The nel drip, sometimes called flannel drip, is the oldest filter method still practiced in specialty coffee. It uses a reusable cloth filter — nel is short for flannel — stretched over a wire frame that sits on top of a carafe. The method travelled from nineteenth-century European coffeehouses to Japan, where it became the signature brew of the legendary Tokyo café Cafe de L'Ambre and, through decades of shōwa-era devotion, a defining tool of the kissaten.
What sets the nel apart is the filter itself. Cloth is more permeable than paper, so it lets through the oils and very fine particles that paper catches. The cup lands between a French press and a V60 in body: clean of sediment but richer and rounder than any paper pour-over, with a silkier mouthfeel and a longer finish.
A starting recipe: 30 g of coffee to 300 g of water (1:10 for nel-drip's typical concentrate, to be diluted or drunk short), medium grind, water at 82–85 °C — notably cooler than a V60 because nel is most often associated with dark-roast coffee — poured slowly in a continuous centre stream over 3 to 4 minutes. The filter must stay wet at all times between uses (the classic storage is in cold water in the fridge) or the cloth picks up off-flavours that ruin the next brew.