Germany · since 1908
The company that invented the paper filter
In 1908 Melitta Bentz punched holes in a brass pot, lined it with a sheet of her son’s blotting paper, and invented filter coffee. The 1×4 cone in supermarkets everywhere is a direct descendant, and the company is still family-owned.
The modern range is unglamorous and thoughtful. In Europe, Melitta sells narrow super-automatic machines that deliberately skip milk, which makes them cheaper and leaves no milk system to abandon. Most of those models are not sold on Amazon.com, so we do not cover them here.
In the US, the simplest way into the brand is its pour-over cone, one of the cheapest ways to find out whether you like the method.
Where Melitta is genuinely the reference is consumables. Its filter papers set the standard for weight and porosity, and they are stocked in most supermarkets at a price nobody undercuts meaningfully.
One-cup cone, number 2 filters included as a starter supply, open cone design to monitor the pour
A one-cup pour-over cone with a starter supply of number 2 filters.
Best for: Finding out whether you like pour-over before spending anything on it
≈ $9
