Sadly, studies keep showing that unfiltered coffee (like French press coffee) raises bad cholesterol levels (LDL cholesterol).
Worse, anecdotal data from reddit and friends unfortunately shows this might be a pretty big effect: a lot of people who switch from unfiltered coffee to filtered coffee are seeing their cholesterol numbers drop.
Filtered coffee means it goes through a paper filter, like your 1980's Mr. Coffee machine.
Amazingly, the paper filter traps a bunch of cafestol particles (yep real name!) that are somehow causing the cholesterol increase.
Heeding these warnings, we recently switched from our wonderful push-button Nespresso machine back to our old Aeropress, which uses paper filters.
An Aeropress is a super simple tube created by the inventor of the Aerobie frisbee in 1984, and it's still one of the most popular ways to make coffee amongst aficionados.
You put the tube over your mug, put your coffee grounds in, pour in the hot water, wait 30 seconds, and then you push the plunger down to push the coffee through the paper filters - but it takes some strength!
Much harder to do than a French press!
Being used to Nespresso, the aeropress coffee tasted thin, I swear I could taste the mixing cafestol...
We noticed some of the hot water would drip through before it had time to soak up the coffee beans.
So we were excited to try the new $25 valve that Aeropress just came out with, and yes it keeps the hot water from dripping through until you are ready to plunge!
I still miss the richer flavor profile of unfiltered coffee, but as far as filtered coffee goes, we're so darn happy with the Aeropress's new valve that we figured we'd blog about it!