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Comment by iscrewyou | Hacker News Reader

I love my AeroPress. It makes some of the best coffee ever. But I had to stop. Putting hot water in a plastic cup everyday for coffee? I wish there was a metal version. I’ll still use it once every so many months. But the plastic nature of the contraption has turned me away.

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I'm surprised there isn't a premium version available. There's surely a huge market for people willing to spend ~$100 on a non-plastic version.

There is a premium version available. It costs only $30.

As you can see at https://aeropressinc.com/use-it-now/evolution-of-aeropress/ , they’ve continued to re-evaluate materials, including testing for contamination while brewing coffee.

You can boil an aeropress at pH 5 for an hour without detecting any leaching. The interesting bit is how it ages—how cracks form, where bacteria might find a home, that sort of thing.

I'm sure the plastic is fine, I'd just prefer a metal or glass version.

On every discussion of the Aeropress, I've seen the ask for a non-plastic version pop up. Every time I've then seen essentially your reply above. I'd just prefer a metal or glass version.

I'd love a glass version too but I think it would be super dangerous. Metal is probably more practical.

You might be able to re purpose a lab device I don't know the english name for. See pictures: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=kolbenprober

The English name is "gas syringe".

Based on that link I have the version 4 (sep 2010 - dec 2013). The tube has lots of cracks that you can see as well as feel when you run the fingers on the inside, and it doesn't hold pressure that well anymore (whether it's due to air leaking past the cracked surface, or the rubber endcap, I don't know).

I don't worry about crap leaching out of the plastic as much as bacterial creepy critters lodging in the cracks. Also rancid coffee in the cracks isn't nice. Perhaps I should buy a new one, hopefully the polypropylene is more durable.

I have the second version, use it nearly every day, and mine is as good as new. You can pry my BPA version out of my coffee-mug warmed, dead, hands. Seriously though: I am slightly concerned about the BPA, but based on a sample size of two (modulo differences between how we use ours), it makes for a more durable plastic.

BTW, I use 200° water. Brewing time is less than 30s total for me.

This company in Australia makes copper and steel adaptations of the aeropress:

https://www.artisansmith.com.au/collections/press

Steel press is $149AUD, which is about $110USD.

Metal is a heat thief and will significantly affect the brew. You can go through a rigmarole of pre-heating but it will still drop in temperature much faster than plastic.

Handling metal at boiling temperatures is miserable. Burning yourself in your pre-coffee haze makes the ritual less enjoyable. Plastic is pretty damn good brewing material thanks to it's insulation. Metal and ceramics look great but you end up needing to add cladding and they are still inferior.

Fortunately aeropress is forgiving compared to espresso so you might get away with the temperature changes but I would not be suprised by mixed results.

>> But the plastic nature of the contraption has turned me away

Why? If you fear BPA or other materials leaching... they've been testing since 2009 and never found anything. And anything recent has been BPA-free.

https://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134196209/study-most-plastics...

> The team concentrated on BPA-free baby bottles and water bottles, Bittner says, "and all of them released chemicals having estrogenic activity." Sometimes the BPA-free products had even more activity than products known to contain BPA.

That was just the top search engine result for "plastic leaching".

Not quite the "see, nothing to worry about" hill I would die on when one can just buy glass or metal vessels.

Oh, so it's the soy scare, plastics edition. I guess that explains the desire for a dangerous to handle impractical steel version, you get to prove how non-estrogenous you are every morning by burning yourself.

Don't worry, you'll be fine. If that worked, I'd be sucking on plastic spoons all day.

Yeah, let's die by 1000 cuts, it's all fine.

Same feeling here. High acidity hot coffee, at that. Plus the rubber seal was starting to degrade on mine

You can buy a replacement rubber end from the manufacturer for about $8 shipped.

would this http://espro.ca/espro-press/ work for you ? I have used it for a while .. I have never owned an aeropress so I don't know how it compares.

The espro is still a French press and the coffee or produces still comes out more bitter than what is produced in an aeropress. I'll be damned if I know why. I switched from an espro to an aeropress a few years ago because even though I tell myself that an aeropress should produce about the same flavor as a French press with the same grind (the espro has a very fine filter, similar to some of the reusable screens for an aeropress) and water temp, it seems different.

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