Hario Woodneck

Serious eats recently posted a guide to the Hario Woodneck, an item sold here on ROASTe: http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/10/how-to-brew-coffee-in-a-woodneck-dripper-nel-pot.html#.TqoJYy1GPKA.twitter

It's a great guide but leaves out a lot of information.

The first is that the cloth, when brand-new, has a clothy taste. It needs to be boiled out. In fact, I would go so far as to make a brew and then dump it...that first brew is drinkable but has a "fibrous" quality to it. Not the best stuff.

The other thing is that to say "the cloth requires maintenance" is a huge understatement. The cloth is troublesome.

When I had a nel dripper, I used five cloths. Fresh cloth for each brew, and then I'd wash them all at once in an oxy-clean solution. Then I'd boil them to make sure they were free of the soap.

This gave me fresh filters each time and therefore a clean brew. And the when the woodneck is clean, it's amazing. Fragrant, bodacious, transparent. Possibly the best way to make coffee.

But boy, it's a lot of work. You have to really love coffee to use it imho.