Melitta Pour-Over Coffee Maker Review: simple, single-serve brews

Melitta makes some of the most popular pour overs on the market. Simple and chic, they tick a lot of boxes for a lot of coffee drinkers. If you want to make fresh coffee without much mess, this could be the coffee maker for you.

Pour overs are known for their mess-free, filter-style coffee. Melitta's classic, 1-cup model is a perfect example of this easy method. I took it to our test kitchen to find out whether it lives up to its reputation. Spoiler alert: it does.

If you're looking for gift ideas, especially for a wedding registry, you can also buy the 1-cup in an Aristan Set from Amazon, which is the model Melitta sent me. It comes with a bamboo tray and porcelain coffee canister. The simple style takes up more room, but would work in everything from a cozy farmhouse to a scandi-minimalist kitchen. Even though it looks beautiful, the best part about the Melitta is the coffee it brews.

But while the Melitta pour-over process is simple, I spotted a few places where novice brewers could make mistakes that would ruin their cup of coffee. These would apply to all the best pour over coffee makers, so it's worth making sure that you're brewing correctly before you use this pour over.

Specifications

Unboxing

Packaging for the Melitta is minimal, which is I always love. The cardboard box was cleverly shaped to keep the porcelain in pristine condition, without any extra plastic padding. It comes with three single-use Melitta filters, so if you've forgotten to buy them, you can get through the day without any caffeine withdrawal. However, though single-use filters are easy to clean up, they're also wasteful and an ongoing cost. I'd recommend buying a re-usable filter like this one from Walmart. 

Who would it suit?

This porcelain cup would suit a lot of coffee connoisseurs. The first discriminator is taste. The Melitta makes clean, crisp, and light coffee, which really suits a lot of coffee drinkers. If you tend to make one coffee at a time, especially if you have a small kitchen, this single-cup pour over is perfect. Efficient, small, and chic, any kitchen will have space for it.

However, it has one drain hole, as opposed to three, so if you aren't a careful pourer, you might over-brew your coffee. Also, if you're in a hurry and you need to batch brew more coffee, this will take too long, because you need to pour your water over the coffee very specifically and you can only brew one cup at a time.

What is it like to use?

Pour overs are always straightforward to use, but they aren't always tidy. This Melitta is. I sat the Melitta directly over my cup, but you could sit it on a decanter to empty, dilute, and store your coffee as needed. 

I placed my filter paper cone into the pour-over and saturated it with water. It's great to have a goose-neck kettle, like this one from Walmart, for occasions like this, because you can achieve a really precise stream of water. Unfortunately, I didn't, so my pour was a little rough, but the paper was still well saturated. I poured in a spiral from the center of the funnel to the upper-edges. This prepares your filter for extracting coffee oils. When the paper is dry, it absorbs some of the coffee oils into its fibers, rather than depositing them in your cup, meaning that you're more lively to over-extract your coffee, resulting in a bitter brew.

Next, I put 18 grams of coffee grounds into the bottom of my filter. I weighed these out in advance, but you could sit your filter on coffee scales (mine are like these from Walmart) for the whole process and measure it that way.

Next, I measured one and a half cups of boiling water into a my kettle. Before you pour, make sure that your water isn't boiling hot, or it will burn the grounds. Ideally, it will be between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour a little hot water over your grounds so that they are wet but not fully covered. This will 'bloom' your grounds, helping them to taste sweeter and less acidic.

Once you've let the water drain from these grounds, you can pour the rest of your cup of hot water over the grounds. This will filter through in a few minutes. Under the Melitta, you will have your coffee, ready to drink. Mine tasted like the paragon of pour-overs: delicate, light, and very singular in its taste.

Cleaning, storage, and maintenance

The beauty of pour-overs is in the clean up. You can fold up your filter paper and place it in the food waste. The Melitta is dishwasher safe, but I washed mine by hand in warm, soapy water. It doesn't get very dirty, because the grounds are all contained in the filter paper, but it's still good to take care washing around the drain hole so that excess coffee isn't left behind for next time.

As for storing the Melitta, it's no bigger than a coffee mug. I guarantee you'll have room for this in your cupboards, especially compared to lots of other pour-overs and coffee machines. You don't need to do anything to keep it working well, except clean it after every use.

How does it rate online?

For $15, I'm not surprised that this is a popular pour-over. It's inexpensive, but it feels like a premium product. Lots of users commented on the single drip hole, which means that your coffee brews slower. A longer brew time results in a stronger coffee, which doesn't require much attention. Lots of people who praised the Melitta were busy coffee drinkers, who wanted a low-maintenance method. I found a few people who had switched from the Chemex or Kalita, because they found pulse-pouring too time consuming. Reviewers also commented on the taste. Lots of people recommended adjusting grind size and bean type if you want to switch-up the notes in your brew.

Although having a single drip hole means that the coffee tastes stronger, some reviewers found that their coffees tasted a little bitter. Adding water in one go can over-extract the coffee oils from the grounds, because they have a longer contact time with the water. If you measure your cup of water carefully, this shouldn't be a problem. Some reviewers with smaller cups found that the big and heavy Melitta felt unstable and poorly suited to their size. However, these must have quite narrow diameters, because I tried brewing straight into my regular cup without any issues. 

How does it compare?

Melitta pour overs are really good for making consistently good coffee. If you keep all factors — amount of coffee grounds, grind size, water — the same, you'll enjoy a good cup of coffee. However, the single hole slows the water down, so your coffee is at risk of over-extraction and tasting bitter if you don't bloom it properly. 

Kalita pour overs, like this one from Walmart, have three hole drippers, so they drip faster. You need to pulse pour in this instance, letting your coffee bloom and drain a number of times. This takes a lot more effort, but can result in a cleaner and less harsh cup of coffee. If you don't mind taking more time over your brew, the Kalita will give a smooother, cleaner cup of coffee. 

If both of these single-serve options limit you too much, the Chemex, which you can also buy from Walmart, is a great option for batch brewing. It's bigger, so needs more storage space, but you can keep any left-over coffee in the glass decanter. It requires a pulse-pour too, so needs more attention than the Melitta, but it's also a quicker process. If you're a big household, I'd go for the Chemex.

Should you buy it?

If you make single servings of coffee and you have a small kitchen, I wouldn't hesitate to buy the Melitta. It makes a quick, clean cup of coffee and looks classy too. Having seen the Artisan Set in-person, I would recommend treating yourself to the full collection. It's a really great foundation for creating your own coffee nook, especially if you want to store your coffee grounds properly too. Either way, you can't go wrong with the Melitta. 

How we test

At Homes & Gardens we have a rigorous process for testing coffee makers. We take them to our dedicated test kitchen, which replicates yours at home, where we use them like you would. If they have any special features, we make sure to test those, so that you know whether they're gimmicks, or genuinely good innovations.

As a priority, we make sure that our coffee makers can make a good brew. However, we also make notes on extraneous aspects, such as unboxing and cleaning, so that you don't have any surprises when you're using it at home. If you would like to know more, we have a page on how we test coffee makers.