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One of the most beautiful siphons ever made, evokes shape of the crane.
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One of the most functional tabletop siphons ever made, with its handle and clamping system.
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Wide mouth lower globe makes much easier to use safely.
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Top brewing chamber does a bit of auto-agitating of the brew.
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Copper tube spirit burner gets the job done nicely with the 3 cup model.
In the introduction above, some background information on the Nouveau was provided, but let’s expand on it here.
The Nouveau Siphon Coffee Brewer was designed by a Hario in-house product designer in 1988, and was first offered for sale in April of 1989 as the NCA-3 model. The company won’t release the name of the Nouveau’s designer for privacy reasons which is understandable, but I really wish they would.
Just like we know Matteo Thun was the designer behind the iconic illy espresso cup (as one example), I think knowing the woman who designed such an iconic and unique siphon coffee brewer should be known and celebrated.
When the Nouveau was initially sold, it had a cloth wick spirit burner like other siphons had for decades. Within a year of the siphon’s introduction, Hario was aware of a specialty copper tubing product from a company called Pitorch.
They designed a siphon burner around this specialty copper product, and the result was the very unique copper pipe spirit burner that Hario sold with the Nouveau between 1990 and 2007, when they went back to a standard cloth wick burner. Why was the Pitorch copper tube spirit burner discontinued?
Hario says it is because the Pitorch company went out of business in 2006.
There’s some missing timelines about the two NCA models: the NCA-3 (3 cup model) and the NCA-5 (5 cup model). One vendor explained that, initially Hario sold the NCA-3 in the early 1990s, and that the NCA-5 version only came along near the end of the 90s. Hario confirmed that the NCA-5 was discontinued in 2006, and they completely ceased production on the NCA-3 in 2014. Several vendors said only spare parts were available at that time, and that the entire NCA-3 siphon brewer was difficult to order after 2010.
On a personal note, I’ve long thought the design inspiration for the Hario Nouveau was the crane, which has a very rich and deep symbolistic meaning in Japanese culture. I’m going to dive a lot more into that later in this review. I did ask Hario if the crane was indeed the inspiration for the Nouveau look, and the company could not say if this was the designer’ intent or not. I still like to believe it is, and I’ll outline why later in this review.
The Hario Nouveau sits on a very unique and well engineered stand that starts with a circular metal base that has been painted black. There’s a hole in the middle of the base because in the 1990s, Hario and a few other companies designed commercial, restaurant siphon butane burner setups and the Nouveau would fit those systems, with a permanent butane burner pointing up and through the base’s central hole. The 2” hole also keeps the siphon’s stand to a reasonable weight. It is still nice and heavy and keeps the siphon secure, but it is lighter than it would have been with a solid bottom plate.
The chromed metal stand attached to the base features a plastic handle midway up, and like all the plastic on this device, it has a very high quality feel to it all. As you move up the assembly, you get to the bracket where the bottom globe and handle fit into place. The bracket is also made from chromed metal and has been designed to work in lock-step with the siphon’s lower globe and globe handle design (more on that below).
The Hario Nouveau sits on a very unique and well engineered stand that starts with a circular metal base that has been painted black. There’s a hole in the middle of the base because in the 1990s, Hario and a few other companies designed commercial, restaurant siphon butane burner setups and the Nouveau would fit those systems, with a permanent butane burner pointing up and through the base’s central hole. The 2” hole also keeps the siphon’s stand to a reasonable weight. It is still nice and heavy and keeps the siphon secure, but it is lighter than it would have been with a solid bottom plate.
The chromed metal stand attached to the base features a plastic handle midway up, and like all the plastic on this device, it has a very high quality feel to it all. As you move up the assembly, you get to the bracket where the bottom globe and handle fit into place. The bracket is also made from chromed metal and has been designed to work in lock-step with the siphon’s lower globe and globe handle design (more on that below).
The siphon itself is made up of five parts: the bottom glass globe; the handle/bracketing collar, the top brewing chamber with its unique design and siphon; the silicone (faux rubber) gasket that encloses the bottom of the top chamber and serves as the airtight seal when everything assembled; and the siphon’s lid, which also doubles as a stand for the top brewing chamber when you remove it from the bottom globe.
The siphon globe is a wide mouth model, with a large diameter aperture at the top of it for pouring out your coffee. Wide mouth siphons are pretty rare these days, but were a more common, “deluxe” feature from vacuum coffee makers in the 1930s. There’s a lot of benefit to a wide mouth lower globe in a siphon design, which I’ll get to more below.
The handle is surprisingly comfortable, and allows for a very controlled “side pour” of the brewed coffee, which you’ll very soon get accustomed to if you own a Hario Nouveau.
Indeed, going back to a more traditional siphon design, like the Hario Technica, with its “stand doubles as the pouring handle” setup can be difficult, and you find yourself wishing they functioned more like how the Nouveau does.
The Nouveau’s handle incorporates the locking collar for the siphon, and how it connects to the siphon stand. It’s an entirely unique system — the closest I’ve seen to it is the Cona siphons out of England — and worthy of its own section in this review, which it will get, below.
The top brewing chamber of the Hario Nouveau may look like other siphon designs, but it is not. The top glass is outwardly tapered, with a bulge at the bottom. At first glance, it looks like an artistic, “visual lines = beauty” engineering design choice, but there’s actually a lot more to it. The bulge helps agitate the water and coffee while the unit is brewing. I’ve seen it in action: throw a lot of light at the brewer while it’s doing its thing, and you can see the granules of coffee flowing and circulating upwards and inwards at the bulge border. The brewer stirs itself because of the upper chamber design.
I almost always stir the slurry in the top chamber of a siphon coffee maker when brewing coffee: one or two revolutions as soon as the brewing starts; one 360 degree stir midway through, and another single revolution stir when I remove the heat. This is to fully saturate the coffee and aid the extraction. With the Nouveau, you could literally skip the second and third stirs because the design of the upper brew chamber does sufficient automatic agitation.
The lid of the Hario Nouveau does what most other lids do for siphon coffee makers: it can be used to keep the top brewing chamber extra hot during brewing, and also doubles as a stand for the top chamber once you remove it from the bottom globe.
The difference with the Nouveau is that the top lid has a) some detailed design to it, and b) is made from high quality material. Most siphon lid/stands are an afterthought. Not so with the Nouveau. Its lid completes the beauty lines of the brewer.
The Hario Nouveau shipped with a unique filter system that was a first for Hario at the time: it was a plastic and metal contraption that used paper filters. Before it came along, the last time a siphon coffee maker used paper filters was the Sunbeam Coffeemasters of the 1940s. Since then, it’s always been all-metal, all glass, or cloth filters. All of Hario’s other lineups of siphon coffee makers used cloth filters, but the Nouveau used a paper system. Let’s get into that a bit more.
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All siphons need a filter of some sort – a way to hold the ground coffee back in the top brewing chamber while letting the brewed coffee move back down to the lower chamber – after brewing is completed. Up until the Nouveau, Hario traditionally has used the same filter designs that siphons since the 1840s used: cloth material stretched over a metal or ceramic “form”, attached to a spring that clamped onto the bottom of a siphon tube, keeping the filter secure and tight.
When the Nouveau was designed, Hario decided paper filters were the way to go. They weren’t the first to use paper filters in a siphon – Sunbeam did so with their Coffeemaster electric vacuum brewers in the 1930s and 1940s – but Hario were the first to use paper filters since the 1950s that I’m aware of. The system they designed has some benefits of being very easy to use, easy to clean, and it did the job it’s supposed to do: it kept all coffee grounds out of the lower brewing chamber, delivering a clean, grit free cup.
The filter for the Nouveau is a dual disk plastic and metal filter design, with one disk providing a level (and perforated) surface for the paper filter, and the second spoked disk clamping down on the paper, holding it both secure to the lower disk, but also the glass side walls of the Nouveau’s upper brew chamber.
The bottom disk is perforated, and features spokes on the underside to help in tightening the overall assembly. The top disk is spoked, and features teeth on the outer edge. When you screw it on tight with a paper filter in place, the teeth grip onto the paper, which in turn presses up against the glass wall of the upper globe, very tightly, creating a very secure barrier for all the ground coffee that will populate the upper brewing chamber of the Nouveau when brewing coffee.
Now, I’ve never been a big fan of paper filtration for coffee. So early on in owning a Hario Nouveau, I discovered I could easily swap in the metal mesh filter from a 3 cup Bodum press pot, replacing the usual paper filters in the Hario filter assembly. Indeed, I doubled up the metal mesh filters from a 3 cup press pot, and got a pretty clean cup as a result using Hario’s filter design. But I also got more body, more aroma, more oomph from the coffee brewed in the Nouveau, compared to what I got using the paper filters.
And I’ve used the Nouveau like that ever since: with a double-layer metal mesh filter stolen from a couple of press pots (actually, I just bought the mesh filters for Bodum 3 cup presses, at around $3 each).
One of the standout features of the Hario Nouveau is its completely unique, engineered handle and stand design. Most siphons have their lower globe attached to a stationary stand (which also doubles as the lower siphon globe’s handle) via a friction clamp.
The Nouveau is completely different. The handle’s collar, which sits around the neck of the lower globe, has four extruding notches built in. These are designed to slot into the siphon stand’s bracket and hold the lower globe perfectly level and still. There’s nothing to clamp or unclamp: to remove the siphon lower glob, you simply tilt it up at a 20-30 degree angle perpendicular to the handle base, and the globe detaches from the stand’s holding bracket.
It’s quite brilliant, because it makes handling the globe much easier when serving hot coffee, and it also makes it very easy to remove the globe, plastic handle attached, and put it into a dishwasher for cleaning. It also lets you pour the coffee with a sideways action, which gives more control over the pouring action.
This design of the Nouveau’s lower globe and clamping system also means the lower globe’s mouth is much wider than most modern day coffee siphon brewers; this again facilitates easy cleaning by hand, or getting the lower globe clean in most modern dishwashers. Siphons like the Hario Technica’s lower globe have a much narrower diameter opening, making it more difficult to get brushes into them to clean off stubborn stains. Those more narrow mouths also make it more difficult for modern dishwashers to push enough water and cleaning detergent into them during a usual dishwasher cycle.
The closest equivalent is the bracket / handle system found on Cona vacuum brewers out of England. The Cona C and D models have a tilt and slot into position design as well, though it feels less secure than the Hario Nouveau because the Cona design is based on one extrusion notch, not four like the Nouveau.
In addition, the Cona models have a) very wide bodies, and b) extremely small diameter mouths or spouts, making them much more difficult to clean, and nearly impossible to do so in a dishwasher.
The Hario Nouveau wins overall for ease of pouring, ease of insertion and removal into the stand, and ease of cleaning.
The Crane Look
Then there’s the look of it all. When you look at the design of the Hario Nouveau, the handle has the silhouette of a crane’s beak. The bottom globe represents the crane’s head. The curved handle of the stand evokes the shape of a crane’s neck.
I don’t believe this is by mistake: after all, the crane is an enduring symbol in Japanese culture that symbolizes a long and good life, with harmony. I asked Hario about this and they could not confirm if the designer had a crane in mind when designing the look and function of this siphon.
But I bet they did. Once you “see” it, you constantly see it when using the Hario Nouveau.
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The Hario Nouveau shipped – for a while at least – with something very few have seen with a siphon coffee maker before (or since): a rather unique spirit burner based not on a cloth wick, but on a copper tube. I’ve talked a bit about this unique little spirit burner in both the preamble and introduction above, but it warrants even more discussion here.
Almost every tabletop siphon coffee maker for the past 150 years has come with a cloth-wick spirit (usually methanol or similar) burner. Even the Nouveau itself initially shipped with a cloth wick burner.
Within months of the Nouveau hitting the market, Hario’s design team worked out a deal with a Japanese company called Pitorch, who manufactured a unique series of copper tube spirit burners (check out this Google search for some examples). Hario worked with Pitorch to design a spirit burner specifically for the Nouveau, fitting the Nouveau’s look and style. Most notable, it was the only Pitorch equipped stove that used glass for the fuel storage.
The Pitorch based spirit burner, just like the cloth wick burners, ran off of denatured alcohol (methyl hydrate in Canada). The design is based on a hollow copper tube that draws the liquid fuel up through induction, to fire blue flames out of two micro-holes, to the lower globe of the siphon.
The single piece copper tube has both ends extending down into the liquid fuel, and they come up through the burner’s top cap, forming a circle. Near the 5 and 7 o’clock positions are two tiny holes which allow the liquid fuel to burn through, forming two blue jets of flame.
Sadly, Pitorch went out of business in 2006; Hario opted to go back to using cloth wick burners for the Nouveau instead of finding a new manufacturer for the copper system, or just manufacturing the burner and its copper components themselves.
I spent many years using this Pitorch equipped stove with the Hario Nouveau 3 cup model. I did note the copper tube burner was a bit underpowered with the 5 cup Nouveau model, but it worked very well with the 3 cup model, even when starting with cold water: it takes about 11.5 minutes for cold tap water to go to boiling in the 350ml, 3 cup model of the Nouveau. If you start with boiling water from a kettle, poured into the Hario’s lower globe, the copper spirit burner will get things kicking up in under 90 seconds.
In the nearly 2 decades of using this burner, I have had thoughts on how Hario could have improved and further developed it. One area would be making the blue jet flames’ size variable by having a micro-adjust valve that could control the flow of the liquid methanol through the copper tubing. This would have allowed for even greater heat control, using standard denatured alcohol fuel, something that would be entirely unique and almost unheard of for this kind of fuel use.
As mentioned above, people complained the single copper tube Pitorch stove was underpowered for the 5 cup NCA-5 model. If you clicked that Google search link above, you’ll note that Pitorch manufactured dual and even triple coil versions of this little wonder-stove. Hario could have sold the single coil version with the Nouveau 3 cup model, and a dual coil version with the 5 cup model. They could have even shipped the siphon with both coil systems, letting the end user decide between the single and double coil versions.
It is sad that, when Pitorch went out of business, Hario didn’t pursue new ways to manufacture this burner in 2007. It’s quite easy to have something like this manufactured today, and someone with good engineering skills might even be able to make a more advanced version of this spirit stove today.
The Nouveau’s gasket — the silicone collar that creates the airtight seal between top brewing chamber and lower globe — deserves more attention than I initially gave it in the review 20 years ago, and so far in this new 2022 Full Review. Because it’s brilliant.
One thing many folks struggle with in the classes I do on siphon coffee brewing is separating the bottom glob from the top brewing chamber after a brew is completed. Most siphons have a very narrow mouth on the lower globes, and the (typically rubber) gasket that encompasses the top of the siphon tubes, creating the airtight seal between top and bottom is chunky and tall.
There’s a bit of an art to the process of separating top from bottom when everything is hot and the glass is extra fragile: I advise people to gently rock the top brewing chamber in a circular outward motion very slowly loosening the seal the rubber gasket provides, before it finally breaks free.
Still, on three occasions in the past 20 years, I’ve had circumstances where my siphon coffee students broke the siphons they were learning with, because the gaskets would stay super tight then very quickly loosen. The person would overcompensate when this happened, and knock the siphon tube against the inner wall of the lower globe’s mouth, shattering the glass.
This kind of thing doesn’t happen with the Hario Nouveau. First, it’s a wide mouth lower globe, which means a lot more room to “play” with the top brewing chamber and its gasket when trying to separate them from the bottom globe after the brew is completed.
Second, the gasket itself has a very complex design which facilitates a very easy break of its seal with the lower vessel. Third, even 20 years on, the gasket material – a type of silicone – is very pliable and supple, creating both a fantastic seal when brewing, and an easy break to the seal thanks to its pliability. Third, the gasket has extending ribs on it which further protect the siphon tube from accidentally crashing against the lower globe’s glass surface.
Just another one of the fantastic innovations in the design of the Hario Nouveau.
I do note something however: Hario’s current Moca Siphon coffee maker (usually under $65) uses a similar gasket design (and has a wide-mouth lower glass chamber).
Why, when a product hasn’t been made for nearly a decade, am I writing about how to improve it?
Because Hario is a very special company, it sometimes does very special things. This is the company that designed the world’s smallest functional siphon coffee maker (the Miniphon), because they could. This is the company that designed and manufactured a glass coffee roaster, because they wanted to. This is a company that brought back one siphon design from their past (the Siphon Flower) because they thought it’d be cool to do so in limited production.
They should bring back the Hario Nouveau. It’s stunningly beautiful, excellently functional, and I think it would be a top seller for the company. They can also improve it, and here’s how.
Improving the Copper Spirit Burner
First, with the burner, work on making the copper tube spirit burner even better by figuring out how to make the flame adjustable. Hario’s designed micro-adjust drippers for their ice drip coffee makers, they can put their design engineers to work on further improving the innovative design of the copper tube spirit burner.
The burner is the number one area they could dramatically improve the Nouveau, especially with the NCA-5 model.
Improving “Auto Agitation”
Hario could explore the “auto agitation” feature they achieved with the top brewing chamber to perhaps increase the coffee agitation even more so. It might just be a case of making the curved bulge even another 2-4mm deeper.
Adding Options for Filter
Hario could really explore that filter design and sell the brewer with a variety of filters to use with it: cloth, paper, and metal. The filter design is sound, but get creative with the filtration material.
Optional Butane Burner
Hario should also consider designing a butane burner that works specifically with the Nouveau. The good news is, most of the butane burners people buy for siphon coffee makers work fine with the Nouveau, but do sit a bit tight under the bottom globe. Hario could offer as an option a designed butane burner specific for the Nouveau, and create a new price point offering of the siphon.
The bottom line here is, I really encourage Hario to bring the Nouveau back: bring it back exactly as it was in 2000, or bring it back exactly the same but with an improved copper tubing spirit burner that works well with the 5 cup model like it does with the 3 cup version.
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When it comes to the overall looks, design and function of the Hario Nouveau, I go back to what I wrote 20 years ago:
The Hario Nouveau is easily the best looking and best designed vacuum brewer I own. I believe this model to be the current highpoint of design and function in double globe vacuum brewer designs currently available today. The materials are first rate, from a black metal base and chromed stand, to high quality plastics (that don't look like plastics) and quality glass. The rubber (ed.note: found out later it’s silicone) gasket is also a piece of superior engineering, very supple, and very complex
Mark Prince, 2001 Hario Nouveau Review
Two decades later, I’d change nothing about that statement, other than to add to it:
After 25 years of using siphon coffee makers, contributing to the recorded history of them, podcasting about them, being interviewed about them by major newspapers and television broadcasts, and collecting over 200 different models dating back to 1917, I think I’ve developed a good feel for what looks good, works well, and what is innovative in coffee siphon design and technology.
There’s a lovely appeal and historical aspect to other siphons from history, including the Silex tabletop electric models of the 1930s, the Sunbeam Coffeemaster and it’s stunning art deco look and advanced functionality for something from the 1930s, and the original Silex tabletop models featuring Pyrex glass from 1917. I’m very fortunate that I have owned siphons from all these eras, and all these companies. Many were works of art with poor function. Many were industrial and basic, but worked incredibly well. And a few of them combined art with function.
With that said, I feel comfortable saying the Hario Nouveau is the most beautiful, best designed and engineered tabletop siphon… ever.
Almost everything about the Hario Nouveau was best of class, completely unique, or both. The spirit stove. The handle and clamping system. The wide mouth lower coffee globe. The way it pours. The top brewing chamber and how it automatically agitated the brewing coffee. The ease of separation between top and bottom glass portions after a brew. The design lines of the brewer. The attention to detail in the lid design. The quality of materials used throughout. Literally the only thing I didn’t like about the original Nouveau was the use of a paper filter, even if the filter holder itself was very well designed.
Hario really needs to consider reviving this iconic, beautiful, ground breaking coffee brewer.
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10DesignPretty much perfect in its shape, look, design, and materials
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10UsabilitySets the usability standard for alcohol stove siphon coffee makers
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10FeaturesFrom the Pitorch heater, to the gasket and handle design, this has it all.
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9.5PerformanceThe single coil Pitorch should have been the double coil design from the get go.
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9.0Value vs. CostIt was quite expensive when available for sale; now after market ones are 3x the price.
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10Quality of BuildPretty much perfect, with all the right materials used.
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8.5Service / WarrantyHario did stock parts for a few years for this siphon.
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9.5Included in the BoxAll you needed was methyl hydrate and you’re brewing.
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10Resale ValueIf you own one, you could probably sell it for 3x what you bought it for new.
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10OverallThe best alcohol stove siphon coffee maker ever made.
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