Why Did Siphon Coffee Give Way to Pour-Over? What's Japan's Most Famous Siphon Brand?

A set of glassware that looks like it belongs in a science lab, paired with a halogen lamp or an alcohol lamp. Through the flame you watch bubbles rise in the hot water. As the coffee grounds go in, a fresh fragrance fills the air. After it cools, the liquid rushing back turns deep and rich. One small sip reveals a round, balanced flavor. Compared with other brewing methods, comfort and a sense of repair are what FrontStreet Coffee remembers most vividly about siphon coffee.

The History of Siphon Coffee is Longer Than Pour-Over Coffee

The English name for the siphon pot is "SIPHON," and it uses the expansion and contraction of water vapor under heat to push hot water from the lower chamber into the upper chamber, where it blends with the grounds. When the temperature drops, the water flows back through the vacuum tube into the lower chamber, producing the coffee.

The origin of the siphon pot reaches back to the early 19th century, nearly a hundred years before pour-over coffee. According to the records, in 1826 the German physicist Johann Norremberg invented the siphon pot using laboratory equipment. His aim was to demonstrate the power of steam to his students, so he never applied for a patent, and his design did not become popular.

By the mid-19th century the device had been improved by the French inventor Marie Fanny Amelne Massot. The vertical-convection siphon pot was born at that point, and she obtained the relevant patents in 1842, which allowed the device to enter the market.

Around the same period, the Scottish engineer Robert Napier designed his Napier Coffee Pot, which also brewed coffee using vacuum principles. Although it won an award from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1856, Napier never patented it.

From then on, similar vacuum brewing devices began to spread across Europe and reached places like the United States. With the later arrival of automatic drip coffee, however, siphon use gradually declined among Americans.

The Rise of Siphon Coffee Culture

When it comes to popularizing the siphon pot, FrontStreet Coffee has to mention the country that adopted it most widely, Japan, and the renowned company that specializes in making them, KONO (Kawano Company).

Japanese coffee has long favored dark roasting, emphasizing fragrance, richness, mellowness, and body. Japanese drinkers also have an innate fondness for finely crafted, ceremonial objects. So when the equipment arrived, the siphon pot won their attention with its elegant brewing process and its solid coffee flavor, and became an important part of local specialty coffee culture.

In 1925, KONO's founder Akira Kawano formally established the company and developed a vertical siphon pot. In 1964, the second-generation president Toshio Kawano refined it further, arriving at a design much closer to the one we see today. The birth of the second-generation pot coincided with Japan's coffee boom, and against the backdrop of Japanese dark roasting it gained further popularity and wide use in specialty coffee shops, while also giving rise to a distinctively Japanese siphon aesthetic. Though times have changed and new brewing devices keep appearing, the siphon pot remains an essential method in many Japanese specialty shops.

Later, this brewing ritual reached beyond Japan, its aesthetics and essence crossing the oceans. In Taiwan, where Japanese coffee culture runs deep, people added this "fashionable item" to their shops. On the Chinese mainland, the siphon pot first became popular alongside the rise of Taiwanese-style business coffee shops.

Why Pour-Over Coffee Became Popular While Siphon Pots Were Ignored?

Today, as specialty coffee culture grows ever more popular, this highly visual, ceremonial old-fashioned method seems to be fading from coffee shops. Even when a store has a full siphon set on display, the barista will often tell you it is not being served. Some people who drink coffee year-round may never have seen one. At this point a friend might sigh quietly: has siphon coffee really become outdated?

Although pour-over and siphon entered specialty coffee shops in China at roughly the same time, there is a striking difference in how often they appear. In other words, siphon coffee has clearly been displaced by pour-over, which is now one of the mainstream ways to serve coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee believes there are two main reasons: the rise of fruity, acidic coffees, and operational convenience.

From the Blue Mountain era to the Geisha dynasty, the mainstream of specialty coffee has shifted from the bitterness of dark, rich roasts to the acidity that preserves more floral and fruity notes. The extraction principle of the siphon pot tends to produce coffee that is mellow, round, and deep in tone, so when brewing medium-light beans it falls a little short of pour-over in expressing floral and fruity acidity.

If you look closely while shopping overseas, you will find that siphon pots mostly sell in the 200-300 range, which is not expensive next to many famous pour-over devices. But the options are limited, and with steps that are almost fixed, the room for variation is far less flexible than pour-over.

Finally, perhaps the least appealing thing about the siphon pot, next to pour-over, is that it is troublesome. You need a heat source before brewing, and you cannot look away during extraction. Afterward, cleaning is necessary, and the flannel filter cloth must be removed and washed promptly after each use. In a shop with high volume, where baristas aim for efficiency, siphon service obviously will not be the first choice.

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Siphon brewing rewards coffees that are mellow, round, and deep, and it was the method behind some of the most popular specialty coffees of the pre-millennium dark-roast era. Two FrontStreet coffees from that tradition fit it especially well: the FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 and the FrontStreet PWN Indonesia Golden Mandheling.

The Blue Mountain No. 1 is neither as sharply fruity as some African coffees nor as heavily bitter as a dark roast, striking a fine balance across acidity, sweetness, bitterness, and aroma. Expect cream, caramel, chocolate, nuts, honey, and a faint fruit note, with a soft, rounded entry, rich sweetness at mid-palate, and a clean, long finish. The PWN Golden Mandheling is deep-roasted with very low acidity, a thick and lingering body, and abundant herbal and dark chocolate aromas laced with a faint earthy note, a rich, layered cup for anyone who likes their coffee heavy and not sour.