No Bypassing Coffee

Good Morning, Mark!

Coffee nerds the world over like to discover new things in coffee. Sometimes they just re-discover old trends. I remember when siphon coffee made its huge comeback in the early 2000s. I also remember when the Hario V60 came on scene and people “discovered” pour over coffee, forgetting that Melitta led the charge for nearly 100 years by that point.

The latest hot topic amongst the Youtube and Tiktok glitterati is something called ‘no bypass coffee brewing’. What exactly is it, and is it really new?

Bypass Exposed

In 2020, Jonathan Gagné, an astrophysicist, book author and coffee lover, wrote a long blog post about using a brewer that Fellow had sent him, along with a pour over kettle. Gagné noted how the brewer produced much more pleasing results than his usual V60 brews. He went into detail about how brewing water bypasses some or all of the coffee in a V60, vs this other brewer that essentially forced all the water to travel through a bed of coffee.

People took note. Youtube stars like Lance Hendricks rolled with it. Even the great Hoff had a few videos. New devices started showing up taking advantage of this “no bypass” brewing method. Tricolate, Nextlevel, Drobi, even Caedo (the grinder company) introduced nobypass brewers. Nextlevel even worked with Gagné to introduce their Pulsar brewer, due out next month.

It very much seems like the new next thing in coffee. So much so, we’re planning content for it this August on CoffeeGeek.

But is it, really?

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Bypass vs No Bypass Coffee

Most pour over and auto drip coffee making is bypass brewing, to a certain extent. Bypass refers to some water that manages to find its way into the coffee carafe without having much contact with ground coffee. Some flows down the sides of the space between paper filter and filter holder. Some extracts out the sides of the paper filter, passing through very little coffee. It is the normal part of brewing filter coffee, and this is why so much emphasis is placed on how you pour hot water over a bed of coffee when brewing pour over.

No bypass means you are forcing all your brewing water to pass through the bed of coffee. There’s no escape route for the water. The result is a larger extraction ratio, and it provides another tool for the barista to control the final output. By maximizing the extraction during the brew, the barista then can add hot water at the end of the brew to the coffee carafe to control the exact amount of dilution they want in the final cup.

It’s that latter part – the dilution – that makes things a bit new here, but again, not really. Because no bypass brewing has been around for a long, long time.

The humble americano – a double shot of espresso diluted with hot water – is a prime example of no bypass, super high extraction ratio coffee with added dilution.

The Chemex brewer is a 70 year old nobypass coffee brewer: the paper filter is designed to adhere to the glass side walls, forcing all extraction through the bottom of the cone shaped filter. For decades, people have used Chemex brewers to do extra strong coffee brews, and diluted them, either for normal hot coffee drinking, or for making iced coffee beverages.

The Vietnamese phin coffee maker is a very traditional and well used no bypass coffee brewer, brewing small amounts for coffee drinks that get iced and sweetened with condensed milk.

The AeroPress is in effect a no bypass brewer doing it’s thing for nearly 20 years now. And the new AeroPress XL is even better suited for no bypass brewing.

So, basically something that has been around for a long time is rediscovered, and new ideas and concepts are thrown at it. And this is a very good thing.

Even though the Melitta was around for 100 years when the V60 arrived, the arrival of Hario’s wunderkind ushered in a new era of experimentation and improvements on pour over coffee methodology.

Coffee nerds “discovering” no bypass brewing, while probably not as massive as the V60 was for pour over, will most likely have a similar effect. The thing I find most intriguing is the final dilution of the brew, controlled by the barista. You no longer roll the dice on how much dilution happens in bypass brewers like a V60; you maximize the extraction ratios by forcing 100% of your brewing water through the bed of coffee, then choose your dilution amount down to the gram.

Anytime we control things like that, I think we get to better coffee for anyone willing to put the time in. So let the no bypass brewing fad grow and expand! We're going to be doing our part, with content coming later this summer on no bypass brewing, up on CoffeeGeek.

Have a great weekend!