Why I Was Wrong About Fast Coffee Brewers

In this episode, I dive deep into my recent exploration of coffee brewers, specifically focusing on the Dwell Dripper by Verve Coffee that I picked up at a recent coffee expo. I share how my perspective on fast brewers has completely shifted after spending weeks testing different brewing methods and equipment. Throughout the episode, I discuss my journey from initially avoiding fast brewers to discovering their potential for creating exceptional coffee with minimal effort.

I break down the practical aspects of using the Dwell Dripper, including grind size adjustments, brewing times, and filter compatibility, while comparing it to other popular brewers like the Hario V60 and AeroPress. Listeners will learn how to optimize their brewing technique regardless of their experience level, understand why coarser grinds can sometimes produce better flavors, and discover how the right water (like Third Wave Water) can dramatically improve their brewing results across all devices.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:44 Why I Used to Hate Fast Brewers
• 2:18 Water Quality Game Changer
• 2:35 Deep Dive into the Dwell Dripper
• 7:39 Brewing Philosophy & Techniques

Transcript

[00:00:00] We love, we love, we love right now today is Monday the 19th of May 2025. We're doing pretty good right now. I hope you're doing pretty good right now. We are going to be talking about brewers. I've been looking at brewers for the past couple of weeks, actually just bought another one. I wonder, this is a topic probably for another day, but I'm wondering if I'm buying these brewers for you, for views, for understanding. It's here. I won't go too crazy with them. I don't think I'm gonna get any more brewers.

[00:00:44] I have noticed a couple things with these brewers that I'm testing out and I just wanted to talk about it a little bit, mainly to help you out so you can see it for what it is and use the right brewer for your application and for the reasons why. If you're watching this, what I have in front of me is a Dwell Dripper, I think that's what it's called, by Verb Coffee. It's a fast brewer. I always, for the most part, for the very longest time shied away or had some kind of hatred towards fast brewers, fast filters and all that stuff. Now that I've actually gone down that rabbit hole of trying to understand them a little bit more, my opinions about them have changed. I'm still putting it through its paces, but I would say this: I don't know where or why this whole notion or logic comes from when brewing coffee - like you want it either hard or you want it easy. At least for me, sometimes I like the reward. Sometimes V60 can be a hard brewer to use because it's not just straight and narrow. You have to do a couple things in order to brew coffee correctly.

[00:02:18] One of the things that I've noticed when it comes to brewing coffee, specifically with the V60, is that ever since I switched to Third Wave Water, it's made it a lot easier for me to actually brew coffee.

[00:02:35] That's perfectly fine, and I think that's more so for all brewers that I've noticed actually. But it is a harder brewer to use. I think the AeroPress is a finicky one too. If you're patient enough, you can figure out what you need to do for that coffee, for that device. That really goes for anything if you're trying to be honest about the situation at hand. Picking up this brewer right here, this Dwell brewer that I got at the Coffee Expo, it was pretty expensive - $25, $30. I think that should be the most somebody should spend on a brewer. At the end of the day, you're gonna get your money's worth if you use it all the time. Even if you use it a couple times a year, you're gonna get your money's worth. Do realize that when you're all said and done, the coffee is gonna taste the way that it's gonna taste. Yes, there's gonna be variations, things that you can do to kind of get things going in a way where you can bring the best out of the coffee. But essentially, you're putting coffee in a vessel that has a particular shape, and it draws down the water and filters it out. That's essentially what you're doing. There's different variations and all that stuff.

Let's talk about the Dwell Dripper. At first, I thought this was a harder brewer to use just because of the whole fastness that people love and crave about brewers. Like I said, I don't really use those filters in the way other people have talked about. They mainly use it for lighter roast, they like to grind a lot finer. Pleasantly, to my surprise, through my taste but also with the TDS meter, on the Fellow, I can grind coffee, even light roast, at an 8, sometimes a 9 on the grinder scale, and still produce very good, tasty coffee. This is at a less than 2-minute brew. What I'm saying here really is that a lot of times we're trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work. But when we try things out for what they are, we can produce really tasty coffee out of any brewer. For this one in particular, I think this brewer works for everybody. It works for everybody just fine.

What I mean by that is that a beginner, intermediate, pro - it works no matter what. I wouldn't even say it's a hard brewer to use. It's a very easy one to use because it's actually kind of cool to see the water just drip out very fast. Yes, I'm using the fast filters, but even using the regular Melitta filters, it works out really well. It doesn't add that much more time to your brew, so you get a little bit more contact time. If you want even more contact time, you can go ahead and go finer. I think this brewer works really well for you when you can go coarse, because I think coarser is bringing the best flavors. I just want to let you know that we can really enjoy coffee for what it is on different brewers. I think that's really the beauty of this.

You don't even have to buy this brewer particularly if you don't want to. You can buy another fast brewer. You can even just use the filters from the Hario V60 and see how that works for you. I do like how tight it is. I like it and I don't like it for that reason. It's very tight, so the filters do fit, but you can only put so much coffee inside of it. You can probably put about 30 grams of coffee inside of it, and it does really well with the pulse method because it's so fast. Like I said, even by me giving it a 30-second to 45-second bloom, the coffee is already done in less than two minutes if you care about the time like that. You can manipulate a little bit more by your pour and by the grind size, but you can have a lot of fun with these coffees.

[00:07:38] What am I saying here? I'm saying that this brewer, as it is right now, a week or so using it, it's for all people.

[00:07:39] It works for all people. If you're able to get fast filters, I think that's a good approach to go, especially with a flat bottom, because of the way that's a little bit more evenly distributed amongst the coffee. Once you go about it that way, I think you're gonna be in a better place when it comes to this whole coffee game.

What kind of things are you thinking about when it comes to coffee brewing? Do you play around with grind size? Do you play around with temperature? Do you kind of let the coffee speak to you? Do you like just play this little dance of what's happening here? What things can we learn when it comes to actually brewing a cup of coffee? Because you know it's about that ritual, about that thing that we want to do and crave and understand as much as we can. But I think after a while, we're gonna get to a place where we're just using one brewer. We are trying to master that brewer with that coffee. Don't get me wrong, I do like the fact that you're able to use different brewers for different reasons. I'm still figuring that out for myself, and I'll share that more with you as I go down this journey of documenting and understanding these brewers and just giving you a piece of understanding of what I'm doing. I think that's gonna help out quite a bit because that's all we're trying to do - we're trying to maximize our love for coffee.

I think a lot of us are in this whole pour-over game, and I do like an automatic drip. Don't get me wrong, I like the ease of use it has. One thing that I am learning is that it's very similar to a lot of things. I don't want to ramble anymore - feel like I kind of am. Let me know what you think about this. Do you have different brewers you play around with different ones? Do you notice different characteristics that you like about the brewers in whichever way that you actually put your cup of coffee? Because again, like I said, you're probably just good enough with a V60 with all different filters, even a flat bottom filter, and kind of just going about it from that way because it can fit in almost any filters and you're not gonna have any issues whatsoever doing a fast pour, a slow pour, or manipulating your brew with temperature, time, and grind size.

[00:10:25] Something like that. This is Everyday Beans signing off. It's just a quickie. Let me know what you think and we'll go from there. Talk to you later. Bye.