The Story of Coffee Filter Inventor: Amalie Auguste Melitta Bentz

Around the turn-of-the-century, a Dresden, Germany housewife named Melitta Bentz

went to innovative lengths to ensure her cup of coffee was grounds-free. Today, her
name is emblazoned across a food industry empire.

Melitta was born Amalie Auguste Melitta Liebscher on January 31, 1873. Her father
was a book publisher and her grandfather owned a brewery though in her biography
there is no mention of her mother. Around 1898 or 1899, she married Johannes Emil
"Hugo" Bentz,

a small business owner in Dresden. They had 3 children Wily, Horst and
Hertha Bentz - and their lives were pretty traditional as far as early 20th-century
German families go. But that was about to change.

When coffee first arrived in Europe around the 16th century (introduced by Muslim
traders), it was mainly a drink for the wealthy. But by the late 19th century, coffee
was available to both the rich and poor alike. Fairly quickly, Europeans
started growing their own beans in their African and Caribbean colonies. Because of
the Caribbean's proximity, coffee was actually more popular and cheaper in the
American colonies. Soon, coffee equaled or even replaced tea as the hot beverage of
choice in many parts of the world.

Every morning, so the legend goes, Melitta made her husband a cup of coffee. And
every morning, after he departed for work, she slaved over the used

brass pot, cleaning out the wet coffee sludge at the bottom. It
was long and tedious work exacerbated by the fact that the family could not afford to
buy cloth coffee filters

(Which were the standard filters of the day). One day, Melitta had enough. She did a
little kitchen experimentation and devised a rather ingenious solution. Taking her old
brass pot, she punched holes in it with a nail in its pliable bottom. Then, she ripped a
sheet of cheap blotter paper from her son's school notebook and lined the bottom of
the brass pot with it. Next, Melitta laid this contraption on top of a coffee mug, filled
it was coffee grounds and slowly poured boiling water over it. Boom, a makeshift
coffee filter. But more than that, it was cheap, easy to clean and disposable (which
also made them hygienic).
Bentz's paper filter became the go-to for her and her friends when brewing coffee.
Soon, Hugo and Melitta went into business together, patenting her invention on July
8, 1908 under the rather innocent title of "Filter Top Device lined with Filter Paper."

In winter of that year, the Bentz couple opened a small office in their apartment to sell
the disposable paper coffee filter with a starting capital of only 72 Reichsmark cents
(about $30 American dollars). The burgeoning company got a big boost in 1911 when
it received a gold medal at the International Hygiene Expo (which was a thing for a
few years, at least according to the Bulletin of the Pan American Union.) By 1914, the
company had over a dozen employees and was churning out paper coffee filters by the
hundreds.

Today, Melitta is an international company that still specializes in coffee products. It

notched €1,436 million in sales (about $1.6 billion)

, an increase of 8 percent from the year before. It's also still family-owned and
operated (with the American headquarters now in Clearwater, Florida). All this
because Melitta Bentz found a DIY solution to her coffee mess.
Melitta is dedicated to providing the ultimate coffee experience with gourmet coffees,
filters and coffeemakers. Melitta Worldwide offers goods and services for coffee
pleasure, as well as food storage, food preparation and cleaning in Europe, North and
South America and Asia.
 

Invention contribution:
1. Less work in cleaning and preparing coffee.
2. Coffee filters trap oily substances in coffee called diterpenes. These oily substances escape into
your morning cup through coffee grounds floating in the coffee or oily droplets accumulating
on the surface. And when consumed, these oily compounds block a cholesterol-regulating
receptor in the intestines. Because of this obstruction, the intestines can no longer properly
regulate the amounts of cholesterol absorbed and excreted -- resulting in elevated blood
cholesterol levels. Since coffee filters trap cafestol and kahweol, they significantly decrease the
risk of coffee-related cholesterol increases.