Siphon coffee
Also called syphon or vacuum pot
A siphon brewer has two glass chambers stacked over a heat source. Steam pressure pushes hot water from the lower chamber into the upper one, where it steeps with the coffee; when the heat is taken away, the steam condenses and the brewed coffee is drawn back down through a filter, leaving the grounds above.
At a glance
- In the cup
- Coffee and water, filtered
- Method
- Steeping, moved by steam and vacuum
- Brewing water
- Just below boiling
- Gear
- Two glass chambers, a filter, a burner
How does a siphon coffee maker work?
Heating the lower chamber builds steam pressure, which pushes the water up a tube into the upper chamber. It only needs enough pressure to overcome gravity and the atmosphere, so the water that reaches the coffee stays below 100 °C. When the heat is removed, the steam condenses and leaves a partial vacuum; atmospheric pressure then pushes the coffee back down through the filter.
Source: The Science Behind Syphons, Barista Hustle
Who invented the siphon?
The record is thin. Barista Hustle credits Johann Nörremberg, a physics teacher who in 1826 built a steam-driven brewer to show his students what steam could do, and described it in a German physics journal the following year without patenting it. Earlier vacuum brewers, it notes, had relied on mechanical pumps.
Source: Syphon Coffee, Barista Hustle
Other histories name different inventors in Berlin and Lyon in the 1830s and 1840s. We could not check their patents directly, so they are left out here.
Read next
- Moka potA stovetop pot where steam pressure pushes hot water up through ground coffee into a top chamber.
- French pressCoarse coffee steeped in hot water, then held back by pressing a metal mesh filter down through the pot.
- Pour-overHot water poured by hand over ground coffee in a filter, dripping through into the cup.
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