Equipment – Melodrip

Let’s go with another equipment review!

When it comes to pour-over brewing it ‘s easy to get stuck in progress or don’t have the time to perfect it. The Melodrip helps you begin your pour-over journey with solid brewing towards a cleaner cup!

I don’t know if I’ve said this before but I like to brew a V60 ‘to-go’ to work. When I brew detailed recipes it’s hard to get into a brewing mood in the morning, the Melodrip is really helpful when you just want to get that good loyal brewing. In this occasion, I don’t even think about it at all. I just look at the time and the weight in grams (how much water goes in). However, this is the lazy sloppy method, but that’s what you want early in the morning.

But does it really work? Yes! The most important ability the Melodrip has (in my opinion) is that it satisfies a large surface area, the water flow spreads out in a way easier compared to a big shower head, a rain shower if you may. So instead of getting that big flow of water on one part of the surface, you get many small droplets on a bigger surface. This helps for canceling out the risk of “over-extraction”. I like to pour my water like any other brewer, I want to saturate as much coffee grounds as possible. However, when you do this in a lazy or unskilled way it will over-agitate the brew to over-extraction. This is when the Melodrip levels out the playing field, an unskilled with the Melodrip will not get an over-extracted watery coffee. Which means you don’t have to invest 2-5 years of everyday brewing to get this far, and that’s amazing!

Something I’ve learned is that the Melodrip is a very nice shortcut to great brewing with the V60. I’ve always thought that conical brewing such as the V60 has a higher skill cap rather than flat bottoms like the Kalita. The V60 + Melodrip = really easy to use for everyone, just look at your time and grams and you’re good to go. I have three gooseneck water kettles, they are kinda expensive, but if you’re not into becoming a greater water pourer this is your safest bet. You can use any water kettle, just get one with temperature control (or use a thermometer).

If the Melodrip works as a shortcut, is there a shortcut to master it?  Yup! With data I’ve collected through months and months of brewing, this is the most obvious differences between using the Melodrip or the gooseneck kettle is that it’s another tool between water and coffee. I’ve found that a recipe with 95 degrees Celsius will need 96 degrees water to get an even temperature. When it comes to lower temperatures like 91 degrees Celsius you need to use a temperature of 93 degrees Celsius. This includes me rinsing the Melodrip with the same temperature of the water as I’m gonna brew with. Another important thing to remember is that the Melodrip will not provoke the coffee grounds (almost at all), so use the included glass stirrer (can be seen in the picture) or your trusted bamboo stirrer. You’ll notice a less saturated bottom of the coffee grinds than usual pouring, however, this isn’t a problem when you stir it around.

So is the Melodrip worth 45 dollars? In my opinion yes! Especially if you’re a beginner with any kind of pour-over, even if you’re skilled this should be a piece of fun equipment you can bring out. The combinations are unlimited. You could bloom the coffee with the Melodrip and later alternate with Melodrip and normal gooseneck kettle pouring. It’s fun to experiment with coffee and this way it keeps the coffee game fresh. I’ve had a lot of fun and I’ve actually introduced some people close to me to manual brewing thanks to the Melodrip! However, finally I must thank Melodrip for the opportunity to try their amazing tool, I’ve had a blast the last couple of months so I could get some experience with it so I could give the best review I could.

Let’s end the review with links to Melodrips website and a recipe from the man himself, Ray  Murakawa:

Overview:

This is a more easy read that I’ve adjusted, if you want to read his detailed recipe click here, the recipe is called “MELODRIP RECIPE B – BY RAY MURAKAWA”

Click here to come to the Melodrip homepage