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I want to tell you about a brewer.
Not because you don't know what it is. If you're reading this, you almost certainly own one. You probably have a recipe you keep coming back to, a filter preference you'd defend, and at least one person you've nudged toward buying one.
I picked up my first Switch in 2023. I'd been making coffee seriously at home for a long time before that, espresso, French press, and eventually filter. The Switch felt like cheating at first. It became my daily brewer within a week.
I'm writing this because I think the Hario Switch is one of the most consequential pieces of equipment in the history of specialty coffee, and its story deserves to be told carefully. It's also the reason GoodSwitch exists.
Here's the full history: where it came from, how it took hold, what it means for the future of brewing, and how a brewer designed in Tokyo ended up on competition stages around the world.
It Started with the King of Glass
Hario was founded in Tokyo in 1921 as a laboratory glassware manufacturer. The name means "King of Glass," hari for glass, o for king. For decades they made equipment for scientists. Then they started making it for people who treat their morning coffee like one.
Their first major coffee product was the syphon brewer in 1948. The product that defined the company globally came much later.
In 2004, Hario's designers revisited a concept they'd been developing since the 1980s: a conical dripper that would let water flow through the grounds rather than steep in them, producing a cleaner, more expressive cup. Working with potters in Arita and resin manufacturers, they developed what would become one of the most recognizable objects in specialty coffee.
The V60 launched commercially in 2005. Named for its shape: a V-angled cone at exactly 60 degrees, with spiral ribs that guide water down and allow air to escape during the bloom.
Five years later, at the 2010 World Brewers Cup in London, Michael Phillips used a V60 to win the championship. The V60 went on to win the World Brewers Cup in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2021. No other dripper comes close to that record.
By the time the Switch arrived, the V60 was already a cultural artifact. Hario wasn't just a company. It was the foundation of an entire community.
The Problem the Switch Was Designed to Solve
The V60 is extraordinary. It's also unforgiving. The quality of your cup is directly proportional to your technique: pour rate, consistency, timing, equipment. Get it right and you're rewarded with something you can't quite replicate on worse gear.
That ceiling is part of what makes it beloved. But it meant there was a gap: something for people who wanted the clean, complex flavors of paper-filtered pour-over without needing a year of practice to reliably get there.
The Clever Dripper had tried to fill that gap since 2009. Simple immersion brewer, steep the grounds, set it on a cup, gravity does the work. Consistent and forgiving, but limited in what it could express.
Hario's answer was more interesting.
2019: The Switch Arrives
In 2019, Hario released the Immersion Dripper Switch. It won the Good Design Award that same year, Japan's most prestigious design recognition, established in 1957.
The concept: take the V60 glass cone. Mount it on a silicone base with a stainless steel ball valve. Add a lever that controls whether the valve is open or closed.
When the valve is closed, water steeps with the grounds, full immersion, clean because of the paper filter. When the valve opens, gravity pulls the liquid through in a controlled drawdown. Pure immersion. Pure pour-over. Or both in a single brew: steep for body, release for clarity.
That mechanism gave brewers something they'd never had before: active, mid-brew control over extraction. Not just water temperature or grind size. You could now control when the water moved and how long it stayed in contact with the grounds. A whole new dimension of recipe development.
The community noticed immediately. But the real explosion was still a year away.
November 2020: James Hoffmann Changes Everything
On November 13, 2020, James Hoffmann, 2007 World Barista Champion and one of the most followed coffee educators on YouTube, posted a video titled "My Current Daily Driver: Hario Switch + Sibarist."
He wasn't reviewing it. He was using it every day.
That video did what it always does when Hoffmann puts his weight behind something. It legitimized the Switch for an enormous audience who trusted his judgment. Within months, the Switch wasn't a niche product for enthusiasts. It was the brewer the community was recommending to everyone.
His hybrid recipe, 20g of coffee, 95°C water, medium grind, stir at 2:00, release at 2:15, became one of the most widely replicated Switch recipes in the world. It remains a touchstone today.
Tetsu Kasuya and the Recipe Explosion
If Hoffmann brought the Switch to the masses, Tetsu Kasuya turned it into a canvas for world-class brewing.
Kasuya is the 2016 World Brewers Cup Champion, known for his 4:6 method for the V60, a recipe so teachable it became a standard. When he turned his attention to the Switch, the results were characteristically deliberate.
His Super Hybrid method uses the valve to engineer extraction in phases: closed for a thorough bloom, then cycling through pour-over and immersion in a precise sequence. Each phase does specific work. The immersion stages build body and sweetness. The percolation stages maintain clarity. The result is a cup that seasoned baristas describe as almost impossibly balanced.
The recipe spread fast. It's now one of the most referenced advanced Switch methods in the community.
The Science Behind Why It Works
Recipes explain what to do. Understanding why gives you the ability to adapt.
Lance Hedrick, one of the more technically rigorous coffee educators working today, published a deep breakdown of what actually happens during extraction that reframes how brewers think about hybrid methods. His core argument: extraction efficiency isn't just about total yield, it's about concentration gradients. Water extracts most efficiently when it's fresh. As it saturates, extraction slows. Percolation methods refresh that gradient constantly. Immersion lets it stagnate.
The Switch lets you choose. Steep when you want body and saturation. Release when you want the concentration gradient working in your favor again. That's not a trick. It's a deliberate tool.
Volatile aromatics, the compounds responsible for the most expressive fruity and floral notes, also peak early and dissipate with time. A well-timed release captures them before they're lost. Knowing this changes how you read a recipe and how you write one.
The Community Runs with It
Justin at Daddy Got Coffee approaches the Switch the way most of us first approach it: with genuine curiosity and no agenda. His coverage reaches home brewers who aren't necessarily tracking competition results or following extraction theory, and it captures something the technical content sometimes misses. The Switch is just fun to use. The control feels good. The results are consistent. That comes through clearly.
The pattern holds across the community. Spend real time with the Switch and you tend to stay with it.
Competition Stage: Hybrid Brewers Take the Stage
The clearest signal about where a brewing method stands in specialty coffee is what competitors choose when everything is on the line.
For years, the World Brewers Cup was largely a V60 competition. That began to change in 2018 when Emi Fukahori introduced the hybrid GINA brewer. A door opened.
At the 2024 US Brewers Cup, champion Weihong Zhang used a Hario Switch paired with a V60 Mugen cone, a no-bypass configuration that maximizes immersion contact. He won the national championship with a decaf Typica from Colombia, brewed on the same equipment he uses at his café every day.
At the 2025 World Brewers Cup finals in Jakarta, four of the nine finalists used hybrid brewers of various kinds. MAME Coffee, founded by 2018 WBrC Champion Emi Fukahori, uses the Hario Switch as their standard café brewer. As Emi puts it: "We're really playful with other elements of coffee, so we want the brewer to be simple and consistent."
At the 2026 US Brewers Cup in North Carolina, hybrid brewers dominated the field. Esther Kim of Kumquat Coffee took the championship brewing on the April Hybrid. Ashlynne Wike of Hydrangea Coffee Roasters in Berkeley finished second on a Hario Switch. Close to 20 of the 30 competitors chose hybrid methods. The conversation has shifted from which dripper to which hybrid, and how.
Why GoodSwitch Exists
I picked up the Switch in 2023. I'd been making coffee seriously at home for a long time before that. The Switch felt different. Within a week it had replaced everything else.
When I started thinking about what I wanted to make, the answer kept coming back to the same place. The Switch is built around a stainless steel ball valve. The glass is beautiful. The stock plastic lever was prone to discoloration, leaks, and breakage over time. I wanted the lever, a touchpoint, the physical interface with the brew beyond the kettle, to match everything else about the brewer. So I set out to make one.
The geometry had to be exact: the lever controls a ball valve with tight tolerances, and fit affects both function and feel. Several iterations later, I had something worth sharing. A lever machined from 316L stainless steel, the same grade used in surgical instruments and marine environments. Heat-resistant. Food-safe. Built to last decades.
When I posted the concept on r/pourover, the response was immediate. I opened preorders for 20 units. Within 24 hours I sized the run up to 50. That batch sold out. I introduced PVD coatings because if you're going to hold a piece of metal every morning for years, it might as well be beautiful.
GoodSwitch is now in its fourth release. The lever fits the Hario Switch 01, 02, and 03. And for brewers on a flat bottom hybrid brewer, there's one for that too.
Where This Is Going
The hybrid brewer category keeps growing, and Hario is expanding with it. The Switch line now includes ceramic versions alongside the original glass, and the lineup has grown meaningfully in the last two years. The brewer that launched in 2019 as a single product is becoming a platform.
The Switch is on competition stages, in leading cafés, in the hands of some of the most credible voices in the community, and in the kitchens of people who take their morning cup seriously.
It's a brewer worth caring about. I think it deserved a lever to match.
At the time of writing, GoodSwitch makes levers for the Levers and the flat bottom hybrid brewer. Machined from 316L surgical grade stainless steel and hand finished. Available in a range of finishes including PVD, DLC, and brushed 316L stainless. Complete kits are also available.