The Pakt Coffee Kit: Design Details
A few out of the many early prototypes of the kettle and the dripper
The Kettle
As the true coffee purists know, to make pour over coffee properly, you need the control of the pour from a gooseneck kettle. However, the gooseneck kettle is not exactly synonymous with traveling -- it’s bulky and has fragile parts. To solve this issue, we’ve invented a new type of dripless spout for our kettle that offers the same control over the strength and speed of the water flow, but in a compact, travel-friendly form. In fact, thanks to its cool-touch silicone outer layer, we think our compact handleless design gives you even more pouring precision.
The Dripper
Another bulky pour over necessity -- the dripper. The large diameter of most traditional drippers is too wide to fit into any self respecting traveler’s coffee kit, so we knew we had to design our own version. We tried many variations. Metal versions that packed flat were too rigid to pack into the rest of the kit and left too much dead space. Plastic versions that packed in multiple pieces were too complicated to assemble – especially before having your coffee! Also, we didn’t want any plastic tainting our cup of coffee. We settled on a stainless steel collapsible dripper that snaps into place for brewing, and collapses into half of its size for packing. To keep the kit as lean as possible, it nestles perfectly atop the kettle lid.
Our Design Partners In Crime
We enlisted the help of our industrial design pals at Impel Studio. The guys at Impel have all the electrical manufacturing partnerships and know-how to complement our skills, and bonus, are very serious about their coffee.
Where Things Stand
We’re currently wrapping up the tooling phase of production. For anyone who isn’t familiar, this basically means that we’ve created and refined the molds that are necessary to create the first production order of our kit. A few weeks ago, Stephen from Impel went to Asia to work directly with the factories involved, and here is his report:
“I spent a week with our team in China reviewing and refining off-tool samples with the many factories helping to bring the coffee kit to life. Being on the ground helped us rapidly refine our kit, ensuring every detail is perfect. Working directly with the factories and people that will be manufacturing the coffee kit cut down on the typical elongated back-and-forth between time zones so that we can keep our manufacturing process on schedule.”
