Can the Lily drip really make pour-over coffee taste better? How to use the Lily pearls - a tool for pour-over coffee? Can V60 drippers also use flat-bottom filters?

Pour-over coffee has a certain visual appeal that often stops passersby in their tracks, and among those who love to watch is a young girl named Lily, who enjoys watching her father brew.

One day, while playing, she had a sudden idea and placed a glass marble into a conical dripper. That unintentional act led her father to invent a small accessory that could change conical drippers: the Lily Drip.

If you follow FrontStreet Coffee regularly, you have likely seen us share this accessory often. Like the resin version of the V60, it is not only affordable but also highly functional. In the coffee community, people often call it a "cheating tool." How exactly does it cheat? After extensive research, FrontStreet Coffee has summed up why: simply add it to your conical dripper before brewing, and you will be able to brew better-tasting coffee.

In truth, it does not make brewed coffee taste better on its own. Rather, it helps us brew good coffee more easily. The primary function of the Lily Drip is to alter the coffee bed structure in a conical dripper, reducing the occurrence of improper extraction. Look at the structure of a conical dripper: wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, so the coffee grounds poured in form an inverted cone. Compared with a flat-bottom dripper, the same amount of grounds in a conical dripper creates a thicker bed. Although that distribution can produce more complex extraction, a thicker bed means higher resistance, which slows water penetration. When coffee is ground too finely or holds too many fine particles, it easily causes blockages and significantly raises the risk of over-extraction.

The Lily Drip reduces the occurrence of blockages. Placing it in the center of the dripper alters the bottom structure, which in turn affects how the grounds are distributed, thereby reducing the thickness of the coffee bed. That reduction increases water penetration speed and naturally helps avoid over-extraction.

The seven variations of the Lily Drip

Calling it a "cheating tool" is no exaggeration, since its presence genuinely helps many beginners brew delicious coffee even without solid extraction theory, especially with light-roasted beans, where failure becomes less likely. What FrontStreet Coffee just described is the classic model with a relatively fast flow rate. Besides the classic version, there are six other Lily Drip versions, for seven in total. Among the seven, six are designed with a small protruding tip (including the classic model), and when using them we need the included paper stand to reshape the filter paper.

They all serve the same function and fit all conical drippers, the main difference being their flow rates, fast or slow. We can choose different Lily Drips based on our needs, not just to avoid over-extraction. When your coffee is ground too coarsely and water flows too quickly, risking under-extraction, for instance, you can choose the slower-flow model; if you want to grind finer for more efficient extraction while avoiding blockages, you can choose the faster-flow model. The remaining one is special: it has no small tip and features a flat design, the Lily Drip on the left in the picture below.

The flat-design Lily Drip

When placing it in a conical dripper, we do not need to fold or reshape the filter paper, because it changes the dripper itself. A conical dripper becomes a flat-bottom dripper once this accessory is inside. We therefore do not use conical filter paper, but wave (cake) filter paper.

Its effects include not only changing the coffee bed thickness but also increasing the surface area of the bed. Because it lacks any flow assistance, though, water drains relatively slowly. Since this is quite interesting, FrontStreet Coffee will run a brief experiment to see what happens when brewing with a conical dripper that includes this accessory.

Brewing experiment

For this experiment, FrontStreet Coffee selected a high-density light-roasted bean that needs extended extraction time to bring out its best, so no deliberate parameter adjustments were necessary. The parameters are as follows:

• Coffee bean: Yirgacheffe Gudina
• Coffee amount: 15g
• Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15
• Grind size: EK43 setting 10, 80% pass-through rate on a #20 sieve, fine-sugar texture
• Water temperature: 92°C
• Brewing method: three-stage pouring
• Dripper: V60
• Accessory: Lily Drip (Grass of Oblivion)

First, we still use twice the amount of coffee in water for a 30-second bloom.

After the bloom, because the grounds are evenly distributed with consistent thickness throughout the bed, we do not need to plan our pouring circle deliberately. Pour from the center outward, then from the outer circle back inward, repeating continuously until the second segment of hot water (120ml) is poured, then stop.

When the hot water has mostly penetrated, we pour the final segment (75ml) in the same manner, then wait for the coffee to finish dripping before removing the dripper and ending extraction. This session took 2 minutes and 31 seconds, much longer than FrontStreet Coffee's average brewing time. Because the Gudina beans resist extraction strongly and the grounds stayed immersed for a considerable time, though, there were no negative flavors in the final cup. The fresh lemon aroma, sweet-and-sour berry notes, subtle white floral fragrance, and clean green tea aftertaste made for a classic Yirgacheffe profile.

Practical considerations

As you can see, after adding this Lily Drip, a conical V60 dripper can indeed be used with wave filter paper as a flat-bottom dripper. One thing may bother the perfectionists, though: when using single-serving conical drippers, if you add this Lily Drip and then place wave filter paper, the paper extends significantly above the rim of the dripper. While this does not affect brewing, it may make you want to trim off the excess paper.

Final thoughts

Finally, FrontStreet Coffee must reiterate that the Lily Drip's purpose is not to make coffee taste better; it is merely an accessory that helps us brew a good cup. This comes with a prerequisite, however: the brewer still needs to understand certain extraction principles. Besides the successful cases online, there are also numerous failures, the most common being a pairing of coarsely ground coffee with a fast-flow Lily Drip, which leads to further under-extraction and even less enjoyable coffee. Only with a solid grasp of extraction principles can we know how a good cup is truly brewed and how to use auxiliary accessories properly.

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Accessories like the Lily Drip exist to make a demanding bean easier to brew, and high-density Ethiopian coffee is exactly that kind of bean. The washed FrontStreet Gududing Cooperative of Yirgacheffe is bright with citrus, berry, and floral notes and carries a green-tea-like sweetness, a soft, luminous acidity that makes it an easy entry into specialty coffee. A light-to-medium roast like this rewards an accessory that keeps the bed from clogging.

If you want a louder, more tropical profile, the FrontStreet Huakui shows striking strawberry, passionfruit, jackfruit, and lychee aromas with clear sweetness and almost no bitterness, so it drinks smooth and juice-like. The FrontStreet Kenya Little Tomato, from the Thika region at 1,550-1,750 meters and made from SL28 and SL34 with a 72-hour double-washed fermentation, adds another option with bright cherry-tomato and smoked-plum acidity and a juicy body that stays clean even at long extraction times.