Hario "Switch" Immersion Dripper, Size 03

I use it every day and it works great. Have used it for pourover once or twice, works fine too. Perfect size for if you want a large-size coffee or regular size, I would not get any smaller for sure. If two people wanted a coffee regularly I would probably scale up to the next biggest size. There's really no downside to getting a larger one since you can always just use less grounds and water. I guess the size of the unit itself would be the only consideration, but I just keep it sitting in a small mug on the kitchen counter when I'm not using it. The paper filters it comes with are amazing, like really high quality. In terms of brew speed, it kind of depends on how you brew (and your grind size). If you don't shake it before you press the button, the grinds stick to the wall; if you do shake it, they'll fall to the bottom which I think results in a longer brew time. But ultimately I don't care as I just hit the button and walk away, and it drains into my insulated mug, so I can come back anytime to piping hot coffee. The other thing that's amazing about this is how the bottom is flexible rubber (or silicone?) with a little cut-out piece, so it will conform to smaller-opening mugs/cups. It squeezes perfectly into my mug which I didn't think about before I bought it but I realize now it could even squeeze into slightly smaller ones in theory. On taste: obviously this is subjective but I like it better than the aeropress. Because there's no stopper to fumble around with, you just put in your grounds, and then pour the water at any time, press the button at any time. You could even in theory use a little spoon to break up the grounds instead of a shake. So I feel like it's easier to tweak to get what you want. I notice that small adjustments in amount of water I use, brewing time, and pre-button-press shake, make a drastic change in taste, whereas with the aeropress my adjustments weren't as dramatic. On cleaning: I think this is easier to clean than the aeropress. Basically all I need to clean is the glass, which is wide so it's easy to scrub. There's not really any places for coffee to get trapped. Overall this is my favorite coffee brewer I've had. I'm kind of amazed nobody I know uses this. It's so simple and effective.

Here’s the deal! I own a moccamaster coffee maker, this brand is considered the top coffee machine made worldwide. Before that, I had a Bonavita maker, which is in the top two or three. Yes! I’m a coffee snob. I order my coffee online, expensive, yes! I won’t use coffee older than a month from roasting date. The Hario switch makes coffee BETTER than any expensive coffee maker, period! Plus you can adjust, and Taylor your brew. The first time I used it I was very surprised how great the cup tasted, the subtle nuances, sweetness, and body. Plus it’s EZ. An electric kettle helps, like a Fellow, with a timer, speeds everything up. Save your money and get this inexpensive way to make coffee….. but only if you want the perfect cup!

wonder why no one thought of this before! Combines ideas of a French press with a pour over, filtered device. Very easy. Works great. Cleans up easily. And best of all produces a really good coffee. You do have to learn the correct proportions of coffee and water, easily googled and easily modified as to how strong you like it. Note that this larger size, the 03, makes 3 servings, meaning 5 ozs per serving, rather than “3 cups” which would be 24 ozs (3 X 8).

Perfect hybrid style brewer. The aeropress got me into the world of brewing. I just hated how coffee would drip through before I’d start plunging. Yeah there’s the inverted method, but I didn’t want to risk spilling coffee everywhere. I saw the hario switch and it’s exactly what I was looking for. The level allows the coffee to steep for as long as you want before you want to brew the coffee. It’s like the pour over and a french press had a baby. You get to steep as long as you want like a french press and get the filtration of a pour over, no more coffee sludge taste. The switch is also so much easier to clean than a french press or aeropress. Just take out the filter once you’re done brewing and rinse it. I’ve had it for 3 years now and it still works great! Just don’t lose the magnetic ball mechanism and you’re good!

This makes very nice coffee. Clean up is a breeze with no worries of hidden mold like my Bonavita drip coffee maker. The holder is silicone which handles the hot water better than plastic. I wish the holder was ceramic or stainless steel, but then the switch may not work properly. I hardly ever use my Chemex or Aeropress. I usually fill my OXO kettle with filtered tap water to 190 degrees and the v60 switch with 50 grams of coffee grinds. I let it immerse for two minutes before opening the switch and completing the brew. I change the ratio depending on my mood. I highly recommend the V60 filters too.

This is the third full immersion dripper I've tried. I started with a Clever, which impressed me at the time, but I had a few problems with leakage and at some point I decided that I no longer felt like brewing hot coffee in plastic. Next I moved on to the Bonavita dripper, which was made of porcelain and had a very simple and effective release lever. The Bonavita had great heat retention, used standard #4 filters, and was easy to use. It was my driver for years but then one day I dropped it on the floor, and it's been discontinued, so... Here we are. My next immersion dripper, Hario. As compared to my previous favorite: - Like the Bonavita, the Hario dripper doesn't put my hot coffee in touch with plastic. YAY! - Unlike the Bonavita, this dripper uses nonstandard filters. These are more expensive, and I'm also not a fan of the thicker paper as compared to the brand I was using with the Bonavita (Filtropa), so I'll give this a BIG NAY. At least I'm not getting too much paper taste. (But more on taste in a moment.) - The Hario glass seems to have less effective heat retention than the Bonavita's porcelain. I can't prove that but I just don't feel that I'm getting a good heat up without a lot more initial water pouring. Not sure what the net impact is but I'll give this a MEH. - The Hario, unlike the Bonavita, is super-easy to completely disassemble and clean. Huge YAY here. My Bonavita was somewhat grungy inside, as was revealed after it shattered. Ew. - The Bonavita had significantly more water capacity. I can't brew more than 24g of coffee in the Hario, whereas I used to be able to go over 30 in the Bonavita. NAY. - No lid. The Bonavita didn't have one either. Clever for the win here! Why can't we get a nice lid and keep the water hot and contained, coffee dripper companies? Actual coffee rating? Well, here's where things go totally south for Hario. I've simply not gotten very good results with the Hario to date. I'm getting really sharp and bitter cups, with the same coffee and procedure that used to render excellent results with the Bonavita. What's different? First of all, the geometry of the dripper, which I theorize concentrates too much of the drainage through the narrow tip of the coffee at the end, thereby causing overextraction at that point. Second, the thick Hario paper and (perhaps) not well engineered interior, which cause a very long drainage time, thereby exacerbating the overextraction problem. No paper taste at least. So where does this leave me? Not immersion brewing all that much; I'm sticking with pour-over from my Kalita Wave for now and just using the Hario on occasion when I'm bored. I'm hoping that James Hoffmann, who says that he is a fan of the Hario, will create a guide to using it that will help me get a better result. While I wait for that, I'm not going to bother drinking too many cups of really bad coffee. So in summary: I weep for the loss of my precious Bonavita, I can not really recommend this thing at the moment, and also looking back on this review it's apparent that I probably need to drink less coffee. Should I crack the code on getting better results from the Hario I'll come back and update the review. Until then, happy brewing! --- Update, many months and many brews later: I've finally cracked the code on this thing. Full immersion with ~50% of your target water, for two minutes. Then drain and go pourover for the other 50%. This combination of the two seems to be the key: I think it allows the immersion to do its work, and then rinses the grounds during the pourover stage to ensure full extraction. It produces a really nice and balanced cup, with sweetness, acidity, and full aroma -- all of the things I was missing when I was first playing with this. Upgrading from 3 stars to 4 stars, but it took me a lot of experimentation to get here so I'm not giving a full 5 even though I'm pretty happy with brew quality at this point.

I have virtually every coffee brewer made and, without doubt, the Hario Switch is my go to and for me it is the most versatile of all of my brewers. It brews great as a standalone pour over brewer (none better) and also is a great standalone immersion brewer. Again, for me, none better. The best versatility of it is as a mix brewer - getting the best of both worlds as I showed in the video - the first 40% of the brew as a pour over (extracts sweetness and acidity) and the other 60% as an immersion (extracting boldness and strength and still sweetness). I recommend the larger brewer (03). The small unit is simply too small and not nearly as versatile as the larger brewer. Another real beauty of it is by controlling the pour over / immersion ratio, you can vary the flavor with every cup you brew. Also, you can obviously increase the volume of coffee you brew by adjusting the ratio of the pour over / immersion ratio. To increase volume, I never brew concentrated and then dilute as some recommend. Flavor is definitely lost doing this. It is much easier to clean than some other standalone immersion brewers and with the paper filter (I use the V60 filter) you filter out the potential cardiotoxic oils and grounds that are left in your coffee with some of them.

tl;dr — Buy it. If you can measure accurately, boil and pour water, then wait for 2-4 minutes, you'll make a perfect cup every time. I rarely have a purchase perform exactly as advertised straight out of the box. The Switch did. HIGHS: High-temp-resistant glass dripper: A big selling point, if not the biggest. We've used and loved our Clever coffee dripper for the last few years. It's made of BPA-free Tritan plastic, but we're trying to move away from any plastic touching near- or boiling water. This may be one of the biggest reasons you're considering this brewer. Food-grade silicone dripper holder: Do your own reaearch but multiple sources put silicone's high-temperature stability at 250° C or higher (2X the temp of boiling water). So our concerns about BPA, PFAS and other synthetic nasties are lessened. Stainless steel "stopper ball" is secured in the silicone base, seals the drain shut until the coffee's ready. Push the switch down, the ball is liftwed upward to open the spout and drain the coffee into your cup. Works with paper filters (#3 cone type) or a metal filter. Paper will give you a cleaner, brighter cup, metal filter will give you a thicker cup (closer to French press). LOW: I only have one, and that's the plastic switch that you open to drain the coffee into the mug when brewing is complete. Again, if you're trying to de-plasticize your coffee routine, you might see this as a nit. But it doesn't sit soaking in the brew. I did want to eliminate all the plastic, so I was tickled to find that the little switch piece can be easily replaced by an optional steel version available from foundrycoffeeworks.com. NOTE: Calling the little plastic switch a "switch" makes it sound more mechanical or complicated than it is. It's a simply lever than seats in the silicone base, then see-saws to push the the metal ball in the base upward and release the coffee. PHOTOS: 1) The Switch, well packaged, ready to brew 2) Detail showing the underside of the dripper holder and the plastic switch. 3) foundrycoffeeworks.com stainless steel replacement switch, ordered and on the way.