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Photos courtesy of Aaron Stansell.
Aaron Stansell, Michele Lauto, Tyler Quill and Luke Votaw.
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Photos courtesy of Aaron Stansell.
The filters come in cone and basket shapes to accommodate most drip coffee systems, and there is also an AeroPress filter available to purchase.
Like any engineering major, Homewood native Aaron Stansell spent many late nights in the library at Georgia Institute of Technology, studying with friends and drinking his seventh cup of coffee.
One morning four years ago, he and his group of four friends were there before class talking about their upcoming senior design project when one friend said his dentist was giving him a hard time about coffee stains on his teeth. Stansell said his gastroenterologist had also just recommended drinking less coffee to help prevent flares of acid reflux.
“The whole point of senior design is to find a problem and solve it,” Stansell said. “So as we’re sitting there talking about coffee and how our doctors are telling us to drink less of it, we had a lightbulb moment.”
Through their research, they realized it’s the acid in coffee that was causing problems for Stansell and his friends. They spent the next year inventing a new coffee filter that would allow them to keep drinking the same amount of coffee without as much acid and without ruining the taste of the coffee.
There are low-acid coffee beans and low-acid instant coffee brands already on the market, but Stansell said some don’t taste as good as regular coffee. Additionally, they wanted to create a coffee filter that would allow consumers to continue using their own coffee beans or grounds.
“Our whole thing was, how can we make something that will let everyone enjoy their favorite coffee without the side effects?” he said. “That’s how we differentiated what we’re doing from what’s already out there.”
The result was The Better Coffee Filter, which the group presented for their senior design project and now sell online. They come in cone and basket shapes to accommodate most drip coffee systems, and there is also an AeroPress filter available to purchase. They look and are used the same as other filters on the market.
“The only difference is our filter has an all-natural mineral blend that is built into the filter,” Stansell said. “So when we manufactured the paper, those minerals were put into the paper. … So you put the filter in, and as you brew your coffee, the water and the coffee interact with that mineral blend, which essentially filters out some of that acidity.”
When friends tried the coffee filters during the product’s prototype stage, Stansell said they would return saying, “I don’t know what you did, but it works.”
Another good piece of feedback was the taste. The group set out to reduce acidity without impacting taste, but what they found was that many people said their coffee tasted better than before.
“It’s an added benefit,” he said. “Some people might say, ‘I don’t care about acid reflux. I don’t care about my teeth.’ But everyone cares about how their coffee tastes.”
Stansell personally hand packs and ships each filter that goes out. He’s a 2014 graduate of Homewood High School and played on the Homewood boys golf team. It’s now been three years since he graduated from Georgia Tech, and this has been his full-time job.
For more information, visit thebettercoffeefilter.com. The Better Coffee Filter is also available on Amazon.
