What is Flannel? What's the Difference Between Flannel Filter Cloth and Filter Paper? Is Flannel Dripper Good to Use?

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What is Flannel?

Here FrontStreet Coffee offers a quick introduction to the flannel filter. What exactly is flannel? Strictly speaking, "flannel" is a borrowed term: it refers to a soft, napped woolen cloth woven from carded wool yarn.

Characteristics:

Advantages: Flannel filter cloth extracts the coffee's flavorful compounds slowly and thoroughly, producing a cup with a mellow, deep body. Brewing with it demands patience and care at every step, plus a certain sensitivity to what the coffee is doing.

Disadvantages: Flannel requires fussy maintenance and storage, and filtration takes longer. That is why most people keep their distance from it — though for enthusiasts, this very fussiness is part of its charm.

What's the difference between flannel filter cloth and filter paper?

Flavor: The capillary pores of flannel are larger than those of filter paper, so some of the coffee's oils pass through — unlike filter paper, which typically strips out all of them. Coffee brewed through flannel is therefore richer and smoother than paper-filtered coffee.

Time: Because flannel's pores are coarser and it drains from every point below the waterline — rather than only through the gaps between the filter paper and the dripper wall, as with paper — a flannel filter actually runs slightly faster than the usual paper-and-dripper combination.

Pour-over coffee made with flannel has a thick, full flavor and an incredible sweetness reminiscent of dessert wine. Brewing well this way is not easy: pouring too fast, water that is too hot, or clumsy technique will all dull the cup. Huangdao Coffee welcomes everyone to come and taste the difference.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation: Honey-Processed Beans for Maximum Sweetness

If it is that wine-like sweetness you are after, FrontStreet Coffee recommends our Costa Rica black honey coffee. Costa Rica is famous for honey processing: after floating and sorting the cherries, the skin is removed while the mucilage is kept on, and the beans are dried in the sun. Black honey retains the most mucilage of all honey styles, so it ferments the deepest and tastes the sweetest. Our lot is a high-grown single origin with natural floral and fruit notes, best roasted medium-light — expect sweet florals, grape, sweet orange, and liqueur chocolate in the cup. For a heavier, nutty-chocolate sweetness, our medium-roast Brazil Fazenda Queen coffee also delivers a long, lingering finish.