Drip brew

History

Commercial paper coffee filters were invented in Germany by Melitta Bentz in 1908 and are commonly used for drip brew all over the world. In 1944, Willy Brand developed an automatic drip-brewer utilizing circular paper filters in Switzerland. In 1954, one of the first electric drip brewers, the Wigomat invented by Gottlob Widmann, was patented in Germany. Drip brew coffee makers largely replaced the coffee percolator (a device combining boiling, drip-brewing and steeping) in the 1970s due to the percolator's 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 together, without a need to clean the filter. Permanent filters are also common, made of thin perforated metal sheets, fine plastic mesh, porous ceramics or glazed porcelain sieves 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.