The Fellow Aiden brewer at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Chicago. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Popular consumer coffee equipment maker Fellow made waves at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Chicago last week with the launch of an automatic drip coffee brewer, the Aiden.
[See DCN’s complete 2024 SCA Expo coverage here.]
The Aiden extends the Fellow’s dapper design language — as established through its Stagg kettles, and its Opus and Ode grinders — while expanding the brand’s reach for the first time into automatic brewing.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Pre-orders of the black cubical machine launched for $365, putting Aiden at the higher end of the home automatic brewer spectrum, with shipments expected to begin later this year.
Fellow Aiden Highlights
Employing temperature monitoring and control tech from Fellow’s Stagg EKG kettle line, the Aiden is packed with features designed to balance convenience and brew-profiling geekery.
Users can determine how deeply they want to interact with the brewer, which offers one-click operation or a “guided” mode that helps users dial in specific settings. An app gives users additional control over temperature and time, both for the bloom and extraction phases.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Water flows through an algorithm-controlled thick-film heated coil capable of changing temperature rapidly enough to grow hotter or cooler from one water pulse to the next. The machine ships with two filter-holders: a Melitta-style flat-bottom conical shape for brewing 1-2 cups, and a flat-bottom basket shape for up to 10 cups.
“In my opinion, this is truly an all-in-one, amazingly capable machine, just really pushing the boundaries of what a home brewer can be, and I’m super proud to be releasing it today,” Fellow Vice President of R&D Nick Terzulli told DCN in Chicago.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
A removable side-mounted plastic water reservoir accepts between 150-1,500 milliliters of water. The lid over the brew chamber contains a rubber gasket that prevents steam from escaping — a feature designed to protect the underside of kitchen cabinets while preserving steadier temps during brewing.
A full-diameter press-fit lid seals the insulated stainless-steel carafe. The carafe’s cylindrical, groove-free interior and wide-open top are designed to leave no drop behind while also making it easier to clean and dry.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Wi-fi connectivity allows Fellow, Aiden community users and roasters to share brewing profiles for download and execution on any Aiden machine. Profiles can include any temperature, volume and number of pulses of water delivered at a flow rate fixed by Fellow.
The machine also includes a hot-bloom cold brew profile in which hot water activates the coffee bed for a bloom cycle before a series of lower-temperature pulses of water move through the bed for anywhere from two to three hours.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
“We’ve actually built algorithms for this machine that can control the pump and the heater at the same time to ramp the pump and deliver a specific amount of energy to the heater to make sure that our overshoot and undershoot are very tightly controlled,” Terluzzi told DCN. “We’ve been able to prove that we can make amazing batch brew and amazing single-serve with this technology that has never been done before in the home.”
Fellow Background
Founded in 2013 by current CEO Jake Miller, Fellow was propelled early on by a series of remarkably successful Kickstarter campaigns. The company then raised $7.6 million in a Series A funding round in 2021, and $30 million more in a Series B round in 2022.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Prior to the Aiden, the company has focused predominantly on equipping home and professional specialty coffee baristas for manual brewing, including offering kettles, drippers and electric coffee grinders, in addition to travel and ceramic drinkware such as its popular Carter mug line.
Fellow began accepting pre-orders for the Aiden upon revealing the product at the Expo in Chicago last Friday. Machines are expected to begin shipping in September.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
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