Tool:

Clever Coffee Maker
https://amzn.to/2JzEJJv

Transcript:

I’m Donald Bell for Cool Tools and in this video I’m going to show you an immersion style coffee maker called the Clever Coffee dripper. It is one of my favorite ways to brew coffee. I’ve owned two different versions of these — a small one and this large one, which I like more. It cost me around $26 on Amazon. I’m going to show you why I like it. And if you use the Amazon link in the description to pick one up, it helps support my videos and the Cool Tools blog.

Let me start out by saying that there are a lot of ways to make great coffee and I’ve tried a lot of them, from Chemex, to French Press, vacuum pot to Aeropress. They all have their merits and I won’t fight anybody who says their way is the best.

The Clever coffee dripper is yet one more way to do things, it works for me, and I don’t hear a ot of people talking about it so I felt it deserved a video.

It’s essentially a pour over cone with a trap door. There’s a little rubber plug at the bottom that prevents liquid from draining until the whole thing is placed on a cup.

You load up a filter, add some ground coffee, and while it’s sitting on the counter perched up on its feet you pour in hot water.

Unlike a regular pour over where the water quickly passes through the grinds, with this method the grinds steep in the water until you’re ready. In this way it’s more like a french press. If you want, a cover is included that you can place on the top to trap in some of the heat. I don’t usually bother with it.

After a few minutes, you place the cone on your cup, the plug is released, and the coffee pours out.

What I like about it is that even with just a standard bagged coffee grind, I get a deeper flavor, similar to French Press. But compared to the pain of cleaning out a French Press, I get the convenience of just dumping out my filter in the compost bin.

And compared to an Aeropress, I have the convenience of just grabbing new filters from my local market when I run out.

On the downside, it’s more expensive than a conventional pour over cone. It also doesn’t fit well over some extra wide coffee mugs. And it’s plastic. It’s a BPA-Free, food grade plastic that I would personally trust over any automatic coffee maker, and it doesn’t impart a taste, but it’s still plastic.

All that said, this is great brewer. You get a rich flavor without having to fuss over a special grind, or a special filter, or an involved clean-up process.

You can pick one up for yourself using the link in the description and you can see thousands of reader recommended tools like this at Cool-Tools.org.

Find more Cool Tool reviews here:
http://kk.org/cooltools