#manualbrewonly

I make pour over coffee at home everyday and was super excited to learn that Blue Bottle was making their own dripper device. I had my first pour over coffee at a Blue Bottle cafe years ago. It’s by far my favorite way to brew coffee. I love the whole process, the tools, getting the water to pour out at just the right pace, and the final product, a freshly brewed single cup of coffee. Pour over produces what I consider the cleanest representation of a coffee's flavor profile.

Before getting the new dripper I was using a Bonmac Dripper, which is slightly different than the popular Hario V60. Bonmac drippers have two small holes at the bottom rather than one larger hole on the v60. The smaller hole makes it easier to control the flow of water through the coffee grounds, giving the Barista(?) a sense of percision. Bonmac drippers produce excellent coffee, they are inexpensive, and use standard size filters. There is nothing wrong or broken with either the V60 or the Bonmac, however, the brew process often requires a few test cups before dialing in the grind, water/coffee ratio, and brew time with each new coffee. For the geekier coffee drinking, this is all good, for others, it’s likely a bit annoying and possibly intimidating.

The fine folks and Sprudge wrote a great piece (“Building A Better Dripper With Blue Bottle Coffee”), about the engineering, design, and development that went into Blue Bottle’s new dripper. Safe to say, lots of brain power and testing and craftsmanship went into creating this simple device. The drippers are made in a small ceramics factory in Japan. The box and the pamphlet are equally well designed. The combined effect is very satisfying to open and to use. Neil Day, VP of Coffee Technologies at Blue Bottle, described the goal of the product, “to make things easier and more delicious for coffee drinkers.”Blue Bottle Coffee’s new dripper is easy to use, easy to control, and consistently produces delicious coffee.

Anything new is exciting, but does that newness translate to a better final product? After making +30 cups with the new dripper (holidays = more coffee) over the past few weeks, I’m a big fan. The main difference is that the new dripper requires less thinking and less adjustments, but still delivers the level of satisfaction of manually brewing a single cup of coffee. It smoothes out the variables while preserving the aesthetic and the inherent sense of satisfaction you get every time you use it. True to form the new dripper is both easy to use and precise.

With so many new electronic gadgets available all the time it’s refreshing to buy things that are manual/analog that you use everyday. As long as you don’t drop the thing it will never break down. Much like the beloved Chemex, the new dripper is something that will deepen your relationship to the ritual and the flavor of the coffee you make. It will in fact provide a 3 minute meditative routine in your life that ends with a fresh cup of coffee. So ya, it’s worth it. I hope BB starts selling their filters in bulk, 30 filters in a small box is a novelty, too much waste and too few filters for the daily usage.