Costa Rican Chorreador

The chorreador is how Costa Rica has traditionally made coffee at home: a simple wooden stand holding a cloth filter bag, the bolsita, over a cup or pot. You put coffee in the bag, pour hot water through it slowly, and it drips into the cup below. The coffee is called café chorreado. It’s a pour-over with a cloth filter, which lets a little more of the coffee’s oils through than paper. Here’s how to use one.

The short version

• A wooden stand and a cloth bag, the bolsita, over a cup or pot.
• About 20 g of coffee to 240 g of water (Cafetico), about 1:12.
• Water just off the boil, poured slowly in stages, for 3 to 4 minutes.
• Cloth, not paper: a little more body.
• Rinse the bag without soap, and let it dry.

How does a chorreador work?

The bolsita is an elongated cotton bag, shaped a little like a pocket, with its mouth held open by a wire or wooden ring. The stand holds it over a cup, mug or small pot. You put the coffee in the bag and pour hot water through it. The water seeps through the coffee and the cloth, and drips out of the bottom of the bag into the cup. It’s percolation, like any pour-over; the cloth simply replaces the paper filter.

How much coffee and water should I use?

	Amount
Coffee	About 20 g (Cafetico)
Water	About 240 g, just off the boil, or up to 300 g for a lighter cup
Ratio	1:12 to 1:15
Bloom	50 g
Time	About 3 to 4 minutes
Simple home guide	1 to 2 tablespoons per cup

What grind size should I use?

Sources differ. Cafetico suggests medium-coarse, a step coarser than for a V60; Wikipedia and Tico Travel describe fine to medium-fine. Start around medium: if the water runs straight through and it tastes thin, grind finer; if it drips very slowly and tastes bitter, go coarser.

How do you use a chorreador, step by step?

1. Rinse the bolsita with hot water in the stand, and pour that water away.
2. Add about 20 g of coffee for each 240 g of water.
3. Bloom: pour 50 g of water, just off the boil, to wet all the coffee.
4. Pour the rest slowly, in stages, to 100, 150, 200 and 240 g, letting it drip between pours. Start to finish takes about 3 to 4 minutes.
5. Lift the bag off when it’s drained, and serve.
6. Rinse the bag without soap and let it dry.

Brew mode on this page times the bloom and the pour for you.

How do you look after the cloth bag?

• Rinse it well in hot water after every brew.
• Never use soap: the cloth holds onto the taste.
• Scrub it with salt to lift the oils: Café Britt suggests once a week, Wikipedia about once a month.
• Dry it, or keep it wet: if you brew every day, Cafetico suggests storing the damp bag in a glass of clean water in the fridge.
• Replace it when it stays stained, smells stale or drips very slowly. Café Britt says a bolsita can last anywhere from three months to three years.

Where does the chorreador come from?

No one really knows. Cafetico notes that there’s no reliable record of who built the first chorreador or when, and points out that straining coffee through cloth is much older, and found in many coffee cultures. Some accounts place its start as early as the 1820s, others point to 1848, but neither is well documented, so I’d treat both as tradition. The name comes from the Spanish verb chorrear, to pour or drip in a stream.

Chorreador vs other cloth filters

	Chorreador	Coador de pano	Kopi sock
Country	Costa Rica	Brazil	Malaysia and Singapore
Holder	Wooden stand	Handle and ring, or a stand	Handle and ring
Method	Pour through	Stirred into hot water, then strained	Steep, then strain
Coffee	Usually black or with milk	Strong and sweet	With condensed milk

General guidance only. Take care with hot water, keep the stand on a stable surface, and let a cloth filter dry fully between uses.

Chorreador vs other methods

• Coador de pano: Brazil’s cloth filter, for cafezinho.
• Colador: the Caribbean coffee sock.
• V60: a pour-over with paper instead of cloth.
• Chemex: a pour-over with thick paper.

Explore every cloth-filter method in the cloth chapter.