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The Wait Is Over: You Can Finally Brew Coffee in a Mason Jar with the Portland Press

By Ray Hu - May 16, 2013

in Object Culture | Food

You couldn't make it up: a Portland, Oregon-based design duo just launched a crowdfunding campaign to launch a mason jar-based product, designed expressly to brew one of the two beverages that the City of Roses is famous for.

Besides its rugged good looks, it so happens that the mason jar is more durable than the traditional carafe; bedecked in a wool sleeve for insulation and topped off with a maple lid (with a press), the Portland Press is a crafty take on the iconic coffee brewing apparatus (footnote: the origin of the French press is unclear, but the modern version was patented in Italy in 1929; today, it's typically associated with Bodum of Denmark).

While I'm sure some of our readers will dismiss the Portland Press as an exercise in h*pster styling, those very same readers might recall that there's actually a precedent for a DPMJA (Domestically-Produced Mason Jar Accessory) that has had an impact on the U.S. economy. And lest we forget, domestic manufacturing and iterative innovation have been the story all along: the Ball brothers built their company (and subsequent fortune) by buying a kerosene can factory, pivoted (in today's parlance) to glass, moved to Muncie, Indiana, and decided to bring John Mason's idea to the rest of the world.

Like I said, you couldn't make it up. Learn more and help Bryan and Rob out on their Crowdsupply page.

(Full disclosure: Knowing that caffeination is the quickest way to an editor's heart, Bucket co-founders Bryan Kappa and Robert Story kindly [and cleverly] sent us a tall mason jar of coffee beans to ply us. It worked, and although I have no shame in admitting that I'm sipping it from another mason jar as I write this, I'm a little embarrassed that it was brewed with a drip machine and not a French press.)

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John

10 years ago

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The problem with French presses is they break and that's wasteful! So we used a mason jar so when it breaks you can just throw it out and get another!
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bar

10 years ago

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Mason jar, felt, wood, coffee, Portland.. hipster overload.
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