Aerobie Coffee? Does It Fly?
I was recently made aware of a great invention from the makes of the Aerobie flying disc. While this product is less fun at the beach, it's definitely something that is worth trying out. It's an espresso maker that's around $30 called the Aeropress.
You can read about it on their site for how it works, but basically it uses air pressure to make espresso in under 30 seconds.
Years ago my mom gave me a home espresso machine, which I setup in my office kitchen in Korea-town. I spent several hours thereafter attempting to brew espresso with no success. The device was complicated, I didn't know how to load the darn thing correctly, never-mind operate it. At one point a few weeks later, a friend of mine who was also a former Starbucks barista tried to use the thing. The final consensus before the unit was shelved permanently was that it couldn't generate enough pressure to brew good espresso.
Well, this simple plastic Aeropress does what that thing could not, for a fraction of the cost. My first use was more to see what it was like, I didn't really want any coffee and didn't have good beans (just a tin of cheap drip coffee), but damn this thing works well.