I Tried the Most Scientific Coffee Dripper on the Market

I measure my daily coffee intake in gallons and consider a good cup to be one of life's greatest pleasures, but I'm probably not what you would call a coffee snob. My beans generally aren't handpicked at an organic Ethiopian co-op, I'm not entirely sure about the difference between a Chemex and an Aeropress, I've never been to a cupping, and when I hear 'Geisha,' I think Japan not Panama.

That's why I was excited to try out the new coffee dripper from Blue Bottle, a roaster in Oakland and byword for third-wave coffee, which promised that through the miracles of modern science even a coffee dilettante like me could manage to brew a damn good cup.

Released on December 5, the dripper is billed by Blue Bottle as the result of "five years of dreaming, two MIT scientists, one year of research and 70 prototypes." At $25, it's about twice as expensive as the Hario V60, the coffee dripper standard, but not quite as expensive as high end drippers with built in filters. Still, the results of this miracle of modern science seem to justify the price.

"We felt that we could make a dripper that produced delicious coffee much more consistently," Neil Day, Blue Bottle Coffee's vice president of technology, told Motherboard. "By deeply studying the strengths and weaknesses of existing dripper systems we were able to come up with a new design that produces exceptional results with more ease for the user."

The Blue Bottle dripper is based on the science of capillary action, which enables liquids to flow through narrow spaces. This effect can be seen in the way that plants and trees draw up water through their roots, but when applied to the dripper looks like 40 narrow ridges around the inside of the dripper cone.

This design was reached after a year of prototyping by a consulting firm that specializes in analyzing techniques for coffee brewing and employs two MIT-trained scientists. According to Day, the research team collected over a million data points from their different prototypes on things like thermal mass (how well the dripper retained heat) and flow rate and compared them to the sensory characteristics (such as flavor and smell) of the resulting coffee.

One of the trickiest areas of development was finding the right steepness and volume of the brew chamber to allow for constant and controlled water flow through the coffee grounds. A number of the earlier versions of the dripper were much wider and shallower, which met flow requirements but the designs themselves were impractical.

"Many, many iterations allowed us to hone in on just the right balance of brewing parameters," said Day. "This is a marriage of science and sensory pleasure.."

The "marriage of science and sensory pleasure" described by Day captures the spirit of third-wave coffee, a movement that started in the early 2000s to treat coffee less like a commodity and more like an artisanal food products like wine. This is a movement by and for the coffee-snob, but according to Day, even a coffee dilettante like myself should be able to use the Blue Bottle dripper to produce a perfect cup of joe every time.

I tested the dripper by making two cups of coffee each with pre-ground Blue Bottle Santa Elena Catracha, Blue Bottle's whole bean Bella Donovan, and Culpan whole bean from Cartel Coffee Lab, a local roaster in Phoenix. After a few cups of trial and error, I found that it was hard to disagree with Day.

To say nothing of the coffee beans (all were excellent), the dripper really was able to produce consistent, excellent cups of coffee once I figured out the proper technique. I had the best luck with a triple pour, using about two and a half tablespoons of coffee and a third of a liter of water. The filter I used was also designed by Blue Bottle. It was made from bamboo and unlike regular filters did not require wetting before use.

Beginning with about half a liter of boiling water, I poured a little under a tenth of the liter over the beans in the filter until all the grounds were saturated and allowed the coffee to drip for about thirty seconds. This pour allows the coffee grounds to "bloom," which is a more poetic way of describing the release of carbon dioxide that was trapped as the beans were roasted. The roasting process is what endows coffee beans with their smell and flavor profiles, a process known as the Maillard reaction, and the coffee's aromas are reclaimed as it releases CO2 during the bloom.

During the next pour I used the same amount of water, but poured it in a circle to mix the grounds on top with those on the bottom and let the coffee drip for a full minute. On the third and final pour, I used the same amount of water and let the coffee drip for about 30 seconds.

A number of brew guides suggest that a more controlled way of making a cup of coffee is to bring a scale into the mix so it's possible to add water more precisely during each pour. I didn't have a scale at home, but that's fine because I can't really ever imagine having the patience to use a scale to make my morning cup of coffee. Fortunately, with the Blue Bottle dripper this didn't seem necessary. The coffee tasted phenomenal even when prepared in a less-than-precise manner—and that's exactly the point.

"We wanted to design a dripper that would bring pour over into the lives of more people," said Day. "This dripper, because it reduces user error through its design, makes it a more accessible tool for the coffee beginner and for an experienced brewer, the results will be sublime."