An assortment of Dwell Drippers from Verve Coffee Roasters. All images courtesy of Verve Coffee Roasters.
It’s rare for a coffee roasting company to get into equipment development, yet Colby Barr and a team at California’s Verve Coffee Roasters kept ruminating on the concept that a filter can also be the essence of the brewer.
After a research and designing phase, then offering prototypes for feedback, Santa Cruz-based Verve recently launched sales of the Dwell Dripper, a manual pourover brewer.
Priced at $24.99 and available in seven different colors at Verve’s website and on Amazon, the Dwell Dripper is made entirely of flexible BPA-free silicone rubber and features a wide open-bottom design for a free-flowing brew.
The minimally restrained exit flow of the unbreakable, travel-friendly brewer naturally emphasizes grind fineness and barista technique as variables affecting the finished cup.
In collaboration with home products design studio Bould Design, the roasting company took inspiration from the kinds of pre-filled packets that unfold and sit atop a drinking vessel for single pourovers. The format is particularly popular in Japan, where Verve maintains a roastery and multiple coffee bars.
“[We were inspired] specifically by the concept that a filter can be your brewer, which is what led us to pursue an open bottom and steeper walls in the design of the Dwell Dripper,” Verve Coffee Roasters Co-Founder Colby Barr told Daily Coffee News. “It showed us that a free flowing brew design can make exceptional coffee with ease.”
Founded in 2007, Verve today operates 11 retail locations throughout California. Its first cafe in Tokyo, Japan, opened at Shinjuko Station in 2016. In 2020 the company opened a roastery in Tokyo, as well as two more retail bars. The company now runs seven cafes in Japan.
A small number of Dwell Dripper prototypes were handed out during the SCA Expo in Chicago earlier this year. Design tweaks based on feedback from that event included new colors and a new crossbar across the bottom for increased filter support.
Verve recommends a simple “3×3” recipe for the Dwell Dripper: Three scoops of ground coffee plus water poured to a visible fill line on the brewer three times. Each dripper ships with a matching scoop and is compatible with Kalita Wave paper filters as well as custom Dwell Dripper Filters from Verve.
“This is just the beginning of brewing equipment from Verve,” Barr told DCN. “Going into next year we will continue our innovations with the Dwell line, as well as craft single serve and our ready-to-drink Flash Brew Oat Milk Lattes. Beyond that, we will continue to look for retail opportunities here and abroad, while leaning back into creating the coffee content that we have always been passionate about.”
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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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