I really like this recommendation as a beginner friendly introduction to brewing at home. You point out advantages compared to pour over devices, but I think it also stacks up well against other immersion brewers for a beginner. I also like how it gives you versatility since you can also use it for pour overs and hybrid brewing.
Totally! I think the most common question I get from people just starting in coffee brewing at home is whether they should get a French Press. I think they make great coffee, but can be fragile/hard to clean and accumulate off-flavors in the metal parts. The Clever gets around a lot of that quite nicely.
I recently bought a Hario Switch which follows the Clever style system but it has a glass/rubber construction, a bit more expensive but it is nicer to look at, I did a very amateur version of your experiment with a metal mesh filter and a plastic v60. The Hario Switch easily produced the best most rounded balanced tasting coffee with no effort to get that result. A clever or a switch is defintely the way to go for beginners and anyone will be able to consistently get a great cup of coffee with good FRESH beans. A Burr grinder,(Xeoleo from Amazon for £65) a Clever or a Switch, any cheap papers, a scale with timer and you can have great coffee in 5 minutes every day if you buy FRESH beans
Totally agree, it’s fascinating to me how reliable the Clever can be compared to traditional pour overs. It’s a nice balance between an Aeropress (almost too many variables to control) and a V60 (too few). I’ll have to check out the Switch!
Excellent video. I too have always used a Kalita 185 but recently switched to a Clever. I love it. The ease of use, the ability to do other things while it's brewing, plus as you say, so very forgiving makes it a great choice. Question. When watching videos using the Clever, I have not seen anyone bloom the coffee with the Clever. Doesn't a bloom make sense even with an emersion brewer? Thanks again and keep those very informative videos coming.
Thanks for stopping by! You touched on a great point with blooming, I actually cut my discussion of that from the video for length considerations, but I personally don't think you need to bloom with the Clever. I see the purpose of blooming for percolation methods (e.g., pourover) to allow the coffee to degas, which will limit off-gassing as the brew draws down in subsequent pours. For the Clever, you can control that effectively with the amount of time you let it extract, so I think that it's not necessary. I think the Clever is actually most analogous to the AeroPress. Although some people do recommend blooming with an AeroPress, the amount of people winning Championships without a bloom suggests to me that you don't need to bloom with the Clever either.
Very interesting! I'm a (ceramic) V60 user since 2017 now, just recently saw the Clever dripper for the first time on Instagram. Awesome device. The Clever has the huge advantage of taking these cheap Melitta filters, which are way cheaper than Hario VCF-01 paper.
Totally! I still use my ceramic V60 that's over a decade old, it's a champion for sure. I did find that my Hario Slim hand grinder was making it hard to get the best results, and once I started brewing V60 with my Sette or my Aerspeed, the results improved dramatically.
How does one make 2 mugs (ceramic, not see-through) of coffee with a Clever dripper and minimal other stuff? All videos conveniently show one mug/cup only.
This is excellent. I am a beginner who started with a bodum pour over, not realizing how complex that brewing method is. I've been vacillating between a Hario, Chemex, or clever dripper. You're the first reviewer i watched that mentioned Melita filters are available at a grocery store. That might seem obvious to the coffee community, but i had no idea. Definitely going with the clever for now. Maybe I'll make the jump to pour over one day. Ninja edit: i subscribed and i hope you continue to grow your channel
Glad this was helpful! I think pourover filters are becoming a lot easier to find, but I really can’t beat finding standard filters at my grocery store literally across the street. Thanks for the sub!
Is the clever good enough to be the go-to method even for an experienced barista? Not sure if most of the time predictable and reliable methods are the top pick for people that really knows what they're doing and at the same time, would like to know if other brewers (V60) are preferred for the control they offer or by the taste of the coffee you can get from them. If you like the coffee you brew with s Melitta (I do) there's no justification to not using it on a daily basis to enjoy your cup of Joe!
You don't need to preheat the Clever since it's plastic. That plastic just doesn't really pull temperature out of your water like metal, glass, or ceramic. I also don't bother with the lid, tbh. I've done comparative tasting between brews with and without and you really don't lose enough temperature over the course of a steep to make enough of a difference. I mention these things just to say the Clever can be that much simpler for first-time brewers.
Sometimes the clever can clog when you go coffee first. Water first helps with this and it drains in about 45 to 60 seconds instead of 5 to 6 minutes when the clogging happens
I'd absolutely recommend water first. You get a much cleaner, sweeter result that way. It's prone to clogging and a longer drawdown time if you add coffee first, neither of which helps the flavour (unless you actually like that in which case do what you want 😂) James Hoffman advocates water first as well, and he's very rarely, if ever, wrong about these things.
I really like this recommendation as a beginner friendly introduction to brewing at home. You point out advantages compared to pour over devices, but I think it also stacks up well against other immersion brewers for a beginner. I also like how it gives you versatility since you can also use it for pour overs and hybrid brewing.
Totally! I think the most common question I get from people just starting in coffee brewing at home is whether they should get a French Press. I think they make great coffee, but can be fragile/hard to clean and accumulate off-flavors in the metal parts. The Clever gets around a lot of that quite nicely.
I recently bought a Hario Switch which follows the Clever style system but it has a glass/rubber construction, a bit more expensive but it is nicer to look at, I did a very amateur version of your experiment with a metal mesh filter and a plastic v60. The Hario Switch easily produced the best most rounded balanced tasting coffee with no effort to get that result. A clever or a switch is defintely the way to go for beginners and anyone will be able to consistently get a great cup of coffee with good FRESH beans. A Burr grinder,(Xeoleo from Amazon for £65) a Clever or a Switch, any cheap papers, a scale with timer and you can have great coffee in 5 minutes every day if you buy FRESH beans
Totally agree, it’s fascinating to me how reliable the Clever can be compared to traditional pour overs. It’s a nice balance between an Aeropress (almost too many variables to control) and a V60 (too few). I’ll have to check out the Switch!
Excellent video. I too have always used a Kalita 185 but recently switched to a Clever. I love it. The ease of use, the ability to do other things while it's brewing, plus as you say, so very forgiving makes it a great choice. Question. When watching videos using the Clever, I have not seen anyone bloom the coffee with the Clever. Doesn't a bloom make sense even with an emersion brewer? Thanks again and keep those very informative videos coming.
Thanks for stopping by! You touched on a great point with blooming, I actually cut my discussion of that from the video for length considerations, but I personally don't think you need to bloom with the Clever. I see the purpose of blooming for percolation methods (e.g., pourover) to allow the coffee to degas, which will limit off-gassing as the brew draws down in subsequent pours. For the Clever, you can control that effectively with the amount of time you let it extract, so I think that it's not necessary.
I think the Clever is actually most analogous to the AeroPress. Although some people do recommend blooming with an AeroPress, the amount of people winning Championships without a bloom suggests to me that you don't need to bloom with the Clever either.
@@brewingjitsu Makes complete sense. Thanks.
Very interesting! I'm a (ceramic) V60 user since 2017 now, just recently saw the Clever dripper for the first time on Instagram. Awesome device. The Clever has the huge advantage of taking these cheap Melitta filters, which are way cheaper than Hario VCF-01 paper.
Totally! I still use my ceramic V60 that's over a decade old, it's a champion for sure. I did find that my Hario Slim hand grinder was making it hard to get the best results, and once I started brewing V60 with my Sette or my Aerspeed, the results improved dramatically.
How does one make 2 mugs (ceramic, not see-through) of coffee with a Clever dripper and minimal other stuff? All videos conveniently show one mug/cup only.
This is excellent. I am a beginner who started with a bodum pour over, not realizing how complex that brewing method is. I've been vacillating between a Hario, Chemex, or clever dripper. You're the first reviewer i watched that mentioned Melita filters are available at a grocery store. That might seem obvious to the coffee community, but i had no idea. Definitely going with the clever for now. Maybe I'll make the jump to pour over one day.
Ninja edit: i subscribed and i hope you continue to grow your channel
Glad this was helpful! I think pourover filters are becoming a lot easier to find, but I really can’t beat finding standard filters at my grocery store literally across the street. Thanks for the sub!
Is the clever good enough to be the go-to method even for an experienced barista? Not sure if most of the time predictable and reliable methods are the top pick for people that really knows what they're doing and at the same time, would like to know if other brewers (V60) are preferred for the control they offer or by the taste of the coffee you can get from them. If you like the coffee you brew with s Melitta (I do) there's no justification to not using it on a daily basis to enjoy your cup of Joe!
You don't need to preheat the Clever since it's plastic. That plastic just doesn't really pull temperature out of your water like metal, glass, or ceramic. I also don't bother with the lid, tbh. I've done comparative tasting between brews with and without and you really don't lose enough temperature over the course of a steep to make enough of a difference. I mention these things just to say the Clever can be that much simpler for first-time brewers.
I've heard that there's a very big difference between adding coffee then the water vs water then coffee. Have you ever tried it?
Sometimes the clever can clog when you go coffee first. Water first helps with this and it drains in about 45 to 60 seconds instead of 5 to 6 minutes when the clogging happens
I'd absolutely recommend water first. You get a much cleaner, sweeter result that way. It's prone to clogging and a longer drawdown time if you add coffee first, neither of which helps the flavour (unless you actually like that in which case do what you want 😂) James Hoffman advocates water first as well, and he's very rarely, if ever, wrong about these things.
I want that Phodega t-shirt 😎