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A three-station iRhea Automatic Drip Coffee system on display at the recent SCA Expo in Chicago. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
A new high-tech brewing machine from South Korea called iRhea recently made its way to the the United States, offering customizable automatic pourovers for commercial settings.
Made by a parent company called Nobletree, the iRhea Automatic Drip Coffee system involves one or more nozzles that dispense hot water over pourover devices, with users able to dictate the distance, pour pattern, water temperature, volume, number of pours and other variables.
Appearing at the recent SCA Expo in Chicago, the iRhea comes to the U.S. through distribution company RoasTronix, which is also the U.S. distributor of Korean-made Stronghold electric coffee roasters.
The machine is one of multiple new automatic pourover solutions that emerged this year alongside established brands in the niche commercial category such as New York-based Poursteady.
[See DCN’s complete 2024 SCA Expo coverage here.]
The iRhea is currently available with either one, three or five spouts. Single-spout machines feature an internal water heating system, while the three-spout and five-spout versions connect to a 12-liter under-counter dual-boiler system. That system includes a mixing valve that allows for precise temperature adjustments between each pour for each spout, if desired.
“A five-station machine has five nozzles and every one of them has a direct line to the boiler,” RoasTronix CEO Arash Hassanian told DCN. “That’s where you can really control every spot, not like sharing a nozzle between each other — five cups simultaneously, all at different temperatures and different recipes for different grounds.”
Flow meters measure the volume of outbound water, and each station on iRhea machines also has a built-in scale for weighing the finished brew.
“In the U.S., we do a lot of pourover, but in Korea, ‘hand drip’ is a slightly different method,” said Hassanian. “In Korean hand drip, you don’t pay as much attention to what is in the filter holder, you mostly focus on what is in your product, in your cup. This machine does, technically, both of these processes.”
Founded in Suwon in 2013, Nobletree was originally a specialty coffee roasting company that later designed its own automatic pourover system for cafes. After producing successful prototypes in 2016, the first market-ready iRhea single-group machine launched for sale on Asian markets approximately six years ago.
Distribution subsequently expanded to the Middle East, while this year marks iRhea’s entry into Europe and North America.
A single-spout countertop iRhea M1 with its integrated water heater sells for $2,800. The three-spout M3 model, which includes the dual-boiler system, is priced at $15,000. The five-spout M5 sells for $17,000.
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Howard Bryman Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
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