The drippers/devices/brewers – talking about pour over

Some of the first suggestions you will widely see in the internet is the Hario V60, Hario W60, Chemex, Melitta, Zero Bee House, origami, clever coffee, Kalita Wave and the list goes on. Here we will try to make an overview of most of the famous drippers and we have an extended bibliography with links, that you can dive into whatever dripper or overview or comparison, that you wish.

You can have different materials like metal, ceramic and plastic brewers and they can play a role in the stability of the brewing process.

The plastic can be easier handled and let the temperature remain in your brew. The ceramic and the metallic absorb a lot of temperature, which will not be used for your brew. The glass while being very beautiful can easily brake.

We will divide them according to their shape/geometry.

Flat bottom brewers

You will find them also as flatbed or just flat brewers.

Some of the drippers in this category are: Kalita wave, notneutral Gino, blue bottle, December, April, Orea, Stagg, Timemore, MK.

With those drippers is not required a very precise pouring, cause the flat bottom makes the water stay there for longer. This means that the extraction is longer.

Let´s start with Kalita wave and mention first that there are a lot of models. Like tsubame or sagan. The brew time also seems to be different according to the material you will choose to use (metal, glass or ceramic). You could have 3 ribs at the bottom but they could also be absent (in that case you have a lifted bottom, like a hill, so that the filter doesn´t directly touch the holes). The three holes for drainage are always there regardless of ribs. For an optimal flow you need special filters for Kalita. Kalita comes from Japan and was founded in 1958.

The Gino dripper is made of glass and has no handle. This last point makes it more difficult to handle. It is similar to Kalita wave, cause it has 3 holes at the bottom but it has no waves. It is a very elegant dripper and apparently keeps the temperature very well, cause it has double wall glass.

Moving on to blue bottle dripper. First of all it is not widely available. In some countries you might not be able to get one of those. It was made in Japan and later bought from Nestle (which could be negative for some people). The ribs are very well done and prevent from clogging the draining hole. Here there is only 1 larger draining hole. It is advertised as a more forgiving dripper.

The game changer with the December dripper is, that you can choose to use 4, 8 or 12 holes. Or even 0 holes if you want to pre-infuse. It is really interesting having all those settings in 1 dripper. You can use special December filters or Kalita. The name comes from the birth month of the inventor. If you enjoy variables and testing brewing, then this brewer gives you extra options with the settings.

The April brewer is fairly new (2019). No handle, 1 large draining hole and very thick ribs on the bottom. It is one of the drippers, that you will not find in the internet lots of different recipes, so you need to test. Air is supposed to circulate better and there is no clogging. They won the silver medal in a world class coffee competition and this company was in the beginning famous for the coffee they had.

The Orea dripper took its name from the greek word “ωραία”, that means beautiful. It is available independently from the base and the base is made 100% from recyclabe plastic. The dripper has a very compact size, so you can brew just 1 cup and was developed while its founder was travelling and needed something small to brew. You can brew with flat or wave filters.

The fellow Stagg dripper comes in 2 sizes and it has 10 drainage holes. The bottom is also a bit lifted to avoid clogging. It has a quite good thermal insulation and this is one of its highlights. It is thin and slim in order to maximize contact with the coffee. This company was famous in the beginning for its kettles. It is similar in brews with kalita wave 155.

The timemore brewer has more aggressive ribs on the sides and keeps sturdier the filter in position, while it is not restricting the flow. So there is no clogging involved in this dripper and you can use various filters.

The MK drippers are handcrafted from a Stockholm company that makes a variety of ceramics. So each one of them are unique and made of porcelaine. There are 5 holes for drainage, so it is faster than Kalita but slower than Orea. This brewer has also some wins in international coffee competitions.

Cone shaped brewers

You will find them also as conical brewers.

Some of the drippers in this category are: Melitta, Hario V60 (but Hario has a lot more than V60), origami, yeti.

Starting with Melitta, that it was first used by Melitta Benz in 1908. This makes this dripper having more than 100 years of history. It has a conical V-shape but semi flat bottom and 1 small hole (risk to overbrew your coffee) at the bottom of the dripper. Melitta in its plastic version is one of the lightest brewers out there, talking about weight. It comes also in porcelaine.

The V60 has a cone shape (60 degrees) and a large single draining hole. It comes in lots of different materials. Hario, the japanese company (heatproof laboratory glassmaker) was founded in 1921, entered the coffee business in 1948 but the V-60 was born in 2004.

Hario has several other brewers like Mugen and W60. Mugen competes with Chemex and W60 is more similar to V-60 but rounder (like a teacup). There is also suiren that looks like a flower or the switch that combines pour over and immersion technic.

The origami dripper has 20 folded inner ribs and took the name from the japanese origami paper. It comes in different materials. The ribs create air channels and help not having clogging. It gives you 2 option for the filters. You can use a flat bottom or a conical one. You can have different sizes as well and you can use it as it is or with a base, that you buy extra. Origami has no handle.

Yeti is shorter than a V60 and has a bigger draining hole. It has also interior ribs/venting groves. It is made of stainless steel and has double-wall insulation. Yeti has also very well insulated mugs, that can be combined with the dripper and keep the coffee warm for hours. It is being promoted as the ultimate pour over for outdoors. It is compatible with V60 filters.

One more dripper that should be mentioned, cause it is compact, fold-able and fantastic for trips is the MiiR pourigami brewer. It is triangular/cone-shape and it is actually 3 sides, that you can assembly and disassembly quite easily, store or take with you. It is made of stainless steel but still doesn´t weight a lot. There are its own filters, but you can use also V60.

Flat-bottom vs cone-shaped brewers

The shape will influence the coffee to water contact which has a direct influence in the taste. But the recipe and the size of your coffee will play a very important role.

It is difficult to choose one single brewer when there are so many out there but here we tried to do quite a big overview, so that you can check out what there is already in the market and start discarding till you find the one you wanna start with.

In our bibliography you will find from the official sites to blog posts, reviews of various brewers but also recommended recipes. Taste and recipes can widely vary and that is why we tried not include such info in the review above. But you can dive deeper in the following links:

Bibliography

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