My father once referred to my husband’s and my obsession with coffee as “our hobby” and as much as I immediately wanted to protest what seemed like a dismissive comment…my dad had a good point. We love coffee so much that we seek it out when we travel. The minute I book a hotel or Airbnb, I research the closest specialty coffee shops to where we’re staying.
We both wanted to go to the Hario café when we were visiting Tokyo this past summer. We were excited to see the various coffee drippers it had to offer, some of which had only just been released or were only available in Japan. That’s why, when we were at the café, we picked up the new Hario Suiren. As soon as we got home, I put it to the test.
The Tests
- Unpack and Assembly Test: I unpacked and assembled the Hario Suiren to see how difficult it was to put together.
- Standard V60 Recipe Test (Medium Roast): I brewed a single cup of coffee using a medium-roasted South American blend with chocolate and nutty notes to see how easy it was to brew and what the resulting coffee tasted like. I used 205°F water with a medium-fine grind at a 1:14 coffee-to-water ratio. I compared this cup to a pour-over brewed in the same manner using a standard Hario V60 dripper.
- Custom Suiren Recipe Test (Medium Roast): I tweaked the standard V60 pour-over recipe, customizing it for the Suiren’s loss of heat. I used slightly hotter water at 210°F but kept everything else the same, including the grind size and 1:14 coffee-to-water ratio.
- Standard V60 Recipe Test (Light Roast): I repeated the first test, using a single-origin light-roasted Ethiopian coffee bean with floral, citrus, and fruity-tasting notes and a standard V60 recipe of 205°F water and medium-fine grind coffee. I again compared it to a Hario V60 cup brewed in the same manner.
- Custom Suiren Recipe Test (Light Roast): I repeated the second test using the lighter roasted beans, using hotter, 210°F water to see if it made a difference in the resulting coffee.
- Cleaning Test: After each cup of coffee, I washed the Suiren to see how difficult it was to take apart and clean.
What Is the Hario Suiren?
The Hario Suiren is from the makers of the classic Hario V60, one of the most popular pour-over coffee makers. The word “suiren” is Japanese for “water lily” and, true to its name, the Suiren is designed like an open flower, with plastic petal “fins” that the filter sits in, exposed to the air.
It’s a gorgeous design, made even more beautiful by the ability to customize the dripper by buying fins in different colors. You can purchase the original set in clear black or a limited edition black and white, or you can buy sets of six fins in different colors, allowing you to make the dripper in whatever color combination you wish. My husband and I got the red, white, and blue version in Japan.
The dripper works similarly to other cone-shaped coffee filters like the Hario v60, Hario v60 Mugen, the Origami, and the Graycano. You place a cone-shaped filter in the dripper and rinse it with hot water. Then add the grinds, do a first bloom, allowing the CO2 to release, and then continue to pour hot water, waiting for it to drip and repeat like you would for most other pour-overs. The question, of course, is if the Hario Suiren actually works well.
What We Learned
It’s Super Cute
There’s no way to get around the obvious: The Suiren is adorable. The shiny, translucent fins around the coffee filter are so pretty you’ll immediately want to take a photo and post it on your social media platform of choice. The fact that you can swap out the colors to customize the dripper makes it even better. Like the Origami pour-over dripper, this is the sort of device that you’ll proudly display on your countertop. And every person who sees it will ask what it is.
It Brews a More Subtle, Mellower Cup
Does the Suiren make better coffee than a traditional V60? That’s debatable. But it doesn’t make a bad cup of coffee—just a different one. The filter sits fairly naked on the Suiren’s fins, with lots of air in contact with it. Because of the way the fins are in the base, the hole at the bottom is also larger, allowing more coffee through. In comparison, with the classic V60, the filter sits fairly close to the walls of the pour-over, with just the wall’s ridges keeping the filter from sticking to the brewer.
The more the filter sticks, the more water stays inside the filter and subsequently the grounds, enhancing extraction. This process is called no-bypass brewing, where the water has no place to go other than through the coffee. A lot of coffee nerds are into the no-bypass method but the Suiren circumvents this style of brewing entirely, allowing water to escape through the sides of the filter, where it’s exposed to air.
Does this mean the Suiren filters more quickly? Surprisingly, no. I found that the brew time for the Suiren was fairly similar to that of the V60. Both took about three and a half minutes. This is because the water that ends up being poured through the Suiren cools down faster thanks to the brewer’s increased airflow. Cooler water moves through the grounds at a slower rate, but the larger hole at the bottom compensates for this, equalizing the brew time.
The Suiren’s resulting coffee wasn’t as sharp as one from the V60. Medium-roasted coffee had deeper notes of nuttiness and a smooth finish that lingered on my tongue. Light-roasted beans exhibited earthy black tea notes when brewed at 205°F. Comparable coffee made in the standard V60 had the medium roast tasting brighter with subtle cherry notes while the light roast had more hints of floral and stone fruit.
You Can Make a Brighter Cup With Some Tweaks
To get a more traditional V60-style cup out of the Suiren, all you need to do is adjust the temperature of the water. Using hotter water made coffee that tasted more like a V60. When I tried 210°F (just below boiling) and made sure to pour the water fairly close to the grounds with my gooseneck kettle, I got a brighter-tasting cup with the medium roast. The light roast coffee showed off more floral notes, closer to what I would taste with a traditional V60 brew.
Thorough Cleaning Isn’t Necessary
Though the Hario Suiren is easy and intuitive to put together (and take apart), cleaning all those small plastic petals is tedious. But the instructions included with Hario said that all you need to do is rinse the Suiren with hot water after use. In the end, I do take it apart and wash it about once a week. However, a quick rinse under the hot water in the faucet will suffice most days. Hario states that the dripper components are dishwasher-safe, but I’m fearful of placing the lightweight fins through that harsh of a cleaning cycle.
The Verdict
If you’re new to pour-overs, enjoy a mellow cup of coffee, or want something that’s a conversation starter, then the Hario Suiren is an excellent dripper. It’s made of durable plastic, is reasonably priced, makes a subtler cup of coffee, is customizable with different colored petals, and looks great on your countertop.
The Pros
This brewer is intuitive to set up and functions fairly similarly to other Hario drippers. It’s customizable, with swappable “ribs” that can be purchased in sets of six (the dripper needs 12 ribs total). The dripper itself is beautiful and eye-catching. It also makes a great cup of coffee. The plastic resin construction is fairly indestructible. Once set up, it’s sturdy and the larger base fits most coffee mugs with rims up to four inches in diameter.
The Cons
Cleaning the Hario Suiren is fairly easy with just a simple rinse of hot water, but if you want to do a more thorough cleaning, taking apart the fins and individually washing them can be tedious. Also, you can’t just flip the brewer over to empty the grounds into your trash or compost bin (something I did the first time). The petals will fall out! Instead, you have to grab the filter by the edges and pull it out to toss it, leaving the dripper upright. Not a deal-breaker, but still a bit annoying. Finally, if you’re anti-plastic, this isn’t the right pour-over device for you. The entire dripper is made of plastic, with the fins made of PCT resin (a high-temperature-resistant plastic) and the base is made of polypropylene, both of which are BPA-free.
Key Specs
- Material: PCT resin and polypropylene
- Weight: 4.7 ounces
- Compatible with: Hario V60 Glass Range Coffee Server and most coffee mugs
- Compatible with: Hario V60 Paper Cone Filters
FAQs
Is Hario better than Chemex?
Both Hario and Chemex offer several coffee-making products. The better product is largely up to your taste. Hario’s V60 is one of the standards in pour-over drippers, making a beautifully balanced cup of coffee fairly quickly, where the flavor notes can shine. But the V60 does typically take a little more attention while brewing. The Chemex is more forgiving due to the slow brew time, but it uses a thicker filter and the resulting coffee isn’t quite as rich, yielding a softer and cleaner cup of coffee. That said, the Chemex is great for making larger pots of coffee, while the Hario V60 typically only makes one to two cups at a time.
How many cups of coffee can you make with the Hario pour-over?
Most of Hario’s pour-over drippers like the v60, Mugen, and Suiren make one or two cups of coffee per pour-over. Hario offers other coffee-making devices that can brew larger amounts.
Where We’re the Experts
- Irvin Lin is a former barista and coffee obsessive who owns over 25 devices to make coffee. He’s a cookbook author, recipe developer, food writer, photographer, and ceramicist.
- He wrote the cookbook Marbled, Swirled, and Layered, which was picked by The New York Times as one of the best baking cookbooks of 2016.
- He runs a blog called Eat the Love, where he’s developed, photographed, and written recipes since 2010. Eat the Love was nominated twice for best food blog by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) in 2016 and 2022.