Biggin Coffee Pot

A coffee biggin is a 19th-century drip coffee pot: an ordinary pot with a removable upper section that holds the ground coffee over a perforated base, a metal strainer or a cloth bag. You pour boiling water onto the coffee and it drips through into the pot below. It’s also called a biggin pot or biggin coffee maker. Here’s how it works, an 1855 recipe for using one, and the long-running doubt about who Mr Biggin was.

The short version

• A drip pot: coffee sits in a top section, boiling water drips through it into the pot.
• Three styles of filter: a perforated tin or ceramic base, a flannel or muslin bag, or a wire strainer.
• An 1855 recipe: half an ounce (about 14 g) of coffee to six fluid ounces of water per cup.
• No pressure, no boiling of the grounds: just gravity.
• Disputed origin: George Biggin in 1803 according to the V&A, while Ukers doubted Mr Biggin existed.

How does a coffee biggin work?

The V&A describes the biggin on a Wedgwood pot in its collection as “a simple coffee maker in the filter-method”: a standard teapot with a cylindrical pot placed on top, perforated at the base. The teapot lid sits on top as a cover for the whole thing.

1. Coffee goes in the cylinder on its perforated base.
2. Boiling water is poured onto the grounds.
3. The coffee drips through into the pot below.
4. The cylinder comes off and the lid goes back on the pot to serve.

Nothing is pumped or recycled, so each bit of water passes through the coffee once. That makes it a simple drip method, closer to a modern pour-over than to a stovetop percolator.

What types of biggin were there?

William Ukers, in All About Coffee (1922), traces several styles:

Style	How the coffee is held	Source
Early English biggin	A squat earthenware pot with a movable tin strainer on top, after the French drip pot pattern	Ukers
Bag biggin	A flannel or muslin bag hung from the rim of the pot	Ukers
Metal biggin	A metal pot with a wire strainer in place of the bag	Ukers
Ceramic biggin	A perforated ceramic cylinder on a teapot, made by Wedgwood from about 1805	V&A

Ukers says the bag idea was an adaptation of the French fustian infusion bag of 1711, and that “any coffee pot with such a bag fitted into its mouth came to be spoken of as a coffee biggin”. In the United States, he says, the Marion Harland pot was an improved metal biggin, and the Triumph coffee filter was a cloth bag that “made any coffee pot a biggin”.

How do you make coffee in a biggin?

The most detailed recipe I’ve found is from August Dawson and Charles Wetherill, who wrote up coffee experiments in the Journal of the Franklin Institute in 1855. Ukers quotes them: they found “the best coffee pot was found to be the common biggin having an upper compartment with a perforated bottom”.

For one cup	1855 recipe
Ground coffee	Half an ounce (about 14 g)
Water	Six fluid ounces
Time to boil	About three minutes over a gas lamp

Their method was slightly unusual. The water went in the bottom of the biggin with the coffee in the top, and the whole thing went over the lamp. When steam appeared, they took it off the heat, poured the water into a cup, then straight back into the top onto the coffee to drip through.

With any other kettle, the simple version is:

1. Put the coffee in the top section.
2. Boil the water.
3. Pour it onto the coffee and let it drip through.
4. Lift off the top section, replace the lid and pour.

Ukers also quotes a period “common recipe for good coffee” of two ounces of coffee to one quart of water.

Who invented the biggin?

Sources disagree, so here’s what each one says:

• The V&A: “Invented in 1803, the coffee maker is named after its inventor, George Biggin.”
• Ukers (1922): the biggin appeared in England about 1817 and was “said to have been invented by a Mr. Biggin”. The lexicographer Dr Murray seems to have been convinced Mr Biggin existed, Ukers says, but others doubted it and suggested a Dutch origin for the name, possibly from a word meaning to trickle. Ukers concludes that biggins “came originally from France”, so if there was a Mr Biggin, he introduced them to England.

So the name, the date and the man are all uncertain. What’s well documented is that biggins were popular in England in the 19th century, that Wedgwood made them from about 1805, and that Ukers says the biggin “still retains its popularity in England” in 1922.

Coffee biggin vs other methods

• Karlsbad coffee pot: another drip pot, with a porcelain filter instead of a bag or strainer.
• Cloth bag pour-over: the bag biggin’s idea, held by hand.
• Neapolitan flip: a drip pot you turn over once the water boils.
• Melitta: the paper-filter drip cone that replaced cloth and metal strainers.
• Stovetop percolator: cycles the water through the coffee instead of once.

Explore more metal and gravity pots in the gravity and metal chapter.