The New Samantha Brewer By Hario(Hiroia)- First Look

Hario the makers on the famous V60 coffee dripper, a Japanese company that’s almost a century old, has now ventured into the high tech coffee arena.

I got my Samantha Brewer Saturday evening and excitedly unboxed the machine, I notice immediately that Hiroia has given some thought to making this part of the customer experience easy and enjoyable, instructions how to take the brewer out was printed on the box.

First step was to clean the machine by filling the water tank up to it’s max capacity and pressing the play button on the Samantha, this would run the water though the machine and ensure that the water we’re brewing with is new and clean.

Next step is to download the Samantha app from the Apple app store or the Android play store. It only took a few minutes to download and load up the app, it would automatically search and pair with the Samantha brewer. Once your phone and the Samantha are paired you have an option of making your own recipe or downloading shared recipes from the cloud.

Brewing your own recipe is easy with just a few simple steps

1. Press the “+” icon on the upper right corner
2. Enter desired temp ( I suggest between 85- 95 deg )
3. Put in the coffee dosage
4. Enter Grind Settings
5. Enter the parameters for your Bloom and you Pours
6. Press Save
7. Place your filter in your V60 and rinse
8. Press brew on your app

Things I like

• Recipes can be shared online
• Speed of the pours can be set
• Number of pours and interval can be set
• Works with other drippers such as the December, Chemex, Kalita
• Easy to use
• Extracts coffee evenly, no high and drys grounds

Stuff they can improve

• Takes a long time to heat up
• I wish the water tank can be bigger
• No option to duplicate a recipe ( if sure this can be added in a future update to the app)
• I wish it can be paired to a scale

Samantha is available at the following retailers:

• TheVault.ph 
• Manila Coffee Gear- Sheridan St Corner Pines St Mandaluyong City
• Coffee Lab- Bonifacio High Street, Alabang town Centre, Rustans Department stores