The Melitta - Simple Pour-Over Coffee

     We recently visited the Hawaiian island of Maui, and our first stop even before checking into our condo, was at the MauiGrown Coffee Store.Read: Maui Origin Trip ReportWe let store vice president Jeff Ferguson know where we'd be staying while on the island, and he was happy to let  us know that MauiGrown supplied the coffee that we would find in our condo when we got there.  The good news is that when we arrived, our welcome basket did indeed contain some ground MauiGrown coffee.  The not-so-good news is the "coffee maker" in the kitchen was not even a drip brewer, but rather what you see in the picture above: a percolator.[ad#Google Adsense - use me]I hadn't even seen a percolator since I was a child.  In fact, it occurred to me that I had never made coffee in one before.  I understood the concept, that it would release boiling water onto the ground coffee, which is the reason most people don't use these anymore: boiled coffee is spoiled coffee.     The MauiGrown Coffee store to the rescue!  Not even 24 hours after having last been there, we returned for something that was inexpensive, mobile, and that would give our MauiGrown coffee its just brewing.Me: "Jeff, you were right, there is MauiGrown coffee in the room.  But, the coffee maker is a percolator."Jeff: "I'm sorry to hear that."Me: "What can I buy today that will make coffee right?"Jeff: "We sell the Melitta pourover."Me: "I'll take it.  But I have to admit, I used the percolator this morning because I had no choice"Jeff: "That's what a junkie has to do."     I've written alot about the quality of coffee made by pour-over, but mainly in reference to the glass pitcher designed by Chemex.  The Melitta product offers what I needed for this trip - something inexpensive, something I could take home after the trip, and something that would make great coffee while I was there and on future trips away from home.Essentially, where the drip brewer was an improvement on the percolator that boiled coffee, the pour-over techniques offered by Melitta and Chemex allow you to control the drip of hot water onto ground coffee in steps rather than in a continuous stream as the drip brewer does.  The result?  A better cup of coffee, and only a little more work to make it.  And definitely, far superior flavor over the percolator, which by the way didn't get used again by us on this trip.