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.

Bentz found that percolators were prone to over-brewing the coffee, espresso-type machines at
the time tended to leave grounds in the drink. So, she take 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.

Melitta died on 29 June 1950 at the age of 77. The grandchildren of Melitta Bentz, Thomas and
Stephen Bentz, still control the Melitta Group KG headquartered in Minden, on the east of North
Rhine-Westphalia, with about 3,300 employees in 50 countries.

Invention contribution:
1. It was cheap, easy to clean and disposable.
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.