Drip Coffee Maker Coffee Bean Recommendations_What's a Reasonable Price for a Bag of Coffee Beans

Drip Coffee Machines: A Classic Brewing Method

Drip coffee machines are a classic drip-brewing process: simple, efficient and reliable, and best suited to the home, the office or a dorm room. In 1965 Philips invented the first drip coffee machine, and its performance won widespread recognition, ushering in an era in which electric drip machines dominated the market. But do you know how to choose beans for a drip machine, or how to use one and what to watch out for? If you have these questions, read on.

Types of Drip Coffee Machines

The drip coffee machines on the market fall into three types: Japanese, American and Italian.

Japanese Coffee Pot

Also known as a siphon, the Japanese coffee pot has a base with an alcohol lamp and two glass globes above. It heats the water in the lower globe, and the resulting steam pushes the hot water up into the upper vessel; as the lower vessel cools, it draws the brewed coffee back down. Brewing with one feels like conducting a chemistry experiment. It takes some skill, since you must move the alcohol lamp by hand to control the temperature, and it suits people with time and patience.

Japanese coffee pots call for coarsely ground beans and suit single-origin coffees with slight acidity.

American Coffee Pot

The American coffee pot is essentially an electrically heated pot, suited to medium or dark-roasted coffee. It needs a slightly finer grind and produces a relatively bitter cup. American pots have a warming function, but if the coffee is kept warm too long it easily turns sour.

Italian Coffee Pot

The Italian coffee pot extracts coffee by driving steam quickly through the grounds under high pressure and high temperature. The optimal brewing temperature is between 90–98°C, and Italian pots excel at temperature control. Home models often include a steam wand for cappuccino and a cup-warming function — an important detail, since cold cups noticeably diminish the taste of the coffee.

Differences Between Drip Coffee Machines

Drip coffee machines are also called atmospheric-pressure machines, because the water pressure during brewing is one atmosphere.

High-pressure steam coffee machines use more than one atmosphere when brewing, typically 5–19 atmospheres.

Coffee from a high-pressure machine is more concentrated, hotter and more intense in taste than coffee from a drip machine.

How to Use a Drip Coffee Machine

1. First, preheat the machine;
2. Open the top lid and put coffee grounds into the white filter;
3. Add water to the machine's separate water tank;
4. Place the cleaned stainless-steel cup in the machine, aligned with the drip opening;
5. Press start. The tank light comes on and the machine runs automatically. When the coffee is ready, the machine releases some steam.

Drip Coffee Machine Usage Methods

Electric drip machines include ordinary machines that only brew grounds, all-in-one machines that grind beans for you, and Italian steam machines that can create milk foam.

How to Use a Drip Coffee Machine at Home

Before brewing each day, preheat the machine first. Add half a pot of water to the tank and switch on the power. This serves to:

1. Push out any stale water inside the machine;
2. Clean the boiler and the various pipes of the brewing system;
3. Clean the brewing funnel;
4. Preheat the pot.

Place a matching paper filter in the funnel and add 7–9 grams of grounds per cup (taking care not to let grounds slip between the paper and the funnel wall), then close the funnel door. Add 175ml of water per cup to the tank, then switch on the power.

It is best to brew with filtered water, and in particular to avoid water containing chlorine. If you use tap water, a purifier with activated-carbon filtration also keeps impurities and odours out of the water.

Water is generally divided into soft and hard. In simple terms, water with small amounts of dissolved sodium and manganese is soft, while water with more is hard. Most mineral water is hard water containing sodium, manganese, calcium and magnesium. Hard water reduces the release of citric acid and noticeably mutes the coffee's flavor, whereas ordinary purified water can be used as soft water.

Drip Coffee Machine Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's freshly roasted single-origin beans for drip machines come with full guarantees of both brand and quality and suit a range of equipment. More importantly, they offer extremely good value: a half-pound (227 grams) bag costs only about 80–90 yuan. Calculated at 200ml per cup with a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, one bag makes 15 cups of specialty coffee, so each cup costs only 5–6 yuan. Compared with coffee shops that charge dozens of yuan a cup, that is exceptional value.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

However you brew, the bean is what carries the cup, and FrontStreet Coffee groups its recommendations by roast so drinkers can match a coffee to their taste. Lighter roasts suit those who want fruit and florals; darker roasts suit those who want depth and low acidity.

For a light-roast start, FrontStreet suggests Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gutingding, with its citrus, berry and floral notes and green-tea sweetness, and Ethiopia Hunkute, whose tropical character — strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit — makes it one of the most approachable coffees for people who don't care for bitterness. Further along the same line sit the Panama Esmeralda Red Label Geisha, prized for jasmine, bergamot and black-tea refinement, and the Kenya Small Tomato, a bright washed coffee from the Thika region grown at 1,550–1,750 meters from SL28 and SL34 with a 72-hour double washed fermentation.

For a medium-dark or dark roast, FrontStreet points to the PWN Indonesia Golden Mandheling, dark roasted for herbal and dark chocolate depth with very low acidity, the Brazil Queen Estate with its nut and cocoa sweetness, and Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1, whose cream, caramel, chocolate, nut and honey balance makes it one of the most universally likable coffees there is. For a single origin that bridges the two styles, the 2013 Yunnan sun-dried Typica brings citrus and caramel with gentle nut, chocolate and brown sugar.