Mrs. Merita, the pioneer of follicular coffee.

When it comes to follicular coffee brewing, we owe it to Bentz Melitta, a German housewife. She invented the coffee follicle method more than 100 years ago, rewriting the history of coffee drinking in Germany and the world.

Benz Melita was born in Dresden in 1873. As a housewife, she liked Schälchen Heeßen(Saxon dialect, meaning a cup of coffee eine Tasse Kaffee)-freshly brewed coffee, but she was a perfectionist and hated coffee grounds left between her teeth. One day, on a whim, she punched a hole in the bottom of the copper bowl, took a piece of blotting paper from her son's schoolbag and put it on it. She poured hot water into it, and the mellow coffee dripped through the blotting paper into the pot. Thus she invented the follicular method of filtering out the residue and retaining the aroma of full-bodied coffee. Before this invention, people used cloth bags to filter coffee grounds. However, the cloth filter bag is troublesome to clean, and the other is unsanitary after repeated use. The coffee grounds remaining in the gap of the bag are easy to destroy the original taste of coffee.

On June 20, 1908, Melita registered her invention at the Royal Patent Office: a copper coffee filter cup with an arched bottom perforated with a water outlet, which was the world's first follicular coffee cup. Melita Benz founded Melita Inc. in her residence on a small budget and registered her signature Melitta as a trademark.

Unfortunately, local archives in Germany record little about the life history of the daughter of Dresden, who invented follicular coffee. But this great invention soon became a household name and eventually became a necessity in German kitchens. In the mid-1920s, orders poured in from all over the world, and the business of manufacturing Merita coffee filter cups expanded rapidly, but the original family company area could not accommodate the production order of 100000 filters including ceramic filters, and the company moved to Minden in 1929. Today, Melita is still run by the founder's grandchildren. Melita now has 50 branches around the world, more than 3200 employees, Melita hand filter cup early also towards automation direction improvement, after numerous improvements finally achieved great success in the United States, that is, now we see the most popular American coffee automatic follicle machine. But if you take apart an American-style coffee maker, Mrs. Melita's follicular approach has remained almost unchanged, except for the shape of the filter and the filter paper.

It can be said that Saxons have a long-standing coffee sentiment in their bones. Bach, the world-famous composer and composer of Leipzig Thomas Chapel, composed "Coffee Contata". Elector of Saxony and King of Poland Augustus the Strong appreciated fine porcelain for brewing coffee and tea and founded Europe's first porcelain factory in Meissen (Dresden). In Leipzig, Coffe Baum, which opened in the early 19th century, is one of the oldest cafes in the world and is still open today. In Saxony, the words Bliemchengaffe and Blümchenkaffee are used for very weak drinks. Most of these weak drinks are so watered down that you can see the pattern on the bottom of a coffee-filled Meissen china.

Today, 51% of German households own a classic filter drip coffee machine, and 6% of them regularly use Melita's early follicular cups to brew a good cup of German coffee.

In the modern fast-paced information society, it is undeniable that this pure manual follicular coffee method 100 years ago has become less and less in Germany and Europe, but this ancient coffee brewing method has miraculously taken root and blossomed in the eastern land, especially in Japan, South Korea, China Taiwan and the interior, where it has flourished and is in the ascendant. Especially since the 1950s, the Japanese have almost become fascinated with Melita filter cups. A variety of materials follicular, drip filter coffee filter cup appliances emerge in endlessly, established a set of hand-brewed follicular coffee theory and operation technology, more and more people's favorite, really should be the phrase "the west is not bright east bright" proverb.

Typical Melitta single-hole filter bowl

Interestingly, the Japanese also invented a series of follicular coffee appliances modeled on Melita appliances, named Kalita.

Kalita 185 Filter Cup

Two kinds of filter cups in addition to a slightly different structure, there is no difference in the method of use, because Melitta filter cups are mostly single-hole, so it is also called "single-hole filter cup", single-hole filter cup is mainly used for German roast and other medium-depth roast coffee, and shallow roast is easier to plug the filter hole;Kalita filter cup is mostly three-hole, not easy to plug, suitable for all kinds of roast coffee, and as long as the amount of extraction can be adjusted to adjust the concentration, use more convenient than Melitta filter cup.