Brewing
~15th century
AeroPress
A frustrated engineer built this to fix one bad cup. It now has a world championship.
Alan Adler wasn't trying to reinvent coffee. He was a Stanford engineer already famous for inventing a flying disc โ but he couldn't stand how his drip machine ruined a single cup. So he built a plunger that pushes hot water through grounds using nothing but air pressure and thirty seconds of patience.
It looks like lab equipment, and in a way, it is. Steep, plunge, done โ except the ritual is so tunable that thousands of competing recipes now face off every year at the World AeroPress Championship. Invert it, stretch the steep time from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, swap paper for metal โ the machine doesn't flinch. What comes out is smooth, low in acid, and lands somewhere between espresso and pour over, which is exactly why travelers, campers, and coffee obsessives all claim it as their own.
Origin & History
Invented in 2005 by Alan Adler, a Stanford engineering professor and inventor of the Aerobie flying disc. He designed the AeroPress after obsessing over why conventional drip machines made bad single cups. It launched at a trade show in 2005 and became a cult favorite โ particularly among travelers and outdoor enthusiasts โ due to its durability and portability.
Fun Fact
Alan Adler invented the AeroPress at age 68, while already famous for the Aerobie frisbee. He reportedly tested over 40 different prototypes before settling on the final design.
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