The Melitta is the oldest paper pour-over in continuous production and the brewer that effectively created the category. It was patented in 1908 by Melitta Bentz, a housewife from Dresden who drilled holes in a brass pot and lined it with a page from her son's exercise book — frustrated with the sediment and bitterness of the percolators everyone used at the time. The company she founded still makes drippers and paper filters under the same name more than a century later.
The Melitta 1x2 is the small, single-to-two-cup wedge dripper. Its geometry is a flat-bottomed trapezoid with a single small drainage hole and shallow internal ribs — the ancestor of every wedge brewer that followed, from the Kalita 101 to the Hario Pegasus. The cup profile is balanced and slightly sweet, with a gentler acidity than any cone produces and a body that sits between a V60 and a Wave.
A standard recipe: 15 g of coffee to 240 g of water (1:16), medium grind, water at 93–95 °C, three pours in 3:00 to 4:00. Uses standard 1x2 paper filters sold in every supermarket across Europe — one of the practical reasons this brewer has never lost popularity. Pre-wet the filter to remove the papery taste and stabilise extraction temperature.