Palouse Coffee Club
What is drip coffee?
Drip coffee is made by pouring hot water over ground coffee and letting it seep through the grounds and a filter into a pot or cup below. An electric drip machine does the pouring for you. Done by hand with a kettle, the same method is called pour over. Either way, gravity moves the water, not pressure.
How drip brewing works
As water passes through the bed of grounds, it dissolves the coffee's flavor compounds and carries them through the filter. The spent grounds stay behind. Wikipedia's drip coffee article notes one side effect: in a tall pot, the coffee at the bottom is stronger than the coffee at the top, because the grounds have less left to give as the brew goes on.
Grind size and contact time set how much gets dissolved. Drip uses a finer grind and a shorter brew than a French press, which steeps coarse grounds for 3 to 4 minutes, and a much coarser grind than espresso. Coffee extraction covers the numbers behind a balanced cup.
By hand, there is one extra step. Pour a little water over the grounds and wait 30 to 45 seconds before the main pour. Fresh coffee foams as it releases carbon dioxide, a stage called the bloom, and letting it finish helps the rest of the water flow evenly.
Paper or metal filter
The filter changes the cup. A paper filter gives clear, light-bodied coffee with no sediment, because it traps some of the coffee's oils along with the grounds. Metal, nylon and porcelain mesh filters let those oils through, so the cup is heavier. Paper filters themselves go back to Melitta Bentz in Germany in 1908.
A short history
After Bentz's paper filter, the machines followed. Willy Brand built an automatic drip brewer with round paper filters in Switzerland in 1944, and the Wigomat, one of the first electric drip brewers, was patented in Germany in 1954. By the 1970s drip machines had largely replaced the percolator, which kept cycling boiling coffee through the grounds and tended to over-extract it into a bitter pot. Today the Specialty Coffee Association publishes a specification for home coffee brewers, SCA-310.
Drip coffee vs French press vs espresso
| Drip | French press | Espresso | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How water meets coffee | Flows through by gravity | Steeps, then a plunger strains it | Forced through under pressure |
| Grind | Medium to fine | Coarse | Very fine |
| Filter | Paper or mesh | Metal mesh | Metal basket |
| Body | Light and clear with paper | Heavier, some sediment | Thick, with crema |
See espresso for the pressure method.
Washington coffees made for the drip pot
Any whole bean coffee can go through a drip machine, and a few Washington roasters name the brewer outright. On their own shops, checked September 27, 2026:
- Herkimer Coffee in Seattle sells a Drip Blend alongside its Espresso Blend. Herkimer describes itself as focused on coffee for everyday drinking.
- Bluebeard Coffee Roasters in Tacoma sells El Capitan, its everyday drip, from Chiapas, Mexico.
For a morning pot with a Washington name on it, Lighthouse in Fremont also sells Captain Bert's Breakfast Blend, and Indaba in Spokane sells its Lilac City Blend. We list these roasters as local favorites; a listing does not mean the roaster is part of the club. A daily pot goes through a lot of beans, so it is where switching to a Washington roaster adds up fastest. Why local roasters matter explains what that spending keeps in the state.
Drip-friendly beans from the club
For a drip machine, choose Blends or Single origin in the plan builder and any roast level. If you do not grind at home, choose ground, which suits drip and pour over. A two-bag box can hold a drip coffee and a decaf, or a drip coffee and an espresso, from two different Washington roasters. $16.99 a bag; first bag free, you pay $7.99 shipping.
Related terms and sources
Related: coffee extraction, medium roast, espresso, pour over, French press, bloom, percolator.
- Wikipedia: Drip coffee (method, filters, history, bloom)
- Wikipedia: Coffee extraction (grind and brew time by method)
- Specialty Coffee Association: Coffee standards (SCA-310, home coffee brewers)