At the SCA trade show this year, there was a little sumthin sumthin towards the back of Hario’s booth that many folks may have missed (Jay Caragay, however, did not miss it!). It is the new variant of the Hario V60, called the Hario V60 Suiren Coffee Dripper.
The Suiren is not available officially yet in North America, but guess what: you can order one, with zero shipping charges (it’s coming from Japan), direct from the US Amazon site, right now for under $24! And you can also order a set of six spare ribs in one of six different colours (eight will eventually be available) to really customize your brewer. I don’t know how long this availability will last, but if you want one, you can order one, today.
What Exactly Is It?
The Hario Suiren is an open-air kinda pour over brewer, based on the same rib structure, and angles that the original V60 has inside all the filter holders in that series. But something’s missing: any surface area between those ribs! Its basically the polar opposite of a no-bypass brewer.
Now this kind of brewer – one that exposes the main filtering material to full airflow around it – isn’t new. Cloth pourover systems always worked this way, and over the years we’ve been sent various “out in the open” filter holders for Melitta cone filters, flat bottom filter papers, and even aftermarket designs for the V60 filter papers.
What does make this new and interesting is just how beautiful Hario’s execution is of this brewing device. They are selling the Suiren in several variants, including basic black, basic white, and single colours. They are also selling it in “limited edition” mixed colours. And the give even more creativity, you can buy six coloured ribs to really customize your Suiren and make it entirely your own.
The Suiren ships in a flat-pack box, IKEA style, because you have to assemble it when it arrives. Inside the box is the filter holder / carafe rest, the filter’s main hub, and two boxes each containing six removable ribs. Click the ribs into the slots in the circular hub (12 ribs per brewer), and then click the assembled ribs and hub into the filter holder.
The material is all plastic, and appears at first glance to be a different type of plastic than what Hario is using in their plastic V60s. It seems a bit more pliable, “softer” if that’s a thing. Don’t misconstrue though – the plastics are very high quality and once assembled the brewer is very sturdy.
We bought three brewers and two sets of spare ribs, direct from Hario Japan. One set featured alternating black and white ribs. The second set had three colours, in four ribs: red, white and blue (perfect for the 4th of July!). The third set was just black ribs, and also the cheapest option, costing about $6 less than the multi colour versions. We also bought green and purple rib sets.
That’s another thing that makes this brewer so fantastic: you can modify it visually to really make it your own. Choose the rib colours that suit your mood, your work area, or your kitchen. I firmly believe the more you feel your coffee device is meant specifically for you, the more you’ll get out of it.
Brewing with the Suiren
We’ve experimented a lot with open air filter designs in the past, and something always seemed to happen that went against expectations and assumptions: you think the coffee would brew faster with more flow through, but that isn’t the case; if anything, the brews slow down a tad compared to normal, enclosed (and ribbed) filter holders. It took me a long time to figure out why this was happening. Eventually I figured it out via experiments we did in the CoffeeGeek Lab back in 2011.
But it was time to see if the Suiren did the same thing.
And sure enough, the brew times with the Suiren, head to head with a standard V60 brew, were just a tad slower to finish. Magic? Naw. There’s a cause. But first, here’s what I did for both brews.
I set up my first brews with the Suiren side by side with #2 V60 ceramic brewer. Same coffee, same dose, same grind. Same filter paper. Same prewet procedure. Both on the scale, both geting a bloom pour of 2x the coffee volume (21g brewed, 42g bloom pour). Pause 30 seconds. Then pour water at around 2-3g a second to 150g total water weight. Pause 30 seconds. Finish to 300g water weight.
Both pours were completed at around 3:10 mark. The standard V60 finished brewing by 4:10. The Suiren? 4:15. Weird, right?
Temperature is the cause. The open air concept of the Suiren does something a closed porcelain or plastic V60 does less of: it allows heat to escape the brewing slurry faster. Things cool down quicker in the slurry. The finished brew temperature in the cup is lower, with the Suiren. That’s what can slow down the brew and extraction: the hotter the water is, the more efficient it’s going to travel through ground coffee.
You can see this visually with the Suiren: moisture collects on the ribs, showing the dissipation of heat from the filter paper and brewing slurry.
Measuring both brews after with a DiFluid R2 refractometer, they were almost identical, at around 1.32-1.34%
Regardless of all this, the Suiren was producing cups that seemed a bit more “mellow” than the standard V60; a bit softer, but by no means sour or lacking in body or depth. If I had to come up with one word, it would be “less sharp” (I guess that’s two words). And for my palate, that’s a good thing.
Basically, if you are a fan of super bright coffees, you might not like this brewer. Also, I was able to visualize the bypass happening out of the sides of the paper filter (though it proved impossible to photograph); you definitely want to use a 14:1 ratio with this brewer to get a properly extracted cup. If your pursuit is getting 300ml of brew from 15g of ground coffee, this brewer ain’t gonna do it. Go no-bypass.
Sure is Pretty
Look: I appreciate beautiful design engineering in coffee (to the point where I’m pretty critical of “engineer-designed UI”) and wow, did Hario ever hit a home run here. For $23 or less, this is a strikingly beautiful brewer. And you can completely customize it!
My partner in life is pretty blasé about all things coffee and espresso, given our house is full of the stuff. But she loves the look of the Hario Suiren so much, she actually posted a photo to her own Instagram account, which is saying something: I think the last time she posted something coffee related was half a decade ago!
Honestly, for $23 or less, this is a no brainer. Who knows how much it will be once the middlemen and importers start stocking it over here in Canada and the USA. I’d probably pay as much as $35 or more for this, given its unique look and ability to deliver a more mellow, less sharp cup of coffee.
But for now, you can buy this via Amazon in the US, with it being shipped direct from Japan. There’s only one colour choice available at the moment (black), but you can also order sets of the ribs to customize your own.
And if you made it this far, here’s a gallery of some other photos I took of this pretty brewer.
Mark has certified as a Canadian, USA, and World Barista Championship Judge in both sensory and technical fields, as well as working as an instructor in coffee and espresso training. He started CoffeeGeek in 2001.
- Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
- Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
- Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
- Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
