The Best Pour-Over Coffee Makers

If you’ve made the move to buying high-quality, freshly roasted coffee beans, and you’re not serving a crowd, then brewing only what you need (one or two cups at a time) is a sensible option. You’ll be able to enjoy your cups fresh, and you’ll minimize waste.

Although there are easier ways to make coffee—like with an automatic drip coffee maker or a French press—the learning curve for making pour-over is not as steep as you might think. Pour-over coffee can be made simply, yet it rewards care and attention, giving you an extra degree of control while you chase that perfect extraction.

For those interested in exploring the big landscape of coffee’s flavors, achieving pour-over proficiency is worth the small amount of effort required.

If you want an easier manual-brewing method with less fuss—one that doesn’t demand a lot of accessories, like a decent burr grinder or a gooseneck kettle—a French press is a good option. And it’s more accessible for the occasional user.

If you are regularly making coffee for more than one or two people, a good modern drip coffee maker will prove to be much simpler, and it can produce very fine cups.

Writer Tony “Tonx” Konecny is a former barista, a longtime coffee roaster, and co-founder of the subscription coffee company Yes Plz Coffee, which specializes in curated coffees with a focus on the home consumer. (Yes Plz is one of the recommendations in our guide to coffee subscriptions.) He has previously worked with Victrola Coffee in Seattle and Intelligentsia Coffee in Los Angeles. He co-founded Tonx Coffee, which became part of Blue Bottle Coffee in 2014. For this update, he did head-to-head dripper testing, along with 2004 US Barista Champion Bronwen Serna and former Go Get Em Tiger retail manager Jaymie Lao.

Writer Justin Vassallo is a former barista with extensive experience in high-end shops in New York City and Boston. He has also worked on Wirecutter’s guides to espresso machines and cheap coffee makers, and he regularly brews pour-over at home.

This guide also builds on work by writers Thais Wilson-Soler, Daniel Varghese, and Cale Guthrie Weissman.

Over the years, we’ve consulted the brew guides from several top roasters around the country. And we’ve spoken to professional baristas, shop managers, and coffee writers and experts about pour-over technique and gear.

If you dial in your technique, nearly all of the popular, simple drippers available are fully capable of making great cups. But there are several factors we consider when making our recommendations:

Size: We primarily looked for drippers suited to making just one or two cups at a time. Some, like the Chemex, can brew more. But for the most part, an electric drip machine is the more practical choice for brewing more than a couple of cups.

Shape and filter type: Pour-over drippers come in three basic shapes—conical, wedge, and flat-bottomed; the shape determines the geometry and, sometimes, the strength of the paper filters you need. Ultimately, we found the Kalita Wave 185’s flat-bottom style to be the most forgiving of one’s pouring technique. And we found the heavier Chemex filters to be better at handling irregular grind sizes or a slapdash pouring technique. We recommend white paper filters over brown unbleached filters, which often introduce noticeable papery flavors to the cup.

Materials: Most drippers are made from ceramic, glass, or metal. A lot of coffee experts have strong feelings about the effect of materials on heat loss or retention during brewing. But this is often a very minor factor, as long as your technique is consistent. Many of our picks are available in multiple materials; we’d suggest choosing based on your preferences for durability, cost, or aesthetics.

Ease of use: Making coffee is a morning ritual, and it shouldn’t feel like you’re erecting a Jenga tower while you’re half-awake. We frowned upon brewers that felt unbalanced, were awkward to use, or required too much precision to get good results.

Tony “Tonx” Konecny, a co-writer of this guide, started our recent round of testing by using all of the dripper models we chose to test at his home, as part of his morning routine.

Tony also invited two coffee professionals (and friends)—2004 US Barista Champion Bronwen Serna and former Go Get Em Tiger retail manager Jaymie Lao—to join him in a more-formal head-to-head taste testing and discussion.

In head-to-head tests, we kept coffee-to-water ratios and brew water temperature consistent (1 gram of coffee for every 17 grams water, heated to 206 °F). We also adjusted grind size, to best accommodate the flow rates for each dripper, and we landed on brew times common across multiple published recipes.

Across all of our testing, we used several common home burr grinders and gooseneck kettles, as well as filtered water. We avoided going too far afield with unusual techniques favored by some baristas—extra stirring, spins, particularly convoluted pulse pours, or atypical brewing times. With manual brewing, the possibilities for tinkering and tweaking are endless, but this should not be a requirement for achieving reliably great cups.

We mainly used two coffees: Yes Plz Coffee’s The Mix (a medium-roast blend that Tony is intimately familiar with brewing) and a somewhat lighter, brighter single-origin Ethiopia Meti, from Copenhagen’s April Coffee Roasters (this company has developed its own, notable pour-over dripper, which can be found in a handful of US shops).

In past rounds of testing, we used a similar recipe. And to help us rate the results, we invited a few coffee experts as well as amateurs.

The Kalita Wave 185 Dripper is easy to use, and it consistently makes great-tasting coffee, capturing the more-nuanced flavors of your beans. If you’re not a pour-over expert, the Wave 185 is reliable. And of all the drippers we tested, it was the best at extracting complex, rich flavors from our coffee.

It requires less finesse, so it’s beginner-friendly. Hitting the bullseye with pour-over brewing comes down to many more variables than just which dripper you use. But because of the Wave 185’s flat bottom, ridged filter, and generous outflow, it’s a tiny bit less prone to under- or over-extraction.

In our tests, a typical cup made with this dripper had a comparatively smooth mouthfeel, good body, and a remarkably clear articulation of flavors. We found it made great coffee, even when we eyeballed the amount of water per pour. So we think beginners will get enjoyable results more quickly than with other drippers.

Cone-bottom drippers, like the Hario V-60, drain from a single point, making the resulting brew more dependent on how meticulously you pour. If you think mastering the more-demanding rhythm of a cone-bottom dripper will be too much effort, the Wave 185’s design allows for a less-exacting technique.

It comes in a range of materials. The Kalita Wave 185 is available in stainless steel, glass, and ceramic (which is often hard to find); the material you find most pleasing is largely a matter of personal preference. The glass vessel is very thin but surprisingly durable; the stainless model is Kalita’s classic design—lightweight and nearly indestructible; and the ceramic version is heavy, solid, and well balanced.

This dripper comes in two sizes. Our pick is the more-standard, 185 version, which brews one to two cups at a time and is the better option for most kitchens. The Wave also comes in a diminutive, 155 version, which is best suited for brewing exclusively small, single cups. Be aware of the different models when purchasing filters, since the filter paper also comes in two sizes.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The Kalita Wave 185’s greatest flaw is that it uses proprietary wavy filters. Because the filters are a Japanese import, they’re harder to find in stores, and they are a little more expensive than standard Melitta filters. They are, however, available through online retailers, and you may be able to find them in specialty coffee shops. Order some when you buy the dripper, and you’ll be fine for a while.

Another potential frustration is that Kalita Wave drippers are small. Even the Wave 185, the larger size, doesn’t have much volume to spare, which limits the amount of ground coffee you can reasonably use. We also found that with fresher, gassier beans, the bloom from the initial pour can be so full that caution is required with the next pour, to avoid overflow. Chalk it up to one of the many ways that pour-over drippers provide more-subtle insights into your coffee beans.

The Hario V-60 Coffee Dripper (Size 02) has an iconic design, and it brews flavorful, dynamic coffee that’s on a par with coffee brewed by the Kalita Wave 185. But it also requires you to be more precise and engaged with the brewing process. For serious aficionados, the Hario V-60 is a worthy alternative to the Kalita Wave, with an elegance that really encapsulates the ritual of pour-over coffee.

It makes great-tasting coffee. The Hario V-60 brewed good to great coffee for most tests, though the Kalita Wave retained an edge when it came to consistently brewing nuanced, great-tasting cups. That said, at its best the Hario V-60 captured the same broad range of well-articulated flavors as those produced in the Kalita Wave. And the Hario dripper performed well with a variety of coffees and various brew strengths.

It demands a bit more finesse. The Hario dripper’s large single hole and faster draining filters mean that your rate and pattern of pouring is important for getting the best results. Additionally, small changes in the grind size or dose of ground coffee can throw off your recipe. So when you’re switching coffees or changing brew volumes, this dripper can require more tinkering with timing and technique than other pour-over devices need.

But that sensitivity also makes this dripper a favorite of coffee hobbyists. Among everyone we spoke to—from professionals to home coffee connoisseurs—the Hario V-60 sits at or near the top of preferred brewers. For those who want to explore coffee’s many intricacies, the Hario V60’s receptiveness to small adjustments in brewing parameters (like time, water temperature, and grind size) makes it a standard-bearer of pour-over coffee as a culinary art.

Like the Kalita Wave, the Hario V-60 uses proprietary filters. And like the Kalita Wave’s filters, the Hario’s filters are available online and can be found in specialty coffee shops.

And we love that the Hario V-60 comes in four different materials. It’s available in ceramic, glass (notably thicker than the Kalita dripper’s glass), metal, and plastic (not an option with the Kalita Wave).

The Kalita 102 Ceramic Dripper is a boon for those not in a hurry to master barista-level technique and precision.

It’s a very capable yet forgiving brewer. The Kalita 102 produced good cups when we applied the same care to brewing as we did with our other dripper picks. And it can also make nice coffees with less-refined pouring. But it didn’t reveal as much nuance from the coffee as our other picks, even with tinkering and refined pouring.

Most importantly, it uses standard Melitta #2 wedge-shaped filters. They’re easily found in most supermarkets. So that gives this dripper an edge over our other picks, whose proprietary filters require a little more foresight to keep stocked.

We like the Kalita Wave 102’s elegant ceramic design. Numerous other beginner-friendly drippers on the market also conveniently use Melitta #2 filters. But we liked the Kalita 102 for its classic, clean lines and sturdy ceramic body. It balanced well atop mugs and carafes, and it allowed a reliably consistent flow rate.

The Chemex Six Cup Classic Series produces great-tasting coffee, is simple to use, and looks gorgeous. This brewer received high marks in all of our taste competitions. And its heavier paper filter makes it very forgiving of pouring precision, timing, and adjustments in grind size.

It’s our only pick that easily accommodates coffee for a crowd. The Six Cup size was the original design, and it can easily brew three or more 6-ounce cups of coffee at a time. So it’s great for small to medium households.

While the Six Cup can go up to 30 ounces, we’ve found brewing quantities larger than 25 ounces to be slow, finicky, and prone to producing less-enjoyable cups. This was true even when we used the upsized Eight Cup model. And the smaller, skinny One Cup model is awkward to use and requires filters that are even harder to find. So we recommend sticking with the Six Cup model.

It’s a timeless example of great mid-century design. The brewer has been mostly unchanged since 1941 (it has a spot in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection). Its beauty and relative ease of use make it worthwhile both for folks who want to brew pour-over only occasionally and those who frequently brew multiple cups to share. It is perhaps the one brewer most suited to displaying on your kitchen counter, and it’s an icon often spotted in the background of film and television scenes.

Its proprietary filter produces a really clean cup. The filter’s heavier paper produces coffee with a lot of flavor clarity and a smooth mouthfeel. And this dripper proved to be more forgiving of irregularities in grind size than other ones we tested. It also encourages a slower flow rate, removing the need for as much precision in pouring or timing.

If you’re looking for a camera-ready or gift-worthy dripper: Instagram coffee aficionados love the visually striking Origami dripper, which comes in many gorgeous colorways. The ceramic version usually requires a wooden base (purchased separately), but the acrylic version usually comes with a clear plastic notched base, which is more stable. Both versions of the Origami support both V-60 and Kalita Wave style filters, so it offers a little flexibility for brewing preferences, and the ceramic version we tested made very nice brews.

The Cafec Flower is a more recent doppelgänger to the Hario V-60. It looks elegant, and it’s supported by a range of Cafec-made cone-shaped paper filters specially tailored to various coffee-roast styles. We can’t deny the visual appeal, and this dripper makes coffee on a par with coffee made in Kalita or Hario drippers. But the Cafec Flower also tends to be a little pricier than our picks, and it’s not as widely available. It’s worth seeking out or splurging on if you’re looking for something that looks and feels special.

If you want something cheap and easy: The Melitta dripper was patented in 1908, in Germany, by Melitta Bentz. She found that brewing coffee using disposable blotting paper was superior to using her percolator. There is an under-$10 plastic model that gets the job done and is great for travel. The ceramic version is functionally similar to our more aesthetically pleasing and steady-flowing Kalita 102 pick, but it’s also more expensive.

If you want to get ahead of the trend: The sturdy plastic April Pour—from Copenhagen’s April Coffee Roasters—has received attention from the competition circuit. But we can’t recommend it due to its spotty availability in the US and its relatively high price for a plastic brewer. The April Pour has been used successfully in the World Brewers Cup and is a close analog of the Kalita Wave.

Pour-over is a method of brewing a small batch of filtered coffee by gradually pouring hot water over fresh grounds. The dripper and the filter help control how quickly water flows through and extracts flavor from your coffee grounds.

But your recipe and technique also matter. The most important factors for getting consistent, delicious results are your coffee-to-water ratio, the coarseness of your grounds, the temperature of the water, and the speed of your pour.

You can find numerous recipes and guides online, but most suggest using between a 1:15 to 1:17 ratio of coffee to water, in grams. The coffee should be ground medium-fine (a little finer than coarse sea salt). And the water should be heated to between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit (depending on your preferences and on the coffee, with lighter or more delicate roasts preferring higher temperatures).

There are a few tools beyond the dripper itself that can help you get consistently tasty results. A good burr grinder will give you a uniform grind on your coffee beans, making for a more balanced and flavorful cup. Using a kitchen scale may seem fussy, but this is actually a no-nonsense way to consistently get the right ratios, taking the guesswork out of measuring. And a gooseneck kettle will allow you to pour hot water at just the right temp, with better control than you’d get with a regular kettle.

It also helps to use fresh, high-quality beans, whether you prefer blends or single-origin offerings. Pour-over isn’t the ideal method for brewing super-oily dark roasts. And you should avoid it altogether when using cheap, pre-ground coffee.

If you currently use an auto-drip coffee maker to brew your coffee, you may find the switch to a multistep, gear-intensive manual method daunting. But once you’ve got the right tools and technique, pour-over can be a simple, inexpensive, and fun way to make the best-tasting coffee.

The Fellow Stagg Pour-Over was by far the priciest of the drippers we tested ($80 for the single-cup set). Fellow clearly gave a lot of design thought to this dripper (which features straight insulated metal sidewalls and a flat bottom), and in our tests it made good coffee. But the specialized filters are expensive, the double-walled glass carafe was awkward to pour or drink from, and the dripper’s silicone base didn’t rest reliably on top of the carafe. We’d recommend this one only if you’re going all in on Fellow’s pleasantly modern-looking product line, and you don’t mind the pricier filters.

The Blue Bottle Coffee Dripper produced a cup with uneven flavor and without much body. If you do purchase or receive the Blue Bottle dripper, don’t worry too much about using the company’s expensive, proprietary bamboo-based filters. After dismissing the dripper, we made a cup with it using a Kalita filter; it ended up tasting much better, but it still wasn’t as good as the coffee we made with the Kalita Wave.

The Bonmac ceramic dripper is similar to our wedge-shaped pick, the Kalita 102. But this one was less consistent, producing fewer solid cups of coffee.

The OXO Pour-Over Coffee Maker with Water Tank has a unique design that allows you to make pour-over coffee without any of the fuss that’s usually essential to the brewing method. Instead of pouring water directly onto the grounds in the filter, you pour them into a plastic tank with holes in the bottom. The water drips through the holes over the grounds at a controlled rate, freeing you up to do other things. Unfortunately, all of our testers thought its coffee was weak and under-extracted.

Although the Clever Coffee Dripper doesn’t technically use the pour-over method, we tested it because it makes filtered coffee that’s closer in flavor to pour-over than other brew methods. The bottom of the dripper is sealed, and you immerse your grounds with all of the brew water at once, as you would with a French press. After a few minutes, you set the Clever dripper on a cup or carafe, which triggers the seal to release, draining the coffee through the filter. Through numerous recipe attempts, we found it challenging to achieve cups as good as with well-finessed pour-over methods. But it’s a pleasantly easy tool to use, as long as you set a timer.

The Hario Switch operates similarly to the Clever Coffee Dripper. But it uses the V-60-style cone filters and feels closer to pour-over in use. The cups we made were very good, and this dripper has a growing online following. But we found it was slightly awkward to use, more difficult to clean than most drippers, and unnecessarily heavy.

There’s an emerging category of “no-bypass” filter brewers, with the most notable being the Tricolate and the Pulsar. These brew more slowly, with a columnar design that forces all of the water through the full coffee bed, resulting in higher extraction yield from the grounds. Though these brewers are popular among some coffee hobbyists, we decided they’re missing too much of the ritual charm and simplicity of pour-over to include in our tests. And most coffee lovers don’t want to wait 8 minutes or longer for a single cup.

We tried the 34-ounce Bodum Pour Over primarily because it’s comparable in size to the Chemex, and we wanted to try an option with a mesh, permanent filter. But it was impossible to avoid a silty brew. Clean, sediment-free coffee is usually the aim with pour-over, and the Bodum’s underwhelming and strangely woody-tasting results led to a quick dismissal.

This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Marguerite Preston.