The AeroPress inverted brewing method involves… literally inverting an AeroPress.
What’s the point of doing this? Mainly, to allow the grounds to remain immersed longer, since gravity isn’t forcing the water to drip through the filter before you manually push it through with the plunger.
Since the water can’t pass through the filter until you’re good and ready, you have a lot more control over how your cup of coffee comes out.
But don’t leave it immersed for too long, or you’ll end up with an over-extraction on your hands, which defeats the purpose of inverting it in the first place.
In the end, your coffee will taste even better than AeroPress brewing using the non-inverted method.
With the water spending more time in contact with the grounds, your final cup of coffee will be stronger in both flavor and caffeine content.
I was a skeptic at first, too, but the answer is: Yes. In the standard (non-inverted) AeroPress brewing method, some of the water will immediately start dripping through the paper filter. This results in some of your coffee being under-extracted and just plain weak in both caffeine content and flavor.
Depending on how fine your grind is and how much coffee is actually in the chamber, you may get a lot more or a lot less premature leakage—but no premature leakage is really what we’re after here.
With this method, you’ll prevent all of that and achieve an overall better, more balanced cup of coffee.
Just that the flavor and caffeine is more consistent throughout the cup. Without getting a mix of all the early less-extracted coffee drips mixing in with the coffee that has had a longer extraction time.
Well, as you might guess, it’s real fucking easy to make a giant spill if you’re not careful. You’ll need to make extra sure that the mug you’re using is sturdy (and has a stable base), as well as that you’re pushing straight down with the AeroPress. These are things you should be doing anyway no matter which AeroPress instructions you’re following, but once you’ve gotten used to brewing it in the non-inverted fashion it’s easy to get lax on the angle you’re pushing down with.
If you push down at too weird of an angle or are trying to brew into a mug that isn’t stable, you can accidentally cause a major kitchen (or desk) cleanup. And since it’s y’know… hot coffee, the chances of burns are increased if you’re not being careful.
So to recap, you should only try this method if you can do it in a careful, stable, controlled way.
Now—if you’re ready—let’s get started:
Viola! You’ve mastered (or at least completed) the Inverted AeroPress method!
Enjoy your even richer, even stronger, even better tasting cup of coffee!