What is a Boat-Shaped Dripper? What are the Differences Between Cone, Fan, and Trapezoid Shapes? How to Use Hario's New Dripper?

Introduction to the "Boat-shaped" Dripper

Whenever FrontStreet Coffee publishes a dripper review, our backend always receives recommendations about a "boat-shaped" dripper. Boat-shaped? FrontStreet Coffee has heard of fan-shaped, conical, and flat-bottom drippers, but never a boat-shaped one! So taking the advice to heart, FrontStreet Coffee immediately pulled out the boss's wallet and placed a rush order. After receiving this dripper, FrontStreet Coffee finally understood why it's called a "boat-shaped" dripper.

The Pegasus Dripper

This dripper is also produced by Hario, the same company that invented the V60 dripper, and is part of their Pegasus series, made from resin material! From its appearance, with its inverted trapezoid shape - wider at the top and narrower at the bottom - it's clearly a trapezoidal dripper. However, upon closer inspection, we can see that every aspect of its construction tells us it differs significantly from conventional trapezoidal drippers.

Rib Design

The first difference is its cup wall! While conventional trapezoidal drippers use vertically downward ribs, the Pegasus dripper adopts a spiral design similar to the V60. The number of curved ribs is also 12, which provides ample ventilation space and faster drainage speed. Experiments confirm this is indeed the case - the Pegasus dripper's drainage speed is comparable to the V60.

Although the rib design has changed, it's still essentially a trapezoidal dripper, so it can directly use trapezoidal filter papers, though the fit will be slightly less perfect.

Base Design

The second difference is its base! This Pegasus dripper features a flat bottom with a dual-hole design. The flat bottom reduces excessive accumulation of coffee grounds in any particular position, allowing for more even extraction. The dual-hole application ensures proper percolation speed of the coffee liquid. Since its base is elliptical, when viewed from above, it greatly resembles a boat. FrontStreet Coffee speculates that the "boat-shaped dripper" name likely originates from this feature.

Cup Holder

The cup holder design is quite special! The holder of this dripper, along with the lower support, features a large opening. The purpose of this opening is to allow you to more intuitively observe the drainage situation during brewing, so you can make timely adjustments to your brewing process.

Cup Body Feature

The front of the Pegasus dripper features two measurement lines. Since FrontStreet Coffee purchased the 01 model, these two lines indicate the positions for 1-cup and 2-cup coffee amounts respectively. This can help measure coffee weight when an electronic scale isn't available, allowing you to find the right brewing recipe. (The 1-cup line is for 15g, and the 2-cup line is for 20g)

Brewing Experiment

Next, let's start using it to see what kind of characteristics coffee brewed with this Pegasus dripper has!

For this brewing experiment, FrontStreet Coffee used Frontera's Sidra coffee beans, with 15g of coffee, a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, ground to 85% pass-through rate on a #20 sieve (EK43 at 9.5 setting), water temperature at 92°C, using a three-stage pour method. Similarly, we performed a 30-second bloom with twice the weight of water (30ml), then poured the second stage of hot water (110ml) in small circular motions (elliptical pattern). When the water level was about to drop, we poured the final stage of hot water (85ml) with larger circular motions in smaller circles.

This Sidra brewed with a V60 took 1 minute and 57 seconds, with flavor notes of grape, passion fruit, and apricot, exhibiting bright, elevated acidity and relatively rich fermented aromas. When brewed with the Pegasus dripper, it took 1 minute and 53 seconds, with almost identical flavor notes, but the difference was that the Sidra brewed with the Pegasus dripper didn't have as prominent acidity - it was somewhat gentler.

During brewing, FrontStreet Coffee discovered a drawback: if we want to enjoy the "inspection" effect provided by the cup holder opening, we cannot brew from the front.

This is because if we brew with the dripper positioned upright, although we can directly observe the liquid column through the opening, when we lower the water level for pouring, the kettle neck will collide with the dripper's handle, affecting the brewing process. So either we have to give up observing the liquid column and change to pouring from a different direction (since the opening only exists on one side), or we need to slightly tilt the dripper body, which allows us to observe the drainage while avoiding collision with the handle that would affect brewing! (But this requires changing your circular pouring habits, so it's somewhat inconvenient)

Conclusion

Overall, this dripper performs quite well! It's affordably priced and produces coffee with good flavor characteristics. If you're interested in trying something new, you can confidently purchase one~ (Finally: this is still not an advertisement)

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