Of all the great minds we have to thank for centuries of coffee-technology advancement, a woman named Melitta Bentz of Dresden, Germany, may be near the top of the list. Her paper filter, created in 1908 out of disdain for washing cloth filters and scraping coffee sludge off the bottom of unfiltered coffee pots, resulted in an easy brew with a cleaner cup and a cleaner brewer.
Since the Melitta hit the scene, the array of manual brewers that have migrated—largely from Japan—to the bars of the cafes of the west have given us many a pour-over option.
This overview of the more commonly seen...
