One of the most important steps in making pour-over coffee is filtration - proper filtration will ensure that your coffee is free of sediment to enjoy a clean, smooth taste.
Once you start to fall in love with pour-over coffee, not only do you buy many different types of filter cups, you may start to wonder, which filter paper should I buy? Or should I buy eco-friendly or disposable filter paper?
What are the different filter papers, what are the filters made of, and do these materials have an effect on the flavor of the coffee? How should I buy the right shape and size?
Keep reading to learn more about coffee filters and you will gain more.
How Coffee Filters Work
The common coffee filters we use are filter cloth, the metal filter, and coffee filter paper. One of the more commonly used filters is coffee filter paper.
Most filters are made of cotton fibers and are made in different ways for different purposes. Since the material is made of fiber, it has numerous small holes on its surface for liquid particles to pass through, while the larger solid particles cannot. This property enables the separation of the coffee liquid from the coffee grounds.
The role of filter paper in coffee making is to have a suitable pore size and density that allows water to pass through the coffee layer to achieve an extraction effect, thus separating the coffee grounds from the coffee liquor and getting a clean-tasting cup of coffee.
What are the Materials of Coffee Filters
In terms of material, the types of pour over coffee filters are paper coffee filters, metal filters, and cloth coffee filters.
Different materials of filters can have different effects on the flavor of the coffee.
Pour Over Coffee Filter Paper
Coffee filter paper most traditional single-use filter supplies, the vast majority of uses are used to filter coffee using filter coffee, the use of extremely dense fibers to retain ground coffee beans, coffee powder, and the extracted coffee filtered into the cup, to get a clean coffee solution. Filter paper can also filter in the coffee terpene esters, mostly organic plant products, and a good filter paper can filter out impurities, coffee also drinks a more mellow, more pronounced aroma.
- Pros: high convenience, use it up and throw it away, you can also replace the brand; the brewed taste is cleaner; impurities and odors less.
- Cons: less environmentally friendly use of paper; the unbleached paper will have a paper smell; grease will be filtered out, resulting in a coffee taste with no sense of grease.
How to Choose the Coffee Filter?
Choosing the right coffee filter paper for you must first fit the shape of your filter cup.
Secondly, there are two core indicators for selecting filter paper.
1. No odor: After directly rushing the filter paper with boiling water, you can taste the water under the filter, to taste no color is better.
2. Water flow rate: prepare 300ml of water, quickly pour it into the filter paper, and calculate the final water flow through time. Fast and slow water rate is not the difference between good and bad filter paper, but to do a number in mind, different brewing programs match different filter paper.
(click the picture for more product details.)
There are many different brands of filter paper. In addition to the above two core indicators, we need to know the following three.
If you often buy different brands of filter paper, you will find that some of them appear easy to tear, water does not flow down, and other problems.
- Material
The fibers of bamboo and abaca (also known as manila hemp) are the longest of all the common raw materials used to make filter paper and are more permeable, meaning more oils will get into your coffee. In contrast, eucalyptus pulp has the shortest fibers and is the least permeable of all the pulp used to make filter paper.
- Bleached or not
Unbleached filter paper tends to leave a "paper" smell to your coffee, which is why it is important to wet the filter paper before brewing your coffee.
- Thickness
Thin filter paper (about 0.15 mm) has a faster flow rate and is better suited for darker roasts and finer ground coffees, both of which are easier to extract and will have a faster total brew time.
Thick filter paper (about 0.28 mm) flows more slowly and is suitable for coarser grinds and lighter roasted coffees. Coarse ground and lightly roasted coffees are more difficult to dissolve, so they usually take longer to brew.
And are our common filter papers right for you?
- Chemex Curved Filter Paper
CHEMEX drip coffee filter paper is 20-30% thicker and stronger than regular filter paper and provides the right amount of filtration to remove the oleic and fatty components that cause bitterness in coffee. While retaining the richness of the coffee, it adds a round and delicate taste.
Evaluation: Chemex filter paper is the most expensive, very strong water filtration, brewing wet almost no filter paper taste, because of the special matching corresponding sharing pot, the use of low range, low-cost performance.
- Kono filter paper
In 1925, the Japanese Kono family began to enter the coffee industry, the purpose: was to continue to provide better coffee equipment and more delicious coffee beans.
Evaluation: Japanese imported KONO filter paper has a medium texture, moderate thickness, moderate water filtration, and ideal fit with the filter cup when filling water, and V-shaped filter cups are applicable.
- Hario filter paper
Review: Hario - V60 filter paper, the water filtration medium, Hario V-shaped consideration cup of the huge market circulation, its original filter paper, become the first choice of most people. The original wood-colored filter paper, the taste of filter paper can be heavy and needs to be wetted several times.
- Tiamo filter paper
Review: Tiamo's log filter paper has a strong smell, and it takes 3-4 repeated wettings to remove it from the filter paper when it is first wetted. The texture is thin and the filter cup does not fit well.
- Bonavita Cake Cup Filter Paper
Bonavita's figure has been active in recent years on top of the world coffee competition, one of the representatives of high-quality coffee appliances in the European and American coffee markets.
Review: Bonavita cake cup filter paper has a thick texture and good water filtration, which needs to be matched with a special cake filter cup. The special deepening design of the side channel can enhance the hand-brewing flavor experience. Bleached filter paper, almost no filter paper taste.
- Kalita cake cup filter paper
Kalita Wave Dripper is a flat-bottomed hand-pouring cup from Japan with a flat bottom for better extraction. The brewing process requires hand movements to produce an even flow of hot water across the bottom, so it is more similar to the familiar Hario V60, with the difference that the bottom is flat. It has a special filter paper, which is not suitable for the standard filter paper in the market.
Evaluation: The filter paper is thin, and the smell of the original wood filter paper is rather strong, it is recommended to use bleached filter paper. Specially matched filter cups are not suitable for other coffee cake filter cups.
Metal Pour Over Coffee Filter
If you are looking for a durable filter that can be recycled, stainless steel filters are a good choice.
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- Pros: more environmentally friendly, reuse through rinsing; more able to drink the original taste of coffee, thick taste.
- Cons: fine powder is easy to cause excessive extraction resulting in excessive bitterness; the fine powder will pass through the filter to the coffee, and the taste may have a sense of slag.
Suggestion: use a clean toothbrush to brush lightly after use, and use edible baking soda to remove the oil, so as not to affect the taste of the next brew. Metal coffee filters can also extract the oil, the taste will be thicker and closer to the original taste of coffee beans, in the blind test can also feel the difference with the filter paper.
Cloth Coffee Filter
As a predecessor to filter paper, using a filter cloth (usually cotton) results in a clean cup of coffee that tastes better than coffee filtered through filter paper. Common brewing methods that use facecloth filter cloths are Chemex hand brew pots and Siphon siphon type.
Pros: It is reusable and allows some of the coffee oils to pass through while isolating most of the insoluble material, resulting in a coffee that is not only aromatic but also denser in taste.
Cons: It must be washed after each use and soaked in clean water, stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Otherwise, it will give off an unpleasant smell and affect the taste when making coffee.
Suggestions: filter cloth cleaning and preservation need to be done, or there may be a rag smell appears, it is recommended that when available with baking soda to clean, and facecloth filter cloth permeability, insulation is better, brewed coffee aroma, as well as taste, are called saturated rich.
Coffee Filter FAQ
Do coffee filters affect the taste?Coffee filters do affect the flavor, but not to a significant degree, and the effect of some filters can be ignored.
Different filter cups and coffee pots require different types of filter paper, and no matter which filter paper we buy, we should prioritize quality over low price.
Do coffee filters go bad?
Generally speaking, there is no such thing as a coffee filter going bad. Metal filters, in particular, only need to be washed and they will last for a long time. If you buy paper and fabric filters, on the other hand, there is a direct relationship to the preservation environment. Usually, we buy a paper filter, and before using it, we check the filter paper to see if there is any damage or the appearance of odor. After all, with frequent contact with people, external factors may have caused the filter paper to "deteriorate".
Can I reuse coffee filters?
Paper coffee filters cannot be reused. If you use a cloth/metal filter, you can reuse it if you wash it well.
