Brewed coffee is made by pouring hot water onto ground

coffee beans A coffee bean is a seed of the ''Coffea'' plant and the source for coffee. It is the pip inside the red or purple fruit often referred to as a coffee cherry. Just like ordinary cherries, the coffee fruit is also a so-called stone fruit. Even tho ...

, then allowing to brew. There are several methods for doing this, including using a

filter Filter, filtering or filters may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream * Filter (video), a software component tha ...

, a percolator, and a

French press A French press, also known as a cafetière, ''cafetière à piston'', ''caffettiera a stantuffo'', press pot, coffee press, or coffee plunger, is a coffee brewing device, although it can also be used for other tasks. In 1923 Ugo Paolini, an Ital ...

. Terms used for the resulting coffee often reflect the method used, such as drip brewed coffee, filtered coffee, pour-over coffee, immersion brewed coffee, or simply coffee. Water seeps through the ground coffee, absorbing its constituent

chemical compounds A chemical compound is a chemical substance composed of many identical molecules (or molecular entities) containing atoms from more than one chemical element held together by chemical bonds. A molecule consisting of atoms of only one element ...

, and then passes through a filter. The

used coffee grounds Used coffee grounds is the result of brewing coffee, and are the final product after preparation of coffee. Despite having several highly-desirable chemical components, used coffee grounds are generally regarded as waste, and they are usually t ...

are retained in the filter, while the brewed coffee is collected in a vessel such as a

carafe A carafe () is a glass container with a flared lip used for serving liquids, especially wine and coffee. Unlike the related decanter, carafes generally do not include stoppers. Coffee pots included in coffee makers are also referred to as ''car ...

or pot.

History

Paper

coffee filter A coffee filter is a filter used for brewing coffee. Filters made of paper (disposable), or cloth, plastic, and metal (reusable) are used. The filter allows the liquid coffee to flow through, but traps the coffee grounds. Paper filters remove o ...

s were invented in Germany by

Melitta Bentz Amalie Auguste Melitta Bentz (31 January 1873 – 29 June 1950), born Amalie Auguste Melitta Liebscher, was a German entrepreneur who invented the paper coffee filter brewing system in 1908. She founded the namesake company Melitta, which still ...

in 1908 and are commonly used for drip brew all over the world. In 1954 the

Wigomat The Wigomat was the world's first electrical drip coffee maker and patented in 1954 in Germany. It was named after the inventor Gottlob Widmann "Wi-go-mat", although some early machines were delivered as "FK-1" (for filter coffee machine). Hist ...

, invented by Gottlob Widmann, was patented in Germany being the first electrical drip brewer. Drip brew coffee makers replaced the

coffee percolator A coffee percolator is a type of pot used for the brewing of coffee by continually cycling the boiling or nearly boiling brew through the grounds using gravity until the required strength is reached. Coffee percolators once enjoyed great popul ...

in the 1970s due to the percolators' tendency to over-extract coffee, thereby making it bitter. One benefit of paper filters is that the used grounds and the filter may be disposed of together, without a need to clean the filter. Permanent filters are now also common, made of thin

perforated A perforation is a small hole in a thin material or web. There is usually more than one perforation in an organized fashion, where all of the holes collectively are called a ''perforation''. The process of creating perforations is called perfor ...

metal sheets, fine plastic mesh or porous

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

that restrain the grounds but allow the coffee to pass, thus eliminating the need to have to purchase separate filters which sometimes cannot be found in some parts of the world. These add to the maintenance of the machine, but reduce overall cost and produce less waste.

Characteristics

Brewing with a paper filter produces clear, light-bodied coffee. While free of sediments, such coffee is lacking in some of coffee's oils and essences; they have been trapped in the paper filter. Metal filters do not remove these components. It may be observed, especially when using a tall, narrow carafe, that the coffee at the bottom of the coffeepot is stronger than that at the top. This is because less flavor is available for extraction from the coffee grounds as the brewing process progresses. A mathematical argument has been made that delivering comparable strength in two cups of coffee is nearly achieved using a

Thue–Morse sequence In mathematics, the Thue–Morse sequence, or Prouhet–Thue–Morse sequence, is the binary sequence (an infinite sequence of 0s and 1s) obtained by starting with 0 and successively appending the Boolean complement of the sequence obtained thus ...

of pours. This analysis prompted a whimsical article in the popular press. There are several manual drip-brewing devices on the market, offering a little more control over brewing parameters than automatic machines, and which incorporate stopper valves and other innovations that offer greater control over steeping time and the proportion of coffee to water. There also exist small, portable, single-serving drip brew makers that only hold the filter and rest on top of a

mug A mug is a type of cup typically used for drinking hot drinks, such as coffee, hot chocolate, or tea. Mugs usually have handles and hold a larger amount of fluid than other types of cup. Typically, a mug holds approximately of liquid. A mug i ...

cup A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, clay, ...

, making them a popular option for backcountry campers and hikers. Hot water is poured in and drips directly into the cup. A less familiar form of drip brewing is the reversible or "flip" pot commonly known as Napoletana.

Cultural impact

A complete Drip-O-lator unit The ''Drip-O-lator'' is a patented coffee pot for making drip coffee patented in 1921 and in 1930 and manufactured in Massillon, Ohio, or Macon, Georgia,

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. The production of Drip-O-lators ceased in the middle of the twentieth century. The pots have become collectibles similar to

bric-à-brac Bric-à-brac () or bric-a-brac (from French), first used in the Victorian era, around 1840, refers to lesser objets d'art forming collections of curios. The French phrase is now obsolete, dating from the 16th century, then meaning "at random, ...

Filter coffee is central to Japanese coffee culture and connoisseurship. In South India, filter coffee brewed at home is known as ''

Kaapi Indian filter coffee is a coffee drink made by mixing frothed and boiled milk with the infusion obtained by percolation brewing of finely ground coffee powder in a traditional Indian filter. Internationally, the drink is referred to as Madras ...

'', and is a part of local culture. Most houses have a stainless steel coffee filter and most shops sell freshly roasted and ground coffee beans. Some popular filter coffee brands include Mysore café, Hill coffee (Suresh healthcare), Cothas Coffee (Bangalore) and Narasu's Coffee (Salem). It is common in South India and Louisiana to add an additive called

chicory Common chicory (''Cichorium intybus'') is a somewhat woody, perennial herbaceous plant of the family Asteraceae, usually with bright blue flowers, rarely white or pink. Native to the Old World, it has been introduced to North America and Austra ...

to coffee to give it a unique taste and flavour.

Methods

There are a number of methods and pieces of equipment for making brewed coffee. Pour-over methods are popular ways of making specialty drip coffee. The method involves pouring water over a bed of coffee in a filter-lined conical chamber, such as the

Chemex The Chemex Coffeemaker is a manual pour-over style glass coffeemaker, invented by Peter Schlumbohm in 1941, manufactured by the Chemex Corporation in Chicopee, Massachusetts. In 1958, designers at the Illinois Institute of Technology said that ...

or the Hario V60. The filter can be with paper, cloth, or metal. The quality of the resulting coffee is extremely dependent on the technique of the user, with pour-over brewing being a popular method used in the

World Brewers Cup The World Brewers Cup (WBC or WBrC) is an annual international coffee brewing competition organized by World Coffee Events, an organization founded by the Specialty Coffee Association. The stated goal of the competition is to showcase the craft and ...

Hario V60

The V60 is a cone-shaped brewer, with ribs along the wall (to prevent the paper sticking and allowing air through) and a single large hole (to allow water to pass through unrestricted). Hario began designing brewers in 1980, but the V60 was not released until 2004. The brewer received the Japanese Good Design Award in 2007 and is used by most of the winners in the

. The design was adapted to create the Hario W60, a brewer with a flat-bottomed mesh filter, in partnership with 2013 World Barista Champion Pete Licata, to "address the concern baristas have with 'flat bed' brewing".

References

External links

Hand Drip Coffee
{{Coffee Coffee preparation Coffee culture Coffee sv:Kaffebryggare