Coffee percolator

[1] Coffee percolators once enjoyed great popularity but were supplanted in the early 1970s by automatic drip-brew coffeemakers.

Just below the upper end of this tube is a perforated metal filter "basket" to hold the grounds to be brewed.

This whole cycle repeats continuously, making the characteristic intermittent "perking" sound of the hot water hitting the underside of the lid.

Most of these automatically reduce the heat at the end of the brewing phase, keeping the coffee at drinking temperature but not boiling.

The first modern percolator incorporating the rising of boiling water through a tube to form a continuous cycle and capable of being heated on a kitchen stove was invented in 1819 by the Parisian tinsmith Joseph-Henry-Marie Laurens.

It had the key elements of a conventional percolator: the broad base for boiling, the upflow central tube and a perforated basket hanging on it.

Percolators are also popular among campers and other nature enthusiasts because of their ability to make coffee without electricity, although a simple filter holder can also be used with boiled water poured from a pot.

In 1976, General Foods discontinued the manufacture of Max Pax, and by the end of the decade, even generic ground coffee filter rings were no longer available.

In 1813, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford published his essay, "Of the Excellent Qualities of Coffee", in which he disclosed several designs for percolation methods which would now be most closely related to drip brewing.

Distinctions from percolator brewing include the fact that the majority of the extraction takes place during the infusion phase (as an immersion brewer) and that the water is not recycled through the grounds.

Moka brewing (invented 1933, Alfonso Bialetti[10]) uses a bed of coffee grounds placed in a filter basket between a pressure chamber and receptacle.

The amount of vapor pressure that builds up, and the temperature reached, are dependent on the grind and packing ("tamping") of the grounds.

In the South of Europe, in countries like Italy or Spain, the domestic use of the moka expanded quickly and completely substituted the percolator by the end of the 1930s.

Since both percolator and drip brewing were available and popular in the North American market throughout the 20th century, there is little confusion in the United States and Canada between these methods.