The Ring-Distributor Drip Pot: Holes in a Trough, Water Everywhere at Once

"This invention relates to that class of coffee-pots in which the ground coffee is placed in a filter in the pot and boiling water is poured over it. The water percolates through the mass of coffee and eventually falls into the pot through the foraminous bottom of the filter." Earlier distributing plates were meant "to prevent the force of the water, when poured in, from washing through the finer particles or dust of the coffee and rendering it 'muddy.'" But "In a pot where a concave distributing-disk is employed the stream of water is apt to pass through at the center, and where a flat or level plate is used it is apt to pass through at the point where the stream impinges." "The trough-like character of the depression h causes the water, when poured in, to flow around and distribute itself evenly as it passes through the perforations."

Brew two cups the same way, 20 g of ground coffee in a paper filter and 320 g of water just off the boil. For the first, pour in a thin stream onto one spot. For the second, pour onto a small plate with holes in a ring (a jar lid pierced round its edge works) set on the coffee. Time how long each takes to drain, taste them side by side, and look at the spent grounds: a crater or a flat bed. Compare with the notebook's picture.

**William H. Sweeney** of New York, a subject of the Queen of Great Britain, filed US 237,783 on 26 May 1880; it is dated 15 February 1881. **Honest limits.** The notebook splits the bed into wetted and dry parts; real flow spreads sideways in the grounds, and extraction depends on grind and temperature too. Amounts and fractions are examples. Your times, taste and the spent bed are the measurement.