The Degono Cafetiere – British Made Coffee Press Review
By: Kev
Updated On: November 29, 2023 at 5:02 pm
The Degono Cafetiere, also known as The Degono Coffee Press, is a cafeitere, isn't it? Well, it is, but then again – it isn't ;-). Confused? You will be!
Just kidding, I'm simple, so I'll keep this review very simple. The Degono Coffee Press is a new kind of cafetiere, designed and manufactured here in the UK (British Press? Maybe doesn't have quite the same ring to it) which has been created to eliminate the usual cons of using a cafetiere.
You more than likely don't need me to tell you what the cons of using a cafetiere are, most people are very aware of them.
The main pro for the humble cafetiere, is that it's one of the easiest brewers, with the least amount of fuss possible, and this is why most of us over the age of 40 will have grown up with a cafetiere in the kitchen, and if you're anything like me, the cafetiere would have been brought out on special occasions, with the good old jar of instant being the daily driver ;-).
The main cons of using cafetieres, though, and probably the reason they're such an under used and underrated brewer these days, are:
Bits of ground coffee in your gob
Coffee continues to extract after brewing
Sloppy, messy cleanup
While other manual brewers have done very well in the speciality coffee world, namely pourover brewers, I think the reason Aeropress was such an mainstream hit, is that it was seen as similar to cafetiere which many people are familiar with, but it fixes all three of these issues.
Although masses of people now own an Aeropress, there are still huge numbers of people who prefer to stick to cafetiere, as they're not sold on the likes of Aeropress or any other “new fangled” coffee brewers.
So what if this is you, you just find the cafetiere to be a very easy, simple brew method, it suits you perfectly – but you come across a Cafetiere which fixes these issues for you, would you buy it?
Well, there is one, it does all of the above, and better still – it's a UK invention, and it's made in the UK, which is something you don't see very often these days!
And here it is:
Degono Cafetiere With GroundsAway ™
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Features:
Material: ABS, Borosilicate glass & Stainless Steel
Capacity: 1L
Carafe & Base dishwasher safe
UK Made
Direct support from the founders
Easiest cafetiere cleanup ever, thanks to the GroundsAway ™ system
Fine mesh for cleaner coffee
Grounds can be removed as soon as coffee is brewed
Individual parts of the cafetiere (including the glass carafe) available and inexpensive
The Degono is the brainchild of a husband and wife team from Ripon in Yorkshire, who developed it simply because they wanted a nicer, cleaner way to use a cafetiere. They wanted to drink cafetiere coffee, the kind of coffee they've always enjoyed, but they wanted it with no bits in their cup, and with easier clean-up. I got one, I used it, and I think they've absolutely nailed it. This is, without a shadow of doubt, the best experience I've ever had with a cafetiere, as I've mentioned in my best cafetieres post: Best Cafetieres It'll brew tea, too, by the way, but of course you wouldn't want to use the same one for coffee and tea, that would never work, so they offer different colours, so you can choose to have one colour for coffee, and one colour for tea. So as you can see from the image, instead of the usual one filter, there is a pair of filters. You use it just as you would any normal cafetiere, or “French press” if you want to call it that ;-), by simply dropping your ground coffee in and pouring hot water on top, but then when you put the top filter in and plunge, instead of just pushing the grounds to the bottom, you're trapping them in between the two filters. This makes for much easier than usual clean up, as you end up with what the guys at Degono call a “pancake” of coffee grounds, that you can just pull out and knock into the compost or food waste bin, or into a tub if you're upcycling it into a body scrub for example. But what this also means is that you can remove the grounds as soon as you plunge, and what this means is that you instantly stop the extraction. If you're using a one cup cafetiere for example, and decanting it all as soon as you brew, this won't be an issue, but if you're brewing a full pot and leaving it in there for a short time, it'll continue to extract, which means that until it cools to a certain degree, the brewing continues, and the brew becomes slightly more bitter. With the Degono, you can remove the grounds, give the filters a quick rinse, then just put the top part of the filter back in so you can put the lid on, and you then have a full carafe of just coffee, no grounds, and no further extraction. The Best Cafetiere Experience Ever If you love using a cafetiere, and you were looking to replace your trusty old cafetiere that has either broken, or started to rust, or maybe if you switched to pods for a while or another brewing method and you just crave pots of satisfying cafetiere coffee, then I honestly can't imagine you finding a better cafetiere than this. It's fairly early days for this brewer too, so as we've seen with other brewers that become a big hit (and I have a feeling this brewer is going to be a big hit) I think we'll see different methods, different versions, different add-ons and so on, all which will just enhance the flexibility. So for example, I think there will end up being different filter options for the Degono, as we've seen with the AeroPress. The current filter mesh I think is right for most people, it's a finer mesh than traditional cafetieres, so it results in a cleaner, less “muddy” cup, but I think there's a lot of scope for optional filter sets. For example, for anyone who really craves the thicker mouthfeel of traditional cafetiere, they could release a version with a coarser mesh. Equally, for people who want cleaner, more filtered coffee, they could release a filter set that uses a much finer mesh, even a cloth mesh. If they do this in the future, due to the modular nature of the Degono (the filters just screw on to the shaft), it'll be possible to upgrade as and when, by the way, you wouldn't have to replace the entire thing. Best Coffee for Cafetiere A Whole New Type of Brewer? While you can certainly use this literally as you would an old-school cafetiere, I think there's scope here for various different methods & recipes, which would in effect turn this into a lot more than simply a new kind of cafetiere. I've done a few experiments with it so far, firstly I made more of a traditional cafetiere coffee with it, and it tasted like a cafetiere coffee but just slightly cleaner in mouthfeel due to the finer mesh, and with a complete lack of grounds in the cup. I then experimented with brews which were more like the likes of the clever dripper, Hario Switch and similar hybrid immersion/filter brew methods. Using more interesting, lighter roast beans, as are commonly chosen for this kind of brewing, and with a tweak to grind, brewing ratio and brewing time, I've made coffee which I think is incredibly similar to these brewing methods. I even tried affixing filter papers to both filters to see what that did, and that made the result even closer to these kind of brewers. If your reaction to this is “if I want that kind of coffee, why don't I use that kind of brewer”, and that's fair comment, but a lot of people who're used to cafetiere brewing I think will probably see this as a less intimidating gateway into different kinds of brewing. So if you look at it from this perspective, as a brewer that people who've never gone off the more beaten path towards the more niche brewing methods will be able to use exactly how they used their old cafetiere, but with the flexibility to make fairly small tweaks in order to have a crack at brewing more interesting cups of coffee, I think the Degono is far more interesting than it may sound by simply being described as a cafetiere with easier cleanup. A Different User Experience The final thing I want to highlight with the Degono, is the very different than normal user experience that you're likely to have as a Degono user. The usual user experience of using a cafetiere, tends to go something like this: You buy a cafetiere, from a supermarket, or from Amazon or another retailer. You use it until it breaks, you then replace it. Most people wouldn't even bother trying to get support for a £20-£30 cafetiere they bought a few years ago that has developed a problem. Degono have gone direct to consumer right from the off, selling directly to the customer instead of via third party retailers, and they're doing all of their own customer support. What this means, is that if you have an issue with your Degono (and even though this is a well made UK product, using a carafe made from premium Borosilicate glass, no manufacturing or QC is ever 100% infallible) when you contact them, you're not being dealt with by someone sitting in a call centre somewhere, you're dealing with the small team who invented the product and saw it all the way through, so you're dealing with people who really care about the product and the customer. If you read through some of their reviews, you'll see examples of customers who've had a problem, having spoken to Sandra or Tim, and having a necessary part (or in some cases simply a replacement) sent out to them, with very little effort on their part. OK, it's a very small operation at this point, if Degono gains the same kind of popularity that AeroPress did, for example (which did have similarly humble beginnings, although the inventor of Aeropress was already very experienced in business given that he was behind the Aerobie flying ring) then a few years from now it may be slightly different. But for now at least, they don't even bother with having an official warranty term, because they know that if anyone comes to them with any kind of issue, they'll resolve it, even if it means replacing the unit. The Negatives OK so the Degono review has been all positives so far, now lets talk about the negatives. I can't find any, which is annoying! As you'll know if you've read my other reviews, I write “warts ‘n all” reviews, and where there is bad stuff, I find it and I write about it, because I'm not here to sell stuff, my reviews are designed to give the reader all of the facts so they can decide if it's the right thing for them, and I do this by giving all of the positives and negatives, but I've yet to find any real negatives. OK, so let's do some real knit picking, shall we, see if we can scrape the barrel for something other than praise for this product. The carafe is DURAN® Borosilicate from the German company SHOTT, one of the most recognized, trusted brands producing premium Borosilicate. So I can't deduct them any points here from using a cheap Borosilicate product and just using the term “Borosilicate” in there marketing blurb and hoping that the public won't realise that just as with everything else, there isn't just one kind or quality of Borosilicate. Yes the frame and the lid are made of plastic, but it's ABS plastic, the same plastic Lego is made from, and anyone who has ever stood on a piece of Lego with bare feet can attest to how sturdy that stuff is! ;-). In terms of how long it lasts, the Lego lost at sea off the Tokyo Express 25 years ago that is still washing up on UK beaches, I think just goes to show how durable ABS plastic is. The box it comes in, could maybe be a bit thicker. It's a bit flimsy, and although I'm sure they'll replace breakages, no one wants to excitedly open their new product to find it's broken, and they have to mess about getting a replacement. So, constructive feedback here, maybe the box could be a bit more protective. I actually think it came in an outer, protective box, to be fair, but remember I'm knit picking here. I'm scratching my head here looking at the Degono and going through my experience with it so far, looking for fault, wow they've made this hard for the critics! 😉 The only thing I can think of is that while I like the slightly cleaner mouthfeel of the coffee produced by the finer mesh, I wonder if some people might be looking for the slightly muddier cup that that much more coarse “filter” (which doesn't really filter anything other than grinds, and that's how the cafetiere was originally designed). This is splitting hairs though, and ultimately as I mentioned earlier, I think there'll end up being different options where the filter mesh is concerned, because some people may want a more coarse mesh, and a lot of people I suspect will either be happy with the stock filter mesh or will want it even finer. The name is something that annoys me slightly if I'm honest, but only because there's a pet shop where I live called Dogano, and I can't stop accidently referring to this as the Dogano brewer, and I've no doubt that when we shoot the YouTube review, I'll be continually having to do more takes to say the product name properly! 😉 It Brews Tea Too?? It does, and I've actually bought a second one, just for that. You may think that Coffee Kev only drinks coffee ;-), but actually, I don't drink coffee at all beyond 2PM, I drink all my coffee in the morning and early afternoon, I'm Tea Total after that, well, until Wine O Clock, of course. You can brew loose leaf tea in the Degono, and they've cleverly made them in different colours for anyone who wants one of tea and one for coffee, so you don't forget which is which and end up with coffee flavoured tea. Use Discount Code: coffeeblog for 15% off And there we go, my review of the Degono cafetiere, or maybe the “English Press”? Kev drops the mic, which is weird, most bloggers use a keyboard. Just before I sign off, if you get one of these, please let me know in the comments what you think, and if you love it, please do them a favour and leave them a review on their website. They're a great business, making a great product, and they're making it in the UK which is rare these days, so if we want to see more British design and development going on, it's important that we support people like this, I reckon. Life is like a box of chocolates, subscribe to my YouTube Channel, try my coffee at The Coffeeworks (use discount code CWNC25 for 25% off your first order), follow me on Twitter & Instagram, follow the coffeeblog FaceBook page, and that’s all I have to say about that.