Metal pourover

A couple of small American companies have been very progressive in bringing out high-quality metal filters for pourover. Coava in Portland has received a lot of love for their K-one, and they just unrolled a metal filter for Aeropress as well (called the Disk). Less well-known are the metalurgical exploits of Kaffeologie, which has a metal filter for pretty much every common brewing application around.

I did a little bit on cloth some time ago, which I still think is *the* best way to filter coffee. Oils go through but fines do not. The problem is that they can be a little difficult to take care of, perhaps involving more work than most people want to deal with. Cloth might be permanently relegated to geek status. 

Really good metal filters provide a good compromise. They're super cinchy to clean and give you oils that paper would filter out (for some coffees paper-filtering might be a good idea, but generally I want that oily stuff).

If you're interested in getting these filters, here are some tips you might find useful. On the Aeropress disk, the holes might be bigger than you expect. If you plunge the Aeropress, expect to get a fair amount of fines. The cool thing is that with the disc you can use the A. as a small personal dripper...put the water in, put in the coffee (or reverse that order if you prefer), then just let the thing drip. It's pretty hard to mess up.

For Coava's Kone. There's a pretty good set of instructions on the Coava website for this thing. I've tried a number of methods and I think theirs is the best balance between ease and quality. One modification: don't let all the water drip out. Once you've poured all the water that you've decided to pour, yank the Kone--water and grounds and all--out of the Chemex. The stuff that drips out at the end is pretty bitter in my experience. This will sweeten the final cup.

I haven't tried the Kaffeologie pourovers yet, but I would use the same strategy of halting the drip.

Hopefully this post has been *somewhat* helpful to *somebody.* Metal filters pay for themselves in the long run and offer a good compromise between cup quality and ease of use. If you decide to get one from one of the above companies, then maybe this little ditty will not have been written in vain.