I am sorry to inform you that you are using a poor quality coffee maker

Coffee is The original biohack and the country’s most popular productivity tool. As we adjust to the shift to daylight saving time, the caffeine junkie Wired Our reviews team writes about our favorite coffee brewing procedures and devices. Today, director Michael Calore explains his love for Caleta Wave. Find other Java.Base stories about others Wired The writers’ favorite brewing methods.

Pour her coffee Reputation for being picky. This is good. If you’ve been using one of the popular brewers like the Chemex or Hario V60, you’ve no doubt spent a lot of time trial and error. If you don’t select the grind size, heat the water to the correct temperature, or stir the kettle in the perfect vortex to steep the coffee evenly, it’s easy to end up with an acidic or under-extracted mess. It can force you to give up pouring altogether and go make up with your Moccamaster.

There’s a better way, and it’s not only foolproof and doesn’t require any precision, but it also results in a great cup of coffee every time.

I’m talking about the Caleta Wave, which has long been my favorite way to make coffee. This brewer, who was born in Japan two decades ago, is very similar to those other trains. But while other brewers’ paper filters are cone-shaped, Kalitta’s filter ends with a 2-inch-wide flat bottom. Instead of allowing the coffee to flow through one fairly large hole at the bottom of the filter, Kalitta drips the coffee more slowly through three small holes.

Photography: Michael Calor

It’s a style of brewer called a flat-top, named after the flat-bottomed filter. Kalita isn’t the only one — other notable products include the Orea, the Timemore B75, and the December Dripper, a Kalita-style dripper with an adjustable aperture — but flattop machines have earned a glowing reputation among serious baristas and people who just want to brew a good cup of coffee without feeling like they’re trying to win a blue ribbon at a science fair.

The trick is in the design. This flat bottom allows more coffee to be fully saturated by distributing water evenly among the ground coffee. You can properly saturate your coffee in the V60 if you pour carefully, but with the Kalita Wave, because more coffee grounds are collected in the flat bottom of the filter, it’s easier to saturate evenly. The three small holes control the flow, restricting it enough so that the coffee is properly extracted before it drips.

The wavy design of the filter makes it barely touch the side walls of the dripper. This prevents heat transfer to the metal dripper, so the water and resulting coffee remain at the right temperature. (You may have noticed that, yes, you’ll need special filters, but the cost is comparable to the cone-shaped V60 filters: about 12 or 13 cents each.)