Todd Carmichael's Dragon Brewer is now for sale on his site or has been for a little while. One thing that I like about his design is that it allows for an easier way to weigh out water for the brew versus using a typical siphon over a beam heater or burner where it would have to be done separately as another step.

It will be interesting to see how widely adopted it becomes and what a larger audience thinks of it. A halogen beam heater is $350, so it's not like his price is too far an outlier for pure coffee geekery.

I'm still trying to understand why the tamping though? It really makes no sense. The coffee becomes a homogenized slurry as soon as you add the water, so to me, that seems like nothing more than theatrics.

It's nice that it includes a hard case and scale. Tempting, I'd like to get my hands on one to try it out for a week.

The price keeps dropping. I imagine if he can sell the first "limited" 500, he'll have them mass produced in China and sold for much less, without the scale, fancy case, extra filters, coffee etc..

TomC wrote: I'm still trying to understand why the tamping though? It really makes no sense. The coffee becomes a homogenized slurry as soon as you add the water, so to me, that seems like nothing more than theatrics.

Same here. I can't understand what the tamp is supposed to do.

I must be missing something. When is he tamping? I watched the video twice and looked at the kit, I didn't see him tamp or see a tamper involved.

It is interesting, it is like the idea of pressurizing a Clever dripper, or the force of pressing an Aeropress, just inverse. Using a syphon style vacuum to draw down rather than forcing the coffee through the filter with pressure from above.

I have read many people wishing they could get an all glass Aeropress , this seems like as close as you can get, at the moment. Since he had to do a limited release 500 unit production run the price does not surprise me. It would be cool if the mass production got this down to under $100, after dumping all the extra kit. I would get one at that price.

Bak Ta Lo wrote:I must be missing something. When is he tamping? I watched the video twice and looked at the kit, I didn't see him tamp or see a tamper involved.

You can see the tamping in this video around the 2 minute mark.

Jofari wrote:You can see the tamping in this video around the 2 minute mark.

Oh, that is interesting, your link must be an older version, maybe they heard your feedback.

The official product page and the instructional video on the Dragon webpage have the tamping edited out. Here is the link on La Colombe's page, tamping edited out

No tamping in this version from the Dragon website.

Now, how about the advice to do all that tapping to settle the fines to the bottom, also seems unnecessary. But, still want to get my hands on this and give it a try.

There's been a lot of chatter about this brewer on Twitter. Over the past few weeks, Todd seems to have sent out dozens of review units. I'm a bit afraid that many (most?) of the power users who'd even consider shelling out ~$400 for a Dragon will have received one for free before they ever get around to clicking the "add to cart" button!

I was trying to follow this on Twitter (and score myself a setup too). I saw tweets of the kits going out, but didn't see much coming back in terms of feedback from the lucky few.

Given how much hand work went into the glass blowing, the price is not surprising at all. But my immediate thought on seeing the video was, "how do you keep that thing clean?" Sure looks cool.

Best,
David