What Are the Characteristics of Coffee Brewed with a Flat-Bottom Dripper?

Why Must Dripper Bottoms Be Points or Lines?

Whether it's a conical or fan-shaped dripper, the bottom is either a hollow point or has a bottom line! This inevitably raises the question: "Why must the bottom of a dripper be a point or a line? Can't it be a flat-bottomed 'surface'?"

The Birth of Flat-Bottom Drippers

As it happens, Kalita company thought the same way. Some time ago, we mentioned that Kalita "borrowed" and created a three-hole fan-shaped dripper in 1959, but unfortunately, the V60, which peaked at its launch, captured most of the market. Therefore, they needed to launch a more competitive dripper to compete with the V60, this "overpowered protagonist." Thus, in 2010, Kalita launched the "Wave" series of flat-bottom drippers! However, they weren't the first to launch a flat-bottom dripper. Because before Kalita's launch, Melitta company's dripper, which went on the market in 1936, used a flat bottom. Coupled with Kalita's "borrowing" of Melitta's fan-shaped dripper as a lesson... It can be said that Melitta company is completely Kalita company's standard template.

Advantages of Flat-Bottom Drippers

(Kalita Wave series flat-bottom dripper) Conical drippers, led by the V60, have their extraction focus mainly on highlighting the characteristics of the coffee, resulting in distinct, full-bodied coffee. However, a common problem is that coffee particles tend to accumulate heavily in the center of the dripper, leading to extraction issues when blooming is improper or when there are too many fine particles. This led to the birth of an auxiliary tool for conical drippers—the "Lily Drip," which helps distribute the middle coffee layer evenly around, reducing extraction problems during brewing. Flat-bottom drippers don't need to worry about the concentration of coffee particles because the bottom is flat, allowing particles to be evenly distributed in every corner. Moreover, due to the larger space, the coffee layer is much thinner compared to conical drippers, allowing hot water to better penetrate every coffee particle!

Design Features of Flat-Bottom Drippers

The flow ribs of flat-bottom drippers are also quite interesting! Whether it's the commonly used V60 or the fan-shaped drippers we discussed recently, their flow ribs are distributed on the wall of the dripper. The difference with flat-bottom drippers is that some of their flow ribs are above the bottom of the dripper.

If the bottom is completely flat, hot water will be on a plane, and which hole it seeps out of depends entirely on fate, with very slow drainage! After adding flow ribs to the bottom, hot water will be guided to seep out from the lower-positioned holes, and the water seepage speed will be improved to some extent~ Flat-bottom drippers are used with cake filter paper (hence also called cake drippers). Because the filter paper cannot fit snugly with the dripper wall, the flow ribs on the wall don't play a significant role. Therefore, the dripper walls launched by Kalita use ring-shaped ribs. The flat-bottom dripper with flow ribs that we see online is the Melitta launched in 1936, which we mentioned at the beginning.

Brewing Guide for Flat-Bottom Drippers

Since the walls of flat-bottom drippers don't have flow ribs, their drainage speed will be slower, so we need to adjust the grind to be coarser! This time, the beans we're brewing are Colombia · Frontera Geisha, which has sweet and sour notes of purple grapes and passion fruit. Well, next, let's use a flat-bottom dripper to try and see what kind of performance this Geisha will have.

Brewing Parameters:

• Selected Beans: Colombia · Frontera Geisha
• Bean Amount: 15g
• Grind: Ek43 setting 10, 80% pass-through rate with #20 sieve
• Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15 (225ml hot water)
• Brewing Water Temperature: 92°C
• Brewing Method: Flat-bottom three-stage pour

First, we inject twice the amount of water as the coffee grounds (30ml) for a 30-second bloom, then start pouring from the center, gradually circling outward, then slowly inject 120ml of hot water from outside to inside. When the water level is about to bottom out, inject the remaining 75ml of hot water in the same way, and wait for the drip filtration to complete!

Tasting Notes

The brewing time was 2 minutes and 5 seconds, while V60-brewed Geisha takes about 1 minute and 50 seconds. The tasting experience surprised FrontStreet Coffee a bit, because most descriptions of the coffee experience brewed with flat-bottom drippers tend to be balanced. However, after FrontStreet Coffee finished drinking, compared to the balanced taste in memory, the coffee brewed with the flat-bottom dripper was more prominent, with flavors well-expressed, and the overall mouthfeel was quite rich. It can be said to be unexpectedly delicious. If you have time, you can try it at home~

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