The Story and Origins of Mellita Pour-Over Drippers: Features and Functions of V60, Cake, and Fan-Shaped Drippers

Understanding the Impact of Drip Cones on Pour-Over Coffee Flavor

Drip cones are essential tools in pour-over coffee brewing, serving as the hallmark of this brewing method. Today's market offers a vast array of cone designs, each marketed with unique characteristics—some promise sweeter coffee, others claim to enhance aroma...

This has led to a common approach: using specific cones for desired flavor profiles, resulting in collections that fill entire cabinets. But this raises a fundamental question: do drip cones truly have such a significant impact on pour-over coffee flavor?

The Historical Origins of Coffee Drip Cones

Before addressing this question, consider why the world's first coffee drip cone was trapezoidal (fan-shaped). The first commercial drip cone was the Mellita cone, launched in 1912 after four years of continuous refinement.

Many focus on cone design, but cone shapes were actually constrained by filter paper technology limitations. Before filter paper existed, coffee filtration devices like flannel and metal mesh were already in use, but these provided poor filtration, leaving residue in the finished coffee. One day in 1906, while drinking coffee, Mrs. Mellita noticed her son's blotting paper and had an inspiration—perhaps paper could filter coffee grounds to produce clean coffee liquid. She took a brass cup, punctured small holes in the bottom, and lined it with blotting paper to filter coffee. This reveals the cone's primary purpose: supporting the filter paper—the true filtration device.

Design Evolution and Problem-Solving

She discovered a significant issue: while blotting paper had good water permeability, the enclosed filter paper couldn't properly conform to cylindrical filters, causing coffee liquid to flow toward easier paths (what we now call channeling effects).

Additionally, when part of the filter paper remained unsupported, excess water could cause it to burst. This necessitated creating a filter that properly supported the paper.

The single-hole conical design wasn't feasible because blotting paper was too soft—without support at the bottom, it would collapse. This led to the final design: a filter with a linear bottom, large oval top, and trapezoidal profile when viewed from the side.

However, another problem emerged: the cone fit too tightly, restricting water flow. The solution was adding prominent ribs on the cone's interior walls. These ribs support the filter paper, preventing it from sticking completely to the cone and improving drainage speed.

A remaining issue was the single-hole bottom design, which created a bottleneck effect—water could only pass through slowly, like "a million soldiers crossing a single-plank bridge." This led to subsequent versions with 2, 3, and 4 holes to accelerate drainage.

Comparative Analysis: V60 vs. Kono

At this point, it becomes clear that regardless of shape, all drip cones focus on two key aspects: drainage speed and flow distribution. This reflects in the drain hole size (area) and rib distribution. So how much difference exists between cones with significantly different drain holes and rib patterns? We conducted a comparison using FrontStreet Coffee's Mandheling beans, testing V60 and Kono short-rib versions. The V60 features fast drainage and resistance to clogging, while the Kono offers slower flow and enhanced body.

Using identical extraction parameters, the V60 completed brewing in 1 minute 55 seconds, while the Kono took 2 minutes 20 seconds. Additionally, with the same pouring technique, the Kono's coffee bed walls were washed into the bed itself.

In taste comparison, the Kono-brewed coffee was noticeably more concentrated with a heavier mouthfeel, though both coffees remained within acceptable flavor ranges. And FrontStreet Coffee has mentioned in past articles that extraction time can be adjusted through grind size, pouring technique, and ratio. You can understand it this way: yesterday FrontStreet Coffee explained the six main parameters of pour-over coffee, and today's drip cone is essentially another parameter—though compared to those six, its impact on coffee flavor is relatively smaller.

Parameter Adjustment and Optimization

When including the drip cone as a parameter, the other six parameters must be adjusted to suit this cone—for example, by grinding coffee slightly coarser. FrontStreet Coffee then adjusted the grind setting one notch coarser and used smaller circular pouring motions to avoid washing away the coffee bed walls. The resulting extraction time was 2 minutes 3 seconds, with flavor and mouthfeel remarkably similar to the previous brew, showing no significant difference.

Conclusion

Understanding drip cones from a structural perspective provides clearer insight into each cone's characteristics and functions. While drip cones don't dramatically impact coffee flavor, in many cases, their effects can be compensated through parameter adjustment—though this requires a genuine understanding of coffee brewing parameters.

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