Hario Cafeor Review- the single server pourover

If you’re a hardcore coffee lover, you will probably appreciate how many coffee making methods are out there to make that one cup of coffee. One of them that I have not tried is the pourover. Personally, the reason that I had not pulled the trigger on it was because it requires a new paper filter every brew and that’s not too environmental friendly in my opinion. As I understood, there’s a Kone stainless steel filter for Chemex pourover too, but it costs a heft at $50 per filter! So, when I saw the Hario Cafeor dripper, I was so stoked and I went ahead to order it! The price was not bad at

 

http://www.roaste.com/product/SungardenTea/Hario-One-Cup-Cafeor-Paperless-Coffee-Dripper

 

The Cafeor is a single cup server, that could makes up to 8-9oz of pourover coffee. It’s perfect for me because I am the only coffee drinker at home. Another great point of the Cafeor is that it’s so compact and only takes a tiny space. I can see that it’s a great candidate for portable coffee! Just get a small kettle and a portable grinder like OE LIDO and you’re good to go!

 

 

Parts break down: 

The Cafeor is made up of 3 parts. The cup, the filter and the lid. The cup is made of thin(but not too cheap) glass. From touching it, I would guess that it is probably not too resistant with banging and stuff. However, it should be able to stand the expansion and contraction from extreme temperature. The transparent glass is very pretty, but could obviously be swapped with a  wide mouth plastic cup if you’re keen on travelling to avoid breaking it. The filter is of stainless steel mesh, with plastic frame. The downside so far is that it would retain some coffee smell after brewing. Other than that, it's serving its purpose very excellently! The 3rd part-the lid: not very useful in my opinion because it doesn’t serve any purpose except for putting your cup on. You can't pour hot water with the lid on!

 

Picture: 3 parts: Cup, filter and lid 

 

Picture: Compact pourover maker

 

My Impression:

I am just using the Cafeor as per the instruction for pourover. Not too difficult. And Cafeor isn't too picky about grind size because of its cone shaped filter. The coffee is much cleaner than the one I had from French Press.  There’s little to no sediment unlike French press, but with a generous amount of body- a perfect intermediate between the clean siphon coffee and muddy French Press. It somehow brings out more acidity from the Guatemalan Antigua than my other brewing methods(which is a good thing for most people). I need to experiment more on this because it could be due to the high coffee to water ratio.The cleaning part isn’t too difficult. The only complain I have is the coffee smell stucked on the filter even after washing with dish detergent. But it doesn’t affect the brew as long as u rinse the filter with hot water before brewing.

 

I haven't got to make a video, but this is one from Hario to give you a general idea of how it's being used. In fact, it's the only video out there about Cafeor. 

Video -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXw7oCFgKos

 

 

Overall, if you can afford this and had not tried pourover before, i would definitely recommend to go for it. It’s a nice little brewer that can turn into portable coffee maker at will. The coffee it made was very nice and could be an alternative to French Press on different days. Even if you already have one pourover maker, it's still a great value because you're saving the trees!