taste my way to a brewer or not. Does it really matter? After that... Yes, I'll talk about microplastics. You win. So here it is, it's a weighty thing.
• 02:00 - 02:30 Ooh. The parts are made of different materials, which is interesting. Starting here at the little cap. Now it's stainless steel and very heavy. Obviously it's gonna be a little bit of a heat sink, but it shouldn't massively impact your brewing. But we'll talk about temperature, don't you worry. Then you've got your main brewing chamber. Now that's dual walled glass. (knock knock knock) It's a choice. I get it. You know, there's not many materials that you could replace plastic with that would allow you to see into the brewer. In fact, there's just one choice. So dual wall glass it is.
• 02:30 - 03:00 Obviously that, you know, brings with it some fragility and it also brings with it a change in the sort of volume and diameter and all those things. So actually on the inside here, it's about four millimeters sort of narrower than a conventional, normal, bog-standard AeroPress. It's also then quite a little bit taller. So actually the total volume technically is a bit bigger. They say 300 mls on this and 300 mls on the standard, but technically the volume of this cylinder is 371 milliliters.
• 03:00 - 03:30 Important stuff. But yeah, you get a little bit more capacity. They've made it taller, which is a choice. Obviously that also makes it a little bit heavier, which is, you know, I guess if you're in, you're in. You know, what's a few extra grams? And then the plunger. You still have your silicon piece at the bottom here. You need that obviously for a nice, you know, good seal as you press down. And the rest of it is aluminum. So much lighter than sort of... this. Less dense. Let's go with that. This does take the standard AeroPress filters, even though this is a little bit narrower in diameter.
• 03:30 - 04:00 Now for me, this is a personal thing. I don't really enjoy... (metallic piece clanking) that. That's the sound of metal on glass. I don't, I don't like it. Other people on the team were like, "Ooh, satisfying," Like, clunk, click, weighty. But for me, ooh, no. Metal on glass. Just not quite right. But, you know, I'm not really worried about robustness or sort of, you know, damaging the glass or anything like that.
• 04:00 - 04:30 It's just a feeling thing. It's kind of a personal thing. I'm, of course, duty bound to mention as I put in my dry, unrinsed AeroPress filter, that we did make a big series of videos about the AeroPress, getting into the hows and whys of technique. We will link to both the exploration video, which is a ton of fun, and the Ultimate Technique video that we made as well. They're down in the description as well if you wanna brew a better AeroPress, or what I might enjoy as a better, more enjoyable, delicious AeroPress. Yeah, it's better. It does change the way you sort of use it,
• 04:30 - 05:00 in a funny sort of way. Like obviously putting this weighty thing of metal onto a glass jug. (jug clanks) I'm more cautious, I'm more delicate. Concerned in some ways. You don't wanna be as slap dash as you can be with a traditional AeroPress. Are you gonna fit? Are you gonna cause me trouble? So first interesting thing about the way that it brews, it's gonna be brew temperature. Now I know what you're thinking. This is gonna lose way more temperature.
• 05:00 - 05:30 And you are kind of right. I'm all right with a little bit of dripping through. It doesn't make a big difference. Anyway. Yeah. Essentially the metal here, the glass here, do pull more heat out of your brewing liquid than a conventional AeroPress. And if you preheat them, even then, if you preheat a standard AeroPress and this, this does initially lose a little bit more temperature, but we left some probes in them for a little while and an interesting thing happened. There's a sort of transference of heat,
• 05:30 - 06:00 especially in a preheated unit, from the brew water into the brewer itself. And then you kind of have a larger thermal mass which will lose heat slower. So it starts at a sort of lower peak temperature in the brew. It'll peak a little bit lower than a conventional, but it will hold its temperature longer. And actually after about two and a half, three minutes, it will be at a higher brewing temperature in here than a conventional AeroPress would be. If you're someone who likes the Gagnepress,
• 06:00 - 06:30 named after Jonathan Gagne's technique of like a 10 minute steep, if not longer, if you want to, you know, do that. Nothing bad happens in a very long press, actually. You just get more extraction. It slows a lot, which is why you have to go so long to have a brew like this. But this brewer would be hotter at the end of that brew than a conventional one would be. Which is kind of interesting, I think. Here, we're just gonna brew for two minutes, then we'll give it a little swirl, and then we'll press 30 seconds later. Obviously not on the scale, 'cause we don't want to press on the scale. Do we? No we don't.
• 06:30 - 07:00 Now I was a little nervous with the idea of, you know, pressing the metal against the glass. You can do that quite easily, but practically, day to day, you're never pressing hard enough to really cause any problems. So that doesn't really bother me. Again, I'm never gonna press super hard, nothing good comes of it. And I will press all the way to the end, to the hiss, 'cause I want every drop of goodness out and it doesn't make your coffee taste worse. (press hissing) Before I taste it - it's too hot - I wanna talk about a second interesting thing
• 07:00 - 07:30 that we discovered in testing, which I'm hesitant to say is absolutely a thing, but kind of makes sense. You might've heard that in espresso brewing right now, one of the hot trends is to have a narrower, deeper basket, a higher extraction. And so step down baskets have become a thing. This is kind of an AeroPress step down. Like it is four millimeters narrower. So the puck is narrower and deeper. And interestingly, if you compare this with a regular AeroPress and you put the same coffee in, same water, all the same stuff, across, I think 20 brews, consistently this extracted just a little bit more,
• 07:30 - 08:00 just a little bit more. Now, is that consequential? I'm not sure. Because you could adjust your grind setting very slightly on a conventional AeroPress and have a matching extraction. Over those brews I think it averaged out a little bit under a quarter of a percent more extracted, which is not a lot, it's not a massive thing. And you could argue it's not important data and I would probably agree with you, but it's just a trend that I've noticed in the brews. Now, other things of note. This is hot now, which is annoying.
• 08:00 - 08:30 I'm gonna be honest. There's no way around it. It's just hot. You've just pressed, you know, 90 degrees Celsius water through it for a while. Letting it cool down a little bit before you dispose of it is probably worthwhile. And then, eh, it's not that bad, but straight away, a little bit hot. Certainly multiple brews, this will get hotter and hotter and hotter. Makes sense. One interesting thing, I need a knock box for this. And I'll be interested to hear from you if you have one of these down in the comments below: we haven't had as neat a puck knocks
• 08:30 - 09:00 as a normal AeroPress, right? So you used to, you know, pop it out. Not bad, but just not quite as good. The regular AeroPress was just so, whew, neat and clean. Now obviously you might have been raised like me (press knocking) to be a bashing-type person. Thankfully they kept this bit metal, which is good. And I would be comfortable bashing that. In terms of maintenance, it's gonna be the same as the regular AeroPress, in terms of like, and cleaning it. So, nice and easy. No complaints. (coffee trickling)
• 09:00 - 09:30 It's an AeroPress. The coffee tastes like a coffee from an AeroPress. Can you detect the temperature difference being very slightly slower? (exhales) If you do a blind tasting or an A/B tasting and compare and contrast, then maybe? But actually as a one-of-one. No, it's just a tasty cup of coffee that you would expect from an AeroPress. But the comparative tasting I think will be much more interesting, especially if I can't tell the difference at all. One of the things I do wanna talk about though
• 09:30 - 10:00 is these unintended consequences. And one of the reasons that, you know, I felt like I might be negative about this brewer is kind of not AeroPress's fault. Go with me for a second here. If you think about what makes the AeroPress particularly charming, right? What made it so successful? Obviously the top line thing is it's one of the least disappointing brewers of all time, right? In that I meet people who buy one and they're just very happy with the coffee that they make. They're not frustrated by it, they're just having a nice time. And I see that level of satisfaction in AeroPress brewers
• 10:00 - 10:30 more often, more commonly, more universally than almost any other brewer, which is notable. But beyond that, it's cheap or it was cheap, and it's still relatively cheap. But it was cheap and it was small and it was convenient. You could travel with it and it was bulletproof. You couldn't break it. You could pop a little grinder inside, get a hand grinder in there, have a little package to travel with. It was a kind of, every need was met for a lot of people. And at a sensible price point, they sold staggering quantities of these things.
• 10:30 - 11:00 I don't know how many, no one will tell me, but it's a lot. They've sold a lot of AeroPresses. This brewer, by asking for, "I want that, but nicer," didn't leave AeroPress as a manufacturer many choices about materials, right? You had to use metal. So that's gonna be heavier. If you want it to be transparent, you have to use glass, which makes it fragile. And so it's no longer light and robust and easy to travel with. You know, it's lost some of the core charm of the AeroPress. And I don't think that's AeroPress's fault.
• 11:00 - 11:30 People wanted the premium thing and I don't think you can make a premium thing that still is all of the things that the original AeroPress was. There has to be compromise in a funny sort of way. And I wonder if this had been the first AeroPress, would it have been as successful? You know, it still makes really nice coffee, it's still easy to use, but would it have had the same success? And I don't know if it would. You know, I think there is real value to being affordable and, you know, lasting for a very long time and being super easy to travel with.
• 11:30 - 12:00 I think there is real meaningful value to a huge number of people there. So it's interesting to me that in chasing a better version, have they kind of made a more expensive version but a worse version? That was something I worried about. But maybe I'm just being harsh. Maybe, you know, going back to the two camps of people that want this thing, the people that want the Premium are not thinking, "I'm gonna take this camping or on holiday or in my luggage or in my hand luggage," or whatever else. They're just like, "I want the AeroPress, but nicer." And so my complaints don't really matter to them.
• 12:00 - 12:30 Seems like a fair point. So what we'll do now is we will brew three brews. We will brew a standard AeroPress. We will preheat the brewer, we'll preheat all the brewers. I think that's fair. We'll brew an AeroPress XL, that will be a double sort of sized batch. Whether that plays a role or not, we'll see. But we'll do a double, so 24 grams to 400 mls in that. And then we'll do a Premium as well. We'll split each brew into two cups and then we'll mix them all up. I'll have six to taste in front of me. Can I find the pairs? Does one taste different?
• 12:30 - 13:00 Let's find out. As a reminder for those of you who have a little misophonia, just like me, if you don't wanna hear the slurps, you can change the audio channel and have an audio channel that has no slurp sounds. 'Cause I'm gonna, well, I'm gonna taste these. (loud successive slurping sounds) They're all definitely coffee. They're all very similar. While I detect some differences, it doesn't mean that they're really there.
• 13:00 - 13:30 We'll find out. I'm gonna pair these A, B, C, A, B, C. So I think... you two are the same, (beeping noise) you two are the same and you two are the same. (beeping noise) Who's beeping? In terms of are there differences between the brews? Well, maybe. (slurps) These two are very similar, if they are indeed a pair. And this one I like slightly less. So let's find out. Can you taste the difference between three different AeroPresses?
• 13:30 - 14:00 This is AP, which is standard? - Premium. - Oh, Premium? It's Premium! Premium. AeroPress Premium. Thank-you-very-much. And this one? XL. XL. (chuckles) Look at me. Look at me go! And then, yeah, AeroPress classic And obviously AeroPress classic. That's not a extraordinary feat of tasting in many ways. That's not.
• 14:00 - 14:30 This may be a little bit luckier here. This one just didn't taste quite as even. Like, you know, maybe the brew itself was slightly flawed, not that, you know, slightly, like it's just a tiny bit less extracted to me. And so you could argue maybe the grind setting was optimized for an AeroPress Premium. But really, could I, if you gave me individual cups of these, could I tell the difference? Not even slightly. Would I take away from this test that the AeroPress Premium brews better than the classic? I'm not sure I would.
• 14:30 - 15:00 You might argue with the same grind setting, which obviously you could change, but with the same grind setting, I might prefer, you know, the narrower, deeper puck of an AeroPress Premium. But I don't think that's therefore a better brewer. Do you know what I mean? Like, I wouldn't say that. I would just say, given a fixed grind size, you'd get a slightly higher extraction from that. That's basically it. I'm just delaying talking about microplastics, which I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that now.
• 15:00 - 15:30 I'm gonna do that now, I promise. Let's clean this up. So one set of unexpected consequences of premiumizing the AeroPress is that, to me it made it less of a AeroPress in a funny sort of way, right? Like it lost some of its charm and that was an, you know, unexpected consequence of changing all the materials. The other unexpected consequence is that people are gonna be talking about microplastics more. And if most of what you sell is a plastic coffee brewer, I'm not sure that's great news for AeroPress. Now, look, microplastics.
• 15:30 - 16:00 Like you, I suspect, I exist in two simultaneous states, one of which is this whole thing is just overblown, it's full of grift, it's full of nonsense. There's a bunch of anti-science going on here. It's just a big hullabaloo about nothing. The other side of me is like, "Oh no, I'm like 95% plastic at this point. This is killing me. My body when I die will never rot. It'll just lie there like a plastinated thing to be put on show at Body Worlds." It's a very specific reference, but, you know. If you know, you know.
• 16:00 - 16:30 Let me say now, this is not the moment to turn on the part of your brain that may accept new information to change your opinion. I'm not trying to change your opinion on microplastics. If you are deeply anti them, nothing I'm gonna say is gonna change your mind. And I suspect comments will be filled with people telling me that I'm wrong about a bunch of stuff because they hold very strong beliefs that are slightly different to mine. As I understand it, there are things like BPA, bisphenol A. Yes, we know that there can be some endocrine disruption from those and I would avoid things that have BPA in them.
• 16:30 - 17:00 If I had an original AeroPress, probably wouldn't brew coffee with it. You know what I mean? Not a BPA-free plastic. I don't know how much BPA you'd get out of it. But ultimately I'd be like, "No, I'm fine. I'll use a modern one." Tritan or whatever they're using now. There are no matching concerns there, right? When it comes to other plastics, we don't, as far as I can tell, have direct evidence of harm. That does not mean we have evidence that they do no harm. If they do something bad, we haven't found it yet,
• 17:00 - 17:30 but we haven't found it yet, right? Like we haven't got evidence in the way that most plastic is really bad. The whole area gets me really stressed out because it's just rife with grift, people trying to frighten you, to make money out of you, to sell you something. And that makes it a very opinionated, very loud, very noisy space where it's hard to get good information. From my own point of view, I don't remotely worry about the impact
• 17:30 - 18:00 of using a regular AeroPress on the amount of microplastics I consume. If I was trying to reduce the amount of microplastic I consume, this would be a very long way down on my list of things to worry about compared to, say, drinking water. As an aside, and I'll try not to get too derailed by this, do you know that most microplastics definitions would be particles smaller than five millimeters? That's not micro, that's a chunk! That's a chunk! Now some people would say smaller than one millimeter, even though I think, to be sort of
• 18:00 - 18:30 dissolved while in your body or to pass through into your sort of, from the digestive system, I suppose, into you, you need to be at about 10 microns in size, which is definitely micro at that point. Anyway, of the plastic we eat, we expel almost all of it, 'cause most of it's bigger than 10 microns. This is not the point, not the point of this whole thing. I know that there's lots of different kinda plastics used in coffee brewers and in coffee machines, and I think if there's definite evidence of stuff like BPA being present, then I would avoid that, Much like I would avoid drinking out of a water bottle
• 18:30 - 19:00 that I'd left in a hot car. You know what I mean? Like it's a sensible... Probably not the best. Probably avoid that. But beyond that, until there's better evidence, I'm not sure it's worth freaking out about. I'm not sure. I'm sure there'll be plenty of evidence presented in the comments. I would advise you to, you know, if you're gonna take that evidence, dig a little deeper into it, have a look at the studies. And again, the reporting out there is wild, just wild and all over the place and just full of a lot of misinformation again. It's a really difficult topic
• 19:00 - 19:30 and I really hate that we're talking about it because I hate having to have an opinion that I might share with you publicly. Ultimately, like I said at the start, the biggest downside of the AeroPress Premium may be that for a company that mostly sells plastic products, everyone's talking about microplastics a little bit more. The AeroPress Premium is something that the community of AeroPress users has been asking for for a very long time, for years and years and years. They asked for a larger AeroPress, they got that in the XL, they asked for a nicer, fancier AeroPress. They got that in the AeroPress Premium.
• 19:30 - 20:00 It's $150. And to be honest, as I look at it and I think about it, I'm not sure that this will have a sort of a hidden huge margin for AeroPress as a manufacturer, in that higher price point. It's going to be a smaller run. There's going to be a lot more sort of cost attached to doing it. The materials are much more expensive. I'm sure if they could sell this for $100 and make a good margin, then they would, because they'd sell twice as many at $100, if not more than they would at $150.
• 20:00 - 20:30 But the price is what it is. It is a lot of money. And I think about what I could spend $150 on. I could buy a very nice grinder these days, actually. Or close to it. I could buy a pretty reasonable grinder. A little bit more money, get a very good grinder. Again, I'm just getting one little brewer. Or, you know, for the same money, I could get a regular AeroPress and spend $100 on coffee, buy some pretty amazing coffee. And from a quality perspective, better coffee will trump a better brewer, if this is a better brewer, every single time.
• 20:30 - 21:00 If I had my way, I suspect I would be interested in this glass piece being switched out for dual wall metal. I would love it to be entirely robust, dual wall so there's no heat transfer concerns, but I could throw it around. It'd be probably a little bit lighter, maybe. Someone correct me if not. I don't mind that I wouldn't see the insides. You can barely see the inside on the kind of original AeroPress now. So that's not important. I'm mostly weighing the water anyway. The glass will always stress me out. It works pretty well. It looks nice.
• 21:00 - 21:30 You know, there's no concerns about picking up the hot thing. It does look pretty, but, I just, I have a history, like most people do, of glass coffee brewing stuff getting broken. I've broken Chemexes, I've broken carafes, I've broken glass french presses. I suspect, in time, I'll break this too, or someone else will. Actually, one of my Patreons who will be getting this unit, 'cause they support the channel and give us the sort of funds to buy these things, at full price like regular customers. Well, I hope they don't break it. I hope they last a very long time.
• 21:30 - 22:00 Is it worth the money? That's kind of up to you. Would you pay $150 to have a slightly nicer-feeling AeroPress? Do you have that level of disposable income? If you don't, don't worry about it, you're not missing out. You're not missing out on better coffee, even though that tasting might make you think that, but you're not missing out on better coffee. You're missing out on a heavier, fancier-looking AeroPress. And what that's worth is almost impossible for me to say.
• 22:00 - 22:30 Anyway, that's the AeroPress Premium. Now, I'd love to hear from you down in the comments below. Do you have one? How are you getting on with it? Have you broken it yet? Have you not broken it yet? Do you want one and you're just waiting to see if it's worth it? Would you never buy this? What would tip you over the line to upgrading your AeroPress? I would love to hear your thoughts down in the comments below, but for now, I'll say thank you so much for watching and hope you have a great day.