A two-chamber brewing device that uses heat-driven vapor pressure to push water up into the coffee bed, then vacuum to pull the brewed liquid back down through a filter. Also spelled syphon. Looks dramatic — water levitates between glass chambers — and works on a simple physics principle.
The lower bulb sits over a heat source. As water inside heats, vapor pressure rises and pushes the liquid up a glass tube into the upper chamber, where the coffee waits. The brew steeps for around 60–90 seconds. Then you remove the heat: vapor in the lower bulb condenses, pressure drops, and a partial vacuum pulls the brewed coffee back down through a cloth or paper filter.
How it tastes
The cup reads clean and bright, with the body of an immersion brew (because the bed is fully submerged during steeping) and the clarity of a paper-filter pour-over (because the final pull happens through a fine filter). It's an unusual middle ground that no other brewer reaches naturally.
Japanese kissatens have kept siphon alive as a serious specialty technique. In the West, it had a brief third-wave revival around 2010 and now lives mostly in coffee-shop demonstrations.
What it asks of you
Time, attention, and a stable heat source — usually a beam halogen heater or a butane burner. Cleanup is more involved than V60. The reward is a brew profile that's hard to replicate: the cleanliness lets light-roast nuance show, while the immersion phase rounds the body in a way V60 can't.