Siphon Coffee

A siphon (also spelt syphon, or called a vacuum pot) looks more like laboratory glassware than a coffee maker. Water is heated in a round lower globe; as it gets hot, vapour pressure pushes it up a tube into the upper chamber, where it meets the ground coffee and steeps just below boiling. When the heat is turned off, the lower chamber cools, the pressure drops and the brewed coffee is pulled back down through a cloth, paper or metal filter, leaving the grounds behind.

The result combines the body of an immersion brew with the clarity of a filtered one: clean, aromatic and often described as tea-like, with flavours that open up as it cools. It is a slower, more hands-on method that needs attention, which is part of its appeal.

Vacuum brewers were popular in Europe and the United States into the mid-20th century before electric drip machines took over. Today they are most closely associated with Japan and Taiwan, where siphon coffee is a speciality at traditional coffee houses and at competitions.

The vacuum coffee maker is usually traced to Loeff of Berlin in the 1830s. In 1841 Madame Vassieux of Lyon patented the twin-globe design that most people still picture today, and other variants soon followed – among them the Napier vacuum machine and the side-by-side “balance” siphon, whose counterweight extinguishes the flame when the water has risen.

Vacuum brewers reached the United States towards the end of the 19th century. From 1915 the Silex, made with oven-proof Pyrex glass, brought them into many American kitchens, and they stayed popular until the mid-20th century, when simpler electric drip machines replaced them in most homes.

In Japan the siphon found a lasting home. The glassmaker Hario developed an all-glass siphon after the Second World War, and siphon coffee became a hallmark of Japanese coffee houses. Japan launched a Japan Siphonist Championship in 2003, which grew into the World Siphonist Championship in 2009.