Hario TCA Syphons

If you really enjoy lighter roasts and are looking for an extremely clean cup, your syphon awaits! Invented in Germany around 1830, the basic principle here is around water pressure. You heat water in the bottom chamber until it rises to the top chamber, hold the heat, add your coffee, keep it hot for a set period of time then remove the heat and as the bottom chamber cools, it draws the coffee down through a cloth filter. The results are amazing and give you the cleanest cup possible out of all the brewing methods out there. It is easily the most entertaining way to make coffee, and a little like a science experiment each time you use it. One of the huge upsides of syphons is that the water does not need to be boiling to get to the pressure needed to move the water into the upper chamber i.e, you aren't brewing in boiling water. This method of lower temperature brewing results in virtually no bitterness in your cup.

The TCA's come with a Spirit Lamp, Cloth Filter and Coffee Bean Scoop and stand. This is ready to use as is however we highly recommend getting a butane burner to go with this, available here. The burner lets you have much more control over the temperature you keep the top chamber sitting at while the coffee is brewing. As with all coffee brewing, temperature is one of the key variables at play, having control over this is really vital. We generally keep the dose lower for syphons at around 60g of coffee per litre of water, although some coffee does taste better with a higher dose and we usually go no higher here than 70g per litre.

You do need to take special care of the cloth filter. Wash the filter in hot water asap following use and keep it under the water level in a cup in the fridge in-between uses. If the filter dries out it will get a pretty foul musty flavour that you don't want. If you want to extend the life of your filters you can clean them with espresso machine cleaner (we use Cafetto) by soaking your dirty filters in a hot mix (~1/2tsp Cafetto / 250ml hot water for a few mins then thoroughly rinsed) and you'll see them come back to life again for a short while. You will need to change filters down the track, order them now and we can send them with the syphon for no extra shipping. 

Replacement filters can be found here.

Butane Burners can be found here.

HARIO manual can be downloaded here.

For more syphon recipes go here.