Is it a Church? No, it’s a coffee maker!

Over the last year or so, as we developed the EPO Coffee Brewer, with its Patent Pending Encapsulated Pour-Over method, we came across many interesting facts and developed a few, possibly provocative, thoughts about the world of coffee.

This is one of a series of articles we produced to share them.

We have looked at, and thought about, a lot of different approaches to making coffee.

Some we quickly moved past, as the process was so far removed from our goal of simplification it made no sense for us to spend too much time on them. A coffee brewer from LD|DL in South Korea stopped us in our tracks.

For reasons that we won’t go into here, we settled on developing a brewer that improves on the standard pour-over method.

The Simplest Way to Make Coffee

There are only two conceptually simpler ways to make coffee than using pour-over. First, there is the approach favored with Turkish coffee - or a Cowboy Brew - where there is no attempt made to separate the ground coffee from the water – you end up drinking both, too some degree. We stepped away from this technique as, to our mind, it simply did not deliver a pleasant drinking experience.

And then there’s cold brew – where you don’t even have the complication of heating the water. Whatever you think of cold-brew (and it’s not our cup of coffee – see what some others thought here and, more positively, here) it’s hard to see how you could have a simpler process – on the assumption that you want to separate the coffee drink from most of the coffee grounds.

The Gothic Steampunk Brewer

Which brings me to the paradox that is the LD|DL (Dutch Lab) Gothic Steampunk Brewer. I can’t stop looking at this thing!

It uses the cold brew method (cold drip, to be precise), allowing the water to percolate through the coffee thanks to gravity. Process-wise, this sounds great to me. But then … well look at it! It looks like a Gothic Cathedral in a bombed-out World War 2 European city. St Nicolas Church in Hamburg, for instance.

I had to understand what took the obviously talented creators down this path.

I believe that there are two main reasons. Firstly, there is a definite use-case (to use that clumsy expression) that warrants this design. Secondly, it communicates values that DL|LD believe will resonate with their customers.

We have built our brewer on these same high-level principles, but ended up with a very, very different product because of our different values.

Social Symbol

The gothic brewer is used in a social setting. As LD|DL say on their website, “it is a symbol of socializing, composure and passion. It is also another way to express the culture and life of a certain region. Traditionally in Arab culture, coffee is the symbol of hospitality, sophistication and generosity …”.

The brewer is a social dining centerpiece, used to emphasize the thoughtfulness of a host and, one assumes, to create a shared experience - “Brewing over long hours, one of the distinctive features of the cold drip method symbolizes sincere hospitality.”

OK, that seems fair enough. It’s a long way from where our brewer is - which is about simply providing coffee to an individual, just the way that he or she wants it – but the sentiment of sharing up to 3 liters of coffee with friends, guests or family does seem attractive. It certainly seems to facilitate connectedness.

So, we understand the scale and function, but what about that baroque design?

Performance & Wealth

LD|DL describe themselves as a ‘premium dining object brand’. The final sentence of the quote we truncated above, goes on to read “Traditionally in Arab culture, coffee is the symbol of hospitality, sophistication and generosity as well as wealth.” So, the design is meant to be an overt statement of affluence and at $8,700 for the Gothic Edition, it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t achieve its goal. But, if you want to go a step beyond, you could elect to have the Burj Akma version … which would let your guests know you are able to spend $28,000 on a coffee brewer!

The brewer is really an object that “sublimates the coffee brewing process into an art performance”.

It’s hard to argue that LD|DL have not delivered.

Relative Values

Brewer as a coffee brewer. Maybe it’s easier to live with it as a piece of art that happens to have a ‘coffee performance’ dimension to it.

We share LD|DL’s desire to use a simple process that allows some sort of connection with the coffee making process.

We agree that the brewer can and should communicate values that the user embraces.

Our values based on simplicity, minimizing resource consumption (including dollars!) and an aesthetic that is visual, tactile and resulting from a consideration of form and function, are interestingly different from LD|DL’s.

That said, I’m glad that this over-the-top Gothic brewer exists! I’d love to see it in action one day.

If you’d like to check out more of LD|DL designs, visit https://www.dutch-lab.com/