Everything about Coffee Dripper
The coffee dripper is no doubt our favourite brewer & we use it literally every single day! Versatile & super easy to clean are the main reasons why we use a dripper every day 😁
There are dozens of coffee dripper available today, here are couple of things you need to know about coffee dripper. Let’s get started!
Material
The common material for coffee drippers are glass, ceramic and metal.
We are a big fan of ceramic and glass brewers. It looks great, good heat retention and most importantly, last a lifetime with proper care.
Beautifully made ceramic dripper.
Plastic brewers tend to add a ‘plastic’ taste to the coffee, especially old plastic dripper. It’s noticeable when you kept on having the same weird note even with different beans. When that happens, it’s time to change your dripper (glass or ceramic dripper for sure 😉)
But for travelling use, plastic is best to avoid accident happen. We like to bring the Rivers Micro Coffee Dripper for travelling that makes single brew real easy. Pair with some Ground Packs and you can travel light anywhere you go 🤗
Brewing with GOLD filter
A metal filter like Cores gold filter allows all the coffee oils flow into cup, hence you’ll get a velvety mouthfeel & better body cuppa.
We like to brew medium roast coffees with Cores gold filter to further enhance the mouthfeel experience, certainly makes the perfect first morning coffee of the day 😋
Ceramic and glass has better heat retention
About heat retention, it’s pretty much the same la for us in Malaysia as our weather is pretty much the same all year long. As long as your water brewing temperature is hot enough you are on the right track!
For light and medium roast coffee, always go for higher 95-98c water temperature. By the time you make your last pour, it should be around 90c and this keeps a good extraction rate. For dark roast, 90c below is preferred 😎
If you live in cold climate countries, the heat loss is greater due to colder room temperature. For that, boiling water is recommended for brewing light roast coffee to ensure enough energy is retain in the brewer. Also, preheating the dripper is utmost important for that!
Shape & Design
There are lots of different drippers nowadays and each has different designs that enhance specific characteristics of the coffee.
In general, there are 3 types of dripper design, ie. trapezoid, flat bottom and cone. The difference in design significantly affects the flow rate during brewing.
Flat bottom dripper like Kalita
Trapezoid dripper is one of the oldest dripper design, with 2 flat surface and a single hole at the bottom that slow down the flow rate. This design is commonly seen in batch brewers.
Flat bottom dripper (like Kalita etc) encourages even extraction of coffee, allow the ground coffee to brew evenly on a flat surface.
Cone design (like Hario V60) encourages a faster flow rate, with a 60-degree angle that allows coffee to flow out all around the paper.
Cone shape like Hario V60
If you brew lots of medium to darker roast coffee, we recommend brewing with trapezoid or flat-bottom brewer. Both designs tend to enhance the body (mouthfeel/tactile) and greater sweetness of the coffee.
The trapezoid and flat bottom drippers also prevent turbulence that causes over-extraction too. Hence it’s perfect to brew for dark roast coffee by gently pouring hot water in, just like how Japanese brews dark roast coffee!
Brew Gesha coffee with V60
Cone dripper (like V60 or Origami) is highly recommended for light roast coffees. The faster flow rate designs give better clarity in aromatics and flavours, perfect to brew worlds best coffees like Gesha and COE coffees!
Also if you plan to brew bigger dosage like 30g to 50g brew at once, we recommend the trapezoid or flat bottom brewer that makes more even extraction and better body cuppa.
Size
One of the frequently asked questions about V60 dripper is the size, here are 2 things to consider
First, is how many cups of coffee do you usually brew at once?
For 1-2 cup, 01 is perfect that fits up to 30-40g ground coffee.
For 3-4 cups, 02 is better and you can brew up to 60g ground coffee.
Almost touching the ground coffee
Second, is the roast level of coffee beans that you are brewing.
The distance between water spout pour to ground coffee gives a different level of turbulence that encourage extraction. The higher you pour, the higher the turbulence, the higher the extraction rate 😯
Both photos are brewing with 18g of ground coffee. The first photo shows the water pour on 01 dripper, you can see the water spout is very close to (almost touching) ground coffee and this keeps turbulence low.
The higher the pour, the higher the extraction
The second show the 02 dripper and water pour at a higher position, this gives more turbulence and it encourages extraction at the same time.
If you brew dark roast coffee, high turbulence will easily over-extract the coffee as dark roast coffees are very soluble. Hence, 01 dripper is preferred to keep turbulence low and slow for a lovely bittersweet cuppa 😋
On the other hand, as light roast coffee is not as soluble as darker roast coffees, it needs more turbulence to encourage extraction and completely extract all the beautiful flavours. The 02 dripper is more suitable for light roast coffees!
This is especially important for high density gesha coffees, brewing with 02 dripper gives better clarity and vibrancy of flavours.
For medium roast coffees, both 01 & 02 work fine! We like to use 02 dripper with a slight coarser (half step) grind size for crystal clear, clean & transparent cup, our favourite morning coffee 😍
Pour over with gooseneck kettle
The second most frequently asked questions about pour over, is gooseneck kettle a must?
If just simply brew coffee, nope not really. But for consistently delicious coffee every single time, YES!
The normal brewing kettle is extremely difficult to control the flow rate, a small mistake you’ll have a huge flow of water pouring in and mess up the grounds that cause overextraction 🥴
Gooseneck kettle gives the ultimate control throughout brewing process. You can easily control the flow rate and precise point of pouring into the ground coffee.
As a result, you can easily replicate the brewing recipe and give better consistency in every brew! Say bye bye to hit or miss 👋🏼
But if you don’t have a gooseneck kettle (while travelling etc), a top tip to brew with normal kettle is to pour in small quantity of water and more times.
This gives a better brewing control and you can easily stretch the brewing time, not the best method but still give a better brew.
Brew with Dripper & Scale ⚖️
To make the best consistency and perfect cup of coffee in every single brew, you’ll need to brew with a weighing scale!
The purpose of a scale is to measure the precise amount of ground coffee and hot water pour into the dripper. This makes it easy to replicate the brewing recipe, no more hit or miss 🤩
If you are brewing coffee at home, a cheap and cheerful kitchen scale will do the work! As long as it measures to 1g difference will do, save the money for getting better coffees, you can upgrade anytime in future 😁
Most weighing scales for coffee brewing comes with a timer! Make sure you start the timer before you start the pouring, the brewing time starts from the moment water in contact with ground coffee ⏱
For single cup brew of 15g-18g ground coffee, brew time should be around 2-3 minutes. For 2-3 cups of 25-35g ground coffee, it goes to 3-4 minutes plus in total.
Stir your pour over coffee after done brewing 🥄
A server is a great tool if you are brewing 2-3 cups of coffee at once with a coffee dripper. But you must stir or swirl your coffee to make sure all coffee is mix up!
As coffee slowly flows into the server without any turbulence, the coffee will be layered and it doesn’t mix up by itself.
You can take a very close look on the colour of coffee, you’ll notice that the bottom part of coffee (first drip from pre-infusion) always look darker than the top part (last pour).
If you don’t mix up and pour coffee into 2 cups, the first cup will be lighter (top part of brew) than the second cup (bottom part) and this creates inconsistent brew of 2 cups of coffee.
To fix this, just use a spoon to stir or swirl the server will do. Easy as that 🤩
Top tips to brew light, medium and dark roast coffees on V60 dripper
Versatility is the biggest advantage of V60 dripper, you can brew any roast level of coffees with it! 🤩
As different roast level of coffees have different solubility, here are a couple of tips for you to make the best coffee every single time!
Here’s the rule of thumb. The darker the roast level, the more soluble the coffee, the easier to extract the coffee!
The first thing to adjust is the grind size.
Imagine pouring water into a cup fill with sand and another cup with rocks, water flows faster through the cup with rocks. The same goes for brewing with dripper!
Water flows faster with coarser grind size and this shorten the brewing time. Whereas water flows slower with finer grind size and you can easily prolong the brew time.
Dark roast coffee is very soluble and easier to extract then light roast coffee. Hence it's best to use coarse grind size to shorten the brewing time.
Second is the turbulence when pouring hot water into dripper. For dark roast, a more gentle pour and try to pour as close to the ground coffee as possible to minimise turbulence.
Too much turbulence will easily over-extract the dark roast coffee and make coffee taste super bitter. 01 dripper is preferred for dark roast coffees.
Light roast coffee is not as soluble as darker roast coffee, hence a finer grind size is required to open up more surface area & encourage extraction. At the same time slow down the flow rate and prolong the brewing time!
Also, it’s best to pour more vigorously to create high turbulence that encourages extraction 🙌🏼 02 dripper allow you to pour at higher position hence it preferred for light roast coffees.
As for medium roast coffees, we like to brew with 02 drippers with coarse grind size and high turbulence pour. Just like the photo 😍
Medium roast coffees are pretty soluble and slightly coarse grind size will be good! The coarser you grind, the higher turbulence is required to achieve a good extraction rate.
Last but not least, filter roast coffees are highly recommended to brew with V60 for the best aromatics! You can check out all the filter roast coffees here ☕️
