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A Guide to Choosing Drippers: What Shape, Structure, Ribs, Filter Holes, and Materials Represent

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, Nowadays, the market offers a bewildering variety of coffee drippers with their unique designs and seller-highlighted advantages. These factors can be overwhelming for coffee beginners. V60, Kono, Origami, Melitta—does a higher price necessarily mean better quality?

Nowadays, the market is flooded with various pour-over drippers featuring unique designs and shapes, each marketed with different advantages. These factors can be overwhelming for beginners who are just discovering their passion for coffee. V60, Kono, origami, melitta—are more expensive ones necessarily better? Which material is superior among ceramic, silicone, resin, or metal? Can using a specific material or dripper produce better coffee? To address these challenges, FrontStreet Coffee believes in teaching rather than just giving answers! This article will provide a comprehensive analysis of pour-over dripper construction, helping you understand this essential tool from the ground up.

The Impact of Dripper Shape

Each pour-over dripper features a unique design shape, with different cup body forms such as conical, fan-shaped, or basket-style. The interior walls feature various curves and different numbers of ribs—or sometimes none at all. The bottom of drippers may have varying numbers and sizes of filter holes. These variations can significantly increase the difficulty of selection for beginners.

All these shapes, wall ribs, and filter holes ultimately influence one key factor—flow rate. Flow rate refers to how long coffee remains in the dripper during brewing. Too short a time can lead to under-extraction, resulting in a thin, flavorless brew; too long a time may cause over-extraction, creating bitterness and undesirable flavors. With the same amount of coffee grounds, grind size, and water pouring conditions, different flow rates will produce coffee with distinct flavor characteristics.

However, it's important to understand that flow rate isn't only affected by the dripper itself—it can also be adjusted through brewing techniques. With appropriate pouring methods, you can slow down fast-flowing drippers or speed up slow-flowing ones.

The Impact of Dripper Material

Beyond shape and design, the second distinguishing characteristic of pour-over drippers is their material. Based on the same external design, drippers are made from various materials such as resin, glass, ceramic, and metal, which ultimately affects a core factor—temperature control.

This brings us to two technical concepts: "thermal conductivity" and "specific heat capacity." Thermal conductivity refers to the speed at which heat travels. When a dripper comes into contact with hot water, how quickly it spreads that heat determines its thermal conductivity. Unsurprisingly, metal and ceramic have the highest thermal conductivity, spreading heat throughout the entire dripper immediately upon contact with hot water, making them uncomfortably hot to touch! In contrast, materials like resin and rubber behave oppositely, only showing temperature changes after considerable brewing time.

"Specific heat capacity" refers to an object's heat storage capability (insulation). The higher the specific heat capacity, the greater the ability to absorb and release heat, and vice versa. Materials like plastic and resin have relatively high specific heat capacity, meaning they have stronger heat absorption and dissipation abilities. To change the temperature of drippers made from these materials, they need more time in contact with high temperatures to store heat. Metal and ceramic are the opposite—while they conduct heat quickly, they cannot store it for extended periods.

Therefore, as beginners, it's best to understand the basics of drippers before selecting the appropriate one. Resin and plastic materials are more suitable for longer brewing methods as they can maintain temperature for extended periods. Meanwhile, metal and ceramic drippers are better suited for shorter brewing—their rapid heat transmission allows coffee grounds to achieve full extraction quickly, with appropriate temperature cooling preventing over-extraction. There is no perfect dripper, nor is there a perfect method, but we can combine suitable methods with appropriate drippers to produce a perfect cup of coffee.