Three Impressions of the Blue Bottle Coffee Dripper

We shared our invention with a few fellow coffee lovers

After a year of research, working with four engineers and creating 70 prototypes, we believe we have created the best pour over coffee dripper. When paired with our bamboo filters, it brews coffee that comes out clearer, cleaner, and more fundamentally itself. It’s a dripper anyone can use successfully—from a total coffee novice to a professional barista.  

We asked three friends with different levels of coffee experience—Samin Nosrat, Yi-Ling Yang, and Michelle Ott—to tell us what they thought of our coffee dripper. Here are three different reasons they love this coffee dripper. 

Reason # 1: Affordable, portable, and easy, even for a novice

"Is it just me or are the filters made of magic and rainbows?" —Samin Nosrat, author of the landmark cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

"I make coffee every morning—just one cup—and I am a total amateur. But I'm an amateur with a taste for good coffee, which often poses a problem. I've tried every single fancy boondoggle and doohickey out there, and though I do sometimes get it right, my inability to produce a consistently good cup of coffee is extremely frustrating. Before getting my hands on this dripper—and is it just me or are the filters made of magic and rainbows?—I was using a $160 contraption meant to make a single cup of coffee each morning. The inefficiency of the whole operation was upsetting.

Then, I met the Blue Bottle Dripper. No more wetting the paper. No more prayers before brewing. No more weighing my water before I've wiped the sleep from my eyes (wait ... am I still supposed to weigh the water?). And yet, somehow … a delicious cup, every morning. And it's portable. And I can move the big coffeemaker over with all of the other doohickeys in my coffee graveyard. Halle-fricking-lujah!!!"

Reason # 2: Evenly extracted coffee, every time

"The extraction feels almost fail-proof because the shape combined with the sturdiness of the filter makes it very easy to have an even extraction, cup after cup." —Yi-Ling Yang, Blue Bottle New Cafe Opening project manager

The seeds of coffee obsession were planted early on for Yi-Ling. She grew up in Taiwan with a family that has always enjoyed coffee for its taste rather than the caffeine. Even now, her trips back home are all about coffee shop-hopping with her sister in Taipei, and her mom can outgeek her on coffee any day. Yi-Ling discovered Blue Bottle in 2006 while going to school in Berkeley. She likes to describe it as a first-love sort of sentimentality. The existence of good coffee finally made the Bay Area feel like home. While she still enjoyed checking out different coffee shops, Blue Bottle remained her favorite. 

Years later, when she saw a barista opening, she wondered why she'd never thought about it before. She had been working at a pediatric office for years while going to school for interior architecture to figure out her next steps. Being a barista was like a dream job for her, but without any prior experience it felt impossible to get started. Three applications and three interviews later, she joined Blue Bottle at the Mint Plaza cafe in 2014. One thing led to another, and she is now a key member of the cafe operations team.

"Truly, I would happily be a barista for the rest of my life, because working in coffee doesn’t feel like work. The beauty of coffee never ceases to amaze me—whether it’s watching the coffee bloom, or that moment when espresso converges into a syrupy stream, or learning about the people connected by farming, roasting, making, and drinking it," she says.

For her, the dripper has subtle differences that make it the best ceramic coffee dripper for pour over around. First, there’s no more wasted water on rinsing out the dripper and no more pre-wetting or folding the filter for every cup. More importantly, the extraction feels almost fail-proof because the shape combined with the sturdiness of the filter makes it very easy to have an even extraction and delicious coffee, cup after cup.

Reason # 3 Makes delicious pour over fast

"The coffee seemed to drip at a quick rate. It was simple to make two cups and be able to enjoy both hot coffees at the same time." —Michelle Ott, Longtime Blue Bottle Illustrator

Originally from Minnesota, Michelle Ott lives and works in Oakland. In 2007, she started working in the office at Blue Bottle Coffee and eventually her handmade signs and notes in the roastery became illustrations of coffee-making tools and coffee-drinking spaces that are used across the company. 

Michelle’s illustration and artworks begin with a focused observation of the objects and conditions before her, which become drawings, photographs, quilts, and prints. One of her primary sources of influence is the twenty-two nonconsecutive months she has spent living and working at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. She considers herself a pragmatic optimist. See her work at michelleott.com or on Instagram.

In Michelle's words:

"In our home we have a morning hot drink ritual, which includes coffee or tea. But if we get up extra early (before 6 am) we call it  continental breakfast, which always includes the hot drinks and sometimes a little snack, or pre-breakfast, to get the day started.

With our ceramic pour over dripper, the coffee seemed to drip at a quick rate, making the cup faster than I other drippers. I liked that it was simple to make two cups and be able to enjoy both hot coffees at the same time. The coffee itself tasted delicious. I typically enjoy fairly heavy-bodied coffee. This cup had a really soft but still substantial feeling in the mouth, and I love that kind of drink."

Learn more about why our ceramic Dripper is best tool for making pour over at home.