The aeropress just uses moderate pressure to get the liquid out past the paper filter. You don’t need to push very hard to make it work, and pushing harder doesn’t really accomplish anything. To use an aeropress you mix the coffee grounds into the water (like pour over or French press), you don’t start with a compacted puck of coffee and then force boiling water through it. The pressure involved doesn’t change the flavor. It’s not an espresso machine.
The thing distinguishing the aeropress from pour over or French press is that by using the plunger you can still get water through the filter even with finely ground coffee beans. By using a finer grind, you can extract more flavor from the coffee with less water, lower water temperature, and/or shorter time, and thereby get stronger coffee while avoiding some of the more bitter larger molecules.
The thing distinguishing the aeropress from pour over or French press is that by using the plunger you can still get water through the filter even with finely ground coffee beans. By using a finer grind, you can extract more flavor from the coffee with less water, lower water temperature, and/or shorter time, and thereby get stronger coffee while avoiding some of the more bitter larger molecules.