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?

The pour-over coffee brewing process has a certain visual appeal that often attracts many friends to stop and watch. Among them is a young girl named Lily, who loves watching her father brew coffee.

One day, during a playful moment, she had a sudden idea and placed a glass marble into a conical dripper. This unintentional act led her father to invent a small accessory that could change conical drippers—the Lily Drip.

If you're a regular follower of FrontStreet Coffee, you've likely seen us share this accessory frequently. Like the resin version of the V60, it's not only affordable but also highly functional. In the coffee community, people often refer to it as a "cheating tool." How exactly does it help cheat? After extensive research by FrontStreet Coffee, we've summarized why people call it a "cheating tool": simply add it to your conical dripper before brewing coffee, and you'll be able to brew better-tasting coffee.

However, it doesn't actually make the brewed coffee taste better—rather, it assists us in brewing good coffee more easily. The primary function of the Lily Drip is to alter the coffee bed structure in conical drippers, reducing the occurrence of improper extraction. Let's examine the structure of conical drippers: they're wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, so coffee grounds poured in form an inverted cone shape. Compared to flat-bottom drippers, the same amount of coffee grounds in a conical dripper will create a thicker coffee bed. Although this distribution of coffee grounds can produce more complex extraction in the resulting coffee, a thicker bed means higher resistance, which slows down water penetration. When coffee is ground too finely or contains too many fine particles, it can easily cause blockages, significantly increasing the risk of over-extraction.

The introduction of the Lily Drip can reduce the occurrence of blockages. Simply placing it in the center of the dripper alters the bottom structure, which in turn affects the distribution of coffee grounds, thereby reducing the thickness of the coffee bed. This reduction in bed thickness increases water penetration speed, naturally helping to avoid the risk of over-extraction.

The Seven Variations of Lily Drip

Calling it a "cheating tool" isn't an exaggeration, as its presence indeed helps many beginners brew delicious coffee even without solid extraction theory, especially when brewing light-roasted beans, making it less likely to fail. What FrontStreet Coffee just mentioned refers to the classic model with relatively fast flow rate. Besides the classic version, there are six other different versions of Lily Drips, meaning there are seven varieties in total. Among these seven types, six are designed with a small protruding tip (including the classic model), and when using them, we need to use the included paper stand to modify the shape of the filter paper.

They all serve the same function and are suitable for all conical drippers, with the main difference being their flow rates—fast or slow. We can choose different Lily Drips based on our specific needs, not just to avoid over-extraction. For example, when your coffee is ground too coarsely and water flows too quickly, potentially causing under-extraction, you can choose the slower flow model; or if you want to grind finer for more efficient extraction while avoiding blockages, you can opt for the faster flow model... The remaining one is quite special because it doesn't have a small tip, featuring a flat design—it's the Lily Drip on the left in the picture below!

The Flat Design Lily Drip

When placing it in a conical dripper, we don't need to fold or modify the filter paper because it changes the dripper itself! Originally a conical dripper becomes a flat-bottom dripper when this accessory is placed inside! Therefore, we don't use conical filter paper but rather wave (cake) filter paper.

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

Brewing Experiment

For this brewing experiment, FrontStreet Coffee selected a high-density light-roasted bean that requires extended extraction time to bring out its delicious flavors, eliminating the need for deliberate parameter adjustments. 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 with #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 coffee grounds are evenly distributed with consistent thickness throughout the bed, we don't need to deliberately plan our pouring circle. Pour from the center outward, then from the outer circle back inward, repeating continuously until you've poured the second segment of hot water (120ml), then stop.

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

Practical Considerations

As you can see, after adding this Lily Drip, the conical V60 dripper can indeed be used with wave filter paper as a flat-bottom dripper. However, there's one aspect that might bother those with perfectionist tendencies: when using single-serving conical drippers, if you add this Lily Drip and then place wave filter paper, the filter paper will extend significantly above the rim of the dripper. While this doesn't affect brewing, it might make you want to trim off the excess paper at the top.

Final Thoughts

Finally, FrontStreet Coffee must reiterate that the Lily Drip's purpose isn't to make coffee taste better—it's merely an accessory that assists us in brewing a good cup of coffee. However, this comes with a prerequisite: the brewer themselves still needs to understand certain extraction principles. Besides successful cases of using Lily Drips online, there are also numerous failures. The most common issue is pairing coarsely ground coffee with a fast-flow Lily Drip, leading to further under-extraction and making the coffee even more unpalatable. Therefore, only when we have a solid understanding of extraction principles can we know how a good cup of coffee is truly brewed and how to properly use auxiliary accessories.

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