So i have a melodrip - kinda. And mine cost $15 and came with a one cup brewer...



It's a "frieling USA one cup brewer." I bought it for the brewer, and only after i read about the melodrip I realized that this brewer came with a diffuser. A fairly nice diffuser too - the holes are precisely engineered so they drip evenly (In fact they stop dripping with about 1cm of water left in the cup).

In the cup - now that i've tried it - it is sweeter. the bed is a lot less agitated using this "melodrip" over a v60 or a kalita wave. In fact, instead of a murky constant agitation in the filter, there is now a clear pool of water over the bed of grinds which sits at the bottom/sides of the paper filter. It's kinda cool looking.

So yes, it's markedly sweeter. I'm not sure if you miss out a little on the fruit acids though. I think you do, but it's less noticeable than the sweetness.

Lovely pics, Spencer!

This is the kind of diffuser I was referring to earlier - I think they haven't been widely adopted because there's a kind of fetishism for craft, technique or artisanship rather than the final product (inevitably variable with human error) and I've heard many non-foruming home baristi disappointed with their results upon buying a pourover (on advice from a pro barista) that they might only use or practice a few times a week...
Edit: I wonder if a Vietnamese coffee dripper would work or be too small for this kind of thing - tomorrow I'll experiment

A few years years ago I tried the exact same principle, but using a 58mm espresso basket. Sort of a "lauter tun" (as used for beer brewing).

Ok, I love pourover and I am a putzer. Zen preps are fine. No rush here.

But Roast Mag now has an article on a new beta prep, Melodrip is way too putzie for me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIe0f4iIMhI Good heavens. I am sticking with KONE (gen 3) and 51oz Bodum press pot beaker.

They are looking for beta testers. Enter here: https://melodrip.co I have ruled self O-U-T. I nominate Yakster. Other nominees?

Three words.

Glass Flower Frog.

I have less love of pour-over than B|J, I will brew small (500 ml) batches in my Behmor BraZen and declare the coffee delicious rather than use my Kalita Wave in the mornings. In past years I was much more zealous about coffee and even poured into a spoon over the coffee bed to break the fall of the water, but no more. I saw an Instagram where someone was using the plunger from a French Press as a stand-in for the Melodrip.

yakster wrote:...In past years I was much more zealous about coffee and even poured into a spoon over the coffee bed to break the fall of the water, but no more. ...

The basic problem is that Fidel sent you some of his cigars from his private cigars before he turned his final chapter.

I use a "ghetto" version of melodrip with the Kalita made with a chopstick and Aeropress cap and it works quite well. It requires a slightly finer grind for the same extraction, but there is less undissolved solids in the cup, which means the final brew is cleaner. I think it might not make a big difference if you use something like EK43 but for my Vario with steel burrs, it improved clarity. The resulting brew is definitely more transparent. It is slightly more cumbersome than normal pouring, but I find the results more consistent, even compared to using a flow restrictor. I do 15g coffee to 250g water and pour about 20g every 10 secs or so, doing the final pour at 2:30 and having total brew time around 3:00-3:30. It also seems there is a lot less water retained in the bed using this method, which means typically extra 5g in the cup when using the same amount of water.

The device:


Typical brew bed after brewing:

I found a small perforated (3 holes) ladle in a Japanese store for $2.5 and figured it was worth a shot. Did the job, flat bed of coffee post extraction and the ladle was cool to the touch afterwards so at least heat loss is minimised.
The dripper system I tried worked only after I had a series of two baskets to diffuse the water and was a bit finicky but also worked well as a test of concept.

Kickstarter launches on Dec 12: https://melodrip.co/