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While answering a few of EdChum's questions I discovered that what I/we in the USA call pour over coffee is referred to as drip coffee in the UK. I added the pour-over tag to both questions I encountered but figured we should decide as a community which tag to use to describe this brewing process and then properly document it because drip-coffee means something different in the US (which is apparently referred to as filter-cofee in the UK). For clarification the method in question is shown in the image below.

enter image description here

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  • oh, these are terms for that? never heard either… maybe allow both and recommend elaboration in the text?
    – mirabilos
    Commented Jan 27, 2015 at 22:55
  • Recommending both would be confusing; generally you want to use one tag, and make any other names a tag synonym (you don't want to have half the questions have one name, and the other have a different one, making it hard to get a list of all questions about that particular topic).
    – user80
    Commented Jan 28, 2015 at 1:48
  • Certainly, the terms "pour-over", "drip", and "filter" (and perhaps others...) need regional disambiguation; perhaps this should be a question at Coffee main site? I fear clarifying text in every question/answer will be necessary. Making uniform the vernacular of the entire world might be easier. ;-)
    – hoc_age
    Commented Feb 11, 2015 at 16:32
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    @hoc_age Tagging terminology needs to be nailed down in the tag wiki for the site so for our purposes Yes, it does need to be agreed upon and defined. Meta is the place to talk about and discuss issues on the main site.
    – Joshua Aslan Smith
    Commented Feb 11, 2015 at 17:02
  • @JoshuaAslanSmith - agreed about the tag terminology, and I think you've convinced me that the best place to "define" our lingua franca is the tag wiki. My comment on this answer summarizes my feelings about the (more-)general problem.
    – hoc_age
    Commented Feb 11, 2015 at 17:09

3 Answers 3

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It looks like filter coffee has another, different meaning too. When I read "drip coffee," I think of the kind you get from a traditional coffeemaker. Go for "pour-over."

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  • Wave hello fellow rpg.se user.
    – Joshua Aslan Smith
    Commented Jan 27, 2015 at 21:31
  • @JoshuaAslanSmith: Cheers. :)
    – Jadasc
    Commented Jan 27, 2015 at 22:17
  • Filter coffee is a horrible term because depending on what TYPE of filter you use, the results can vary widely.
    – Suspended User
    Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 20:24
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I think is the best tag for the job, simply because it will not be confused with another method. If you call it , then one locale will try to apply the tag to one method of brewing, while another locale will use a different one.

If we then call the machine method , and discourage the use of , it makes for less ambiguity. Admittedly, it does make it difficult for the nationalities who don't use those terms, but I think that's better than having half the people on here tagging with one and half the other.

TL;DR — I think we should use and .

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    I think the mere awareness that these terms have different connotations to different people is the most important bit. Aside from this, I give +1 for making the terms descriptive instead of making them distinguishing (as a Proper Noun); e.g., describing the action to pour [water] over the grounds, or that one uses a (paper or cloth) filter to produce the coffee, or that water drips over the grounds.
    – hoc_age
    Commented Feb 11, 2015 at 16:41
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In the UK and Japan we refer to these: enter image description here

as drip coffee this is a fairly recent thing to invade UK espresso shops but they have been around for a while in Japan.

Whilst this: enter image description here

is what we call filter coffee. I'm happy to use both terms but this could turn territorial perhaps as it's unclear what the correct term should be as this is not just a UK-ism.

It may be better to just have a tag synonym in this case perhaps?

Just to defend my corner a little hario is one of the main sellers of these kinds of products and they seem to be the main brand in use in UK and you can see that drip is the term used in their products.

And again here: http://www.hario.co.jp/coffee/hario_coffee/dripdecanter.html although the page is in japanese the url itself uses the term drip.

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  • The worry is that since each of the tags discussed other than pour over have 2 meaning in a chain it can get pretty confusing, using the term that is only has one meaning could grant the most clarity.
    – Joshua Aslan Smith
    Commented Jan 27, 2015 at 22:55
  • agree on filter coffee for the second one (.de here)
    – mirabilos
    Commented Jan 27, 2015 at 22:55
  • Ftr, here Hario calls it "pour over". So again, its back to territorialism, even in marketing terms :-(
    – AviD
    Commented Jan 28, 2015 at 10:02
  • @AviD that's interesting, I think a tag synonym with wiki may be the best bet, I don't like enforcing one's view on another when there is defined term that is not based on territorial differences, it may be unavoidable unfortunately but at least we are discussing this one early
    – EdChum
    Commented Jan 28, 2015 at 10:05
  • Oh and just to make things fun, "pour-over" / "drip" coffee here is colloquially known as "filter coffee". And the typical coffee pot-style isn't even common enough here at all.
    – AviD
    Commented Jan 29, 2015 at 20:32

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