Let’s Compare: Pour Over vs Drip Coffee
Now that you know how pour over and drip coffee pots work, and the key things that set them apart, let’s see what those differences really mean for your daily brew.
Flavor Quality
When you’re comparing flavor with pour over vs drip coffee pots, there are no hard and fast rules. A drip coffee can beat a pour over coffee, especially if you’re using a higher-end brewer that offers more recipe customization.
However, most coffee lovers who try pour over agree that there’s some magic about the way it’s made that produces a richer, more complex flavor—and we agree.
Read: Coffee Flavor 101: How to Taste Your Brew Like the Pros for Max Enjoyment
Drip coffee pots have a way of mellowing out a coffee’s most interesting flavors. Pour over brewers seem to highlight them. And there’s a good reason.
When you brew pour over coffee, there’s nothing holding you back from achieving an exceptional brew.
- No water temperature limitation
- No recipe you’re stuck with
- No set-in-stone water pouring technique that’s unchangeable
As a result, most people find it easy to brew coffee that’s more nuanced and delicious with a pour over brewer than a drip coffee pot.
Of course, people can also make not-so-good coffee with pour over brewers. Since it’s a fully-manual brewer type, there’s room for error, which brings us to our next comparison…
Simplicity and Ease
Just because you can make better-tasting coffee, doesn’t mean you always will.
The strength of a drip coffee pot is precisely that it always does the same thing, over and over again (for better or for worse). Usually, that means you can count on “good enough I guess” coffee every morning, pretty much without fail.
Pour over brewing, since it’s fundamentally a manual process, means you have to be mindful of your technique when you brew to create those A+ flavors.
This means, of course, that it’s a little less easy. The process is straightforward and simple, but if you lose focus mid-brew when you pour water, you might end up not saturating all the grounds evenly (like a low-end drip pot, or worse).
Making pour over coffee is not hard—far from it—but it’s not automated.
If this concerns you, there’s an easy fix: our ESPRO Bloom Pour Over brewer has special tapered walls that ensure all the coffee is evenly saturated for a balanced brew every time. This resolves some of the inconsistency challenges of older pour over types.
Customizability
Drip pots are straightforward: they make black coffee the way they’re designed to.
Pour over cones are a different story.
- You have power over your brew. If you make a bad cup with a drip pot, well, bummer. That’s just how it is. If you make a not-so-good brew with a pour over, you have the power to make small adjustments to your technique to improve the flavor. For example, fixing sour coffee is pretty easy.
- You can make refreshing iced pour over coffee. This is a huge advantage for many people, especially those living in warm climates. “Flash chilled” coffee is incredibly delicious, and just as flavorful as black pour over coffee—here’s how to make it.
If you just want a daily mug, it’s hard to beat a drip coffee. But if you want more ownership of your coffee, and like to tinker to make things work better and better for you, you’re a shoo-in for loving pour overs instead.
Longevity
To put it plainly, most drip coffee makers are designed to be replaced. The plastic parts don’t last forever, the electronics break down from time to time, and landfills are littered with old pots. Unless you purchase a higher-end model, drip pots generally only last a couple of years.
Pour over brewers, on the other hand, are extremely simple devices, usually just made of one or two metal or ceramic parts. Without wires or breakable electronics, pour over brewers can last and work well for decades.
For this reason, pour over brewers are increasingly popular with not only coffee lovers, but the “Buy It For Life” crowd, who’d rather take life a little slower and produce less landfill waste.