Mid-pour. The grounds sit in a deep narrow column instead of a flat bed. Taller, slimmer, steeper, faster. The shape is the whole product, and the cup underneath is the whole footprint.
BREWERS · CAFEC DEEP 27
CAFEC Flower Dripper Deep 27
I called this thing dumb on camera. It is still on my counter sixteen months later, and not for the reason I thought.
If you already know this is the one you want, it is here. Otherwise, the rest is why.
WHAT IT FIXES
Small doses. It brews down to four or five grams without the thin, hollow cup you get when you force that little coffee through a cone built for fifteen.
The cost of figuring a coffee out. Smaller brews mean more attempts out of the same bag. Twenty five dollars once, against the coffee you stop pouring away while you are still learning it.
Technique. One paper, one centre pour, pour as many times as you want. There is no drawdown to manage and no reason to pour around the sides.
Flat coffees. It is a steep, narrow cone, so acidity comes forward. On a nutty or chocolatey coffee that is often the thing the cup was missing.
WHAT IT DOESN'T
Upgrade what you already have. It is a different direction, not a better one. If you already like a V60 for its brightness, know that this one goes further that way, not less.
Justify itself if your brewers are already varied. Two or three genuinely different shapes already cover the ground this one adds.
Give you choices. There is one filter size and one company making it. No paper to swap, no flow rate to change.
Sit on any mug. The base is slender, so a wide mug is a problem and it can end up uneven. Brew into something narrow and pour off into your bigger vessel.
Earn it on dose alone. A ten dollar Hario V60 size 01 brews small too, for less than half of what this costs, and I would rather you knew that from me.
WHO IT'S FOR
You have a nutty or chocolatey coffee that reads flat, and you want more acidity in it to balance the cup out.
You drink light roasts and you want those acidity flavours to shine further, not be smoothed down.
You already own a cone and a flat brewer, and you want a third that does something neither of them does.
You test coffee in small amounts and you are trying to get more shots out of a bag before it runs out.
You would rather have a brewer that does not ask anything of your technique.
WHO IT ISN'T FOR
You are buying your first brewer, or your second. This is not where to start.
You only want the small dose ability. A Hario V60 size 01 is about ten dollars and brews at that scale.
You are chasing sweetness and balance. A Kalita Wave flattens the bed out and reads sweeter to me, and that is the honest direction to send you.
You already own two or three brewers that are genuinely different from each other. You have the range. Spend the money on coffee.
You are happy with your coffee. There is nothing here that solves a problem you have.
What I'd get instead
If the small dose is the only thing pulling you here, get the Hario V60 size 01. It is about ten dollars, it brews at that scale, and almost nobody talks about it for this. I am not sending you somewhere I do not go myself. I use mine about as often as I use the Deep 27.
If you want the opposite of what this brewer does, sweeter and more balanced instead of brighter, get a Kalita Wave. I owned the metal one and lived with the shape, the paper and the way it drains. The version I would point you at is the ceramic, for the heat it holds and because it takes more knocking about, and I should say plainly that I have not brewed on that one. It also asks something back: you will want to warm it through a couple of times before you brew.
Everything on this page carries a link, including the two things I just pointed you at instead of the brewer I am writing about. I earn either way, so I have no reason to steer you.
Why I bought it
Nothing was wrong. That is the honest starting point. I had a V60 and I had a flat bed brewer and neither of them was annoying me.
What I had was a question. Why would somebody pay twenty five dollars for a very small brewer? What is the pull? I already owned things that did more or less the same job, and I wanted to know what this one was supposed to be doing that they were not. I do not read other people's reviews before I buy something, so I had nothing to go on except being curious and a little naive about it.
So I bought it, and I was not quiet about it. On camera, unboxing it, I said I needed to stop buying these things, and then I said this one was dumb. I could not work out who it was for. I said we would come back and talk about whether it was worth it.
I brewed ten grams in it that day and it was fine. Fine is not a reason to buy anything.
What actually changed
Two months after it arrived I brewed in nothing else for two weeks. Close to thirty cups. Somewhere in there it stopped being a novelty.
What got me was that it got out of the way. There is one paper, it runs fast, and you pour in the middle. That is the whole technique.
I have come to think that is worth more than it sounds. A lot of what makes coffee stressful is choice. Which paper, which pour, which structure, and underneath all of it the worry that you are picking the wrong one.
A V60 could feel like this and it does not, because a dozen companies make paper for it at a dozen different flow rates, and every one of them is another decision. CAFEC makes the brewer and CAFEC makes the paper, and there is one of them. Nothing to get wrong. That is not a limitation they forgot to fix, it is the whole experience, and I brew more freely when nothing is asking me to decide.
The one paper that fits it, seated dry. It runs all the way to the neck of the cone. One filter size, so there is no drawdown technique to worry about and no other paper to choose.
The other thing was the floor. Five grams is genuinely brewable in it. That mattered because of what small doses let you do: if you have a bag you are trying to understand, you can run four sessions on twenty grams instead of eighty. You are always racing the bag. This gave me more attempts.
That is the part that changed my mind, and it took two weeks of brewing in nothing else to find it. If that is what you came for, this is the brewer.
Sixteen months later
I still use it, about once a week, sometimes twice. I reached for it yesterday.
But the reason changed, and I would rather say that than pretend the review still holds. I do not use it for small doses. I brew twenty five grams in it, thirty at the top end. The five gram floor is real and it is not why the thing is on my counter.
What keeps it there is that it is the steepest, narrowest cone I own. Taller, slimmer, faster, steeper is a design built to push acidity forward, and that is what it does. When a coffee reads flat, nutty, chocolatey, a bit sleepy, this is the brewer I move it to.
And if you drink light roasts and what you are chasing is the acidity in them, the dimension of it, how far it can be pushed, this shape gives you more of that rather than smoothing it down. That is what these designs are for, and I would rather tell you what a shape is trying to do than hand you a list of flavours to go hunting for.
It does not play the same game as the other brewers on my shelf. That is the reason it is still there. And at twenty five grams it makes enough for me and my wife, so it is not only a one cup novelty either.
And it asks nothing of me. Sometimes technique is overrated. If a thing can brew a good cup without demanding a performance, that is worth something.
What people expect it to do, and what it actually does
The thing people want this brewer to be is better. Better than the V60, better than whatever is already on their counter. It is not better. It is different, and different is the whole point.
It gives you another taste profile and another way at the coffee. Certain coffees work better on different devices on different days, and some days that is this one. What you are buying is the chance to meet a coffee somewhere you have not met it before. That is worth something. It is not the same thing as an upgrade.
The honest part
This brewer has a direction, and the direction is not always the one you want. I ran it against a bright Ethiopian once and it was the most acidic cup on the table, which is exactly what it is built to do to a coffee that did not need any help being bright. I brewed the same Ethiopian four different ways if you want to watch that one.
There is also the filter. One size, one company. That is the reason there is no technique to manage, and it is also the reason you have no options if you ever want different. Both of those are the same fact.
And I told you the Hario 01 does the small doses cheaper, because it does.
Here is the part I would want said to me. Twenty five dollars is nothing when you are curious, and that is exactly how it gets you. One at a time, nothing costs enough to think hard about. Add them all up and you are six, seven, eight hundred dollars into brewers. I am not going to pretend I am above that, because I am not. What I would say is this: if you already have two or three brewers that are genuinely different from each other, a real gap in shape and in what they do to the cup, skip this one. You do not have to own every brewer that exists. You already have the range this one would be adding.
If your brewers are all more or less the same shape, that is a different answer, and this is one of the more different ones you can buy.
I would still replace this if it broke. Nothing else I own does what it does, and if I ever stopped reaching for it I would hand it to somebody who was curious rather than let it sit. But I am not going to tell you that you need a twenty five dollar narrow brewer, because you do not. If the coffee you are drinking is not asking for what this brewer gives, it is not for you, and that is fine.
HOW IT SCORES
Does what it claims — 9 / 10
Holds up over time — 8 / 10
Worth the Buy — 9 / 10
Would I buy it again — 9 / 10
87.5% 35 out of 40. Four things, ten points each.
Sixteen months, used about once a week. That is the window the durability number comes from. If you brew every day, weigh that one lighter than I do.
And read the rest of it through what I am chasing. I am after flavour, and I am fanatical about it. If a device gives me even a small difference I want to know whether it is better for this coffee or for all coffees. That is why the money question scores a 9 for me. If you are not chasing that, and you are not looking to own every device, the number you should be reading is not this one, it is the paragraph above about skipping it.
Worth every dollar if you want a cup none of your other brewers can give you. Not worth it if your shelf already covers that ground.
Scored against what this thing claims to do and what it costs, not against other gear.
$25
That is what it was when I last checked, and it moves around a little. This is an affiliate link and I get a small cut if you buy through it. I bought mine myself, and called it dumb on camera at the time.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
WATCH IT
Two weeks with it, and the answer to the question I asked in the unboxing.
And if you want the version where I called it dumb: Deep 27 Coffee Dripper Review: Worth Your $25?