How Did the American Coffee Machine Grow Out of Pour-Over?
Pour-over coffee descends from Melitta Bentz, who in 1873 punched a hole in a copper bowl, lined it with blotting paper, and poured hot water through the grounds. She patented the filter cup in 1908. That filtration idea later fed into the American coffee machine and today's third wave focus on brewing coffee without additives.
Before paper filters, people strained coffee through cloth bags, which were hard to clean and left grounds that spoiled the taste. The arched-bottom copper cup with a dispensing hole solved both problems. From that single household invention, drip brewing spread into homes and cafes, and the same principle still guides how to use drip coffee machine setups today.
Pour-over coffee, as the core of the third wave of coffee, emphasizes appreciating the original flavor of coffee, rejecting any additives, and preserving the most primitive aroma and taste. This wave is still evolving today. If you are also a pour-over enthusiast, it is worth learning about its history: from Melitta Bentz inventing the filtration method in 1873 using blotting paper and a copper bowl, to registering a patent in 1908, and then to the development of the Melitta company and the birth of the American coffee machine. This article will take you through the origin and characteristics of pour-over coffee, and how it has conquered numerous coffee fans.
Pour-over coffee can be called the soul of the third wave of coffee. Its essence lies in appreciating the original taste of coffee itself, rejecting all external additives, and striving to present the purest and most authentic flavor of coffee. This trend is still continuing to evolve today. If you also love pour-over coffee, then it is necessary to understand its ins and outs.
What Is Pour-Over Coffee and Its History
In 1873, Bentz Melitta was born in Dresden. As a housewife, she preferred Sch?lchen Hee?en (a Saxon dialect term meaning a cup of coffee, eine Tasse Kaffee)—that is, freshly brewed coffee. However, she was a perfectionist and deeply hated coffee grounds left between her teeth. One day she had a flash of inspiration: she made a small hole in the bottom of a copper bowl, took a piece of blotting paper from her son's schoolbag and placed it over it, poured in hot water, and the rich coffee liquid immediately dripped through the blotting paper into the pot. In this way, she created a filtration method that could filter out the grounds while preserving the pure aroma of coffee.
Before this invention appeared, people generally used cloth bags to filter coffee grounds. But cloth filter bags had two drawbacks: first, they were very troublesome to clean; second, after repeated use they easily caused unhygienic problems, and coffee grounds remaining in the gaps of the cloth bag would also damage the originally pure taste of the coffee.
On June 20, 1908, Melitta applied to the Imperial Patent Office for a patent for her invention: a copper coffee filter cup with an arched bottom and a dispensing hole. This was the world's first filter-type coffee cup. Melitta Bentz at that time founded the "Melitta Company" with a small amount of funds at her own residence, and registered her handwritten signature Melitta as the product trademark.
Unfortunately, local archives in Germany have very few records of the life of this Dresden woman who invented filtered coffee. But this great invention quickly became widely known and eventually became a standard fixture in German kitchens. In the mid-1920s, orders poured in from everywhere, and the manufacturing business of the Melitta coffee filter cup expanded rapidly. The original family-style company site could no longer meet the production demand for 100000 filters, including ceramic filters, so in 1929 the company moved to Minden. To this day, the Melitta company is still managed and operated by the founder's grandchildren.
The Melitta company currently has 50 branches and more than 3200 employees worldwide. The Melitta pour-over filter cup has also long been continuously improved in the direction of automation. After countless optimizations, it finally achieved great success in the United States, which is the American automatic drip coffee machine most commonly seen today. But if you open up an American coffee machine, you will find that the principle of the filtration method invented by Mrs. Melitta has hardly changed to this day; only the shape of the filter and the filter paper have been improved.
Pour-over coffee is the core of the third wave of coffee. With simple coffee equipment, you can brew a cup of pure coffee with regional flavor.
The Characteristics of Pour-Over Coffee
The advantage of pour-over coffee lies in its convenience and speed. It takes only a few minutes to make a cup of coffee, and tasting the most authentic flavor of coffee is precisely the core characteristic of pour-over coffee.
Pour-over coffee is just so fascinating. In the third wave, it captured the hearts of a large number of coffee lovers and also opened up a new direction for coffee. Even today, pour-over coffee is still mainstream and highly sought after and loved by many people. This is exactly where its charm lies.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
