The Story behind Filtru
My passion for coffee goes back about 7 years back, when I attended my first ever coffee event, hosted by Hasbean (https://youtu.be/Vj_9ftpWIAk).
This was an eye opening experience to me. I got to meet a coffee farmer, Alejandro Martinez, learn about his experience of growing the coffee, and have also met many like-minded people, not to mention the cupping of some great coffees.
From that moment on, I was hooked on specialty coffee - not just because of the great taste, but also how many coffee roasters do go out their way to give back to the origin - the farmers and communities that grow and harvest the coffee cherries. And Steve Leighton is a prime example of that. You should follow his vlog series titled In My Mug.
Fast forward a few thousand cups of coffee (and 3 years), Apple had announced their newest product - the Apple Watch. An engineering part of me immediately started looking for a good use of it in other people’s lives.
The very first idea that popped in my mind was a covert coffee timer, that taps you on the wrist when you should perform each task of preparing a pour-over coffee.
That wad the very first prototype of Filtru:
When showing this prototype to my barista friends over at Ancoats Coffee, an idea for a coffee training app started taking shape. After looking around the App Store there weren’t many good and intuitive coffee apps out there, or they came with a price tag of £4 or more.
The idea was simple, 9 most common brew methods, such as AeroPress, Hario V60, with easy to follow step-by-step recipes and a timer. The app allows you to change the amount of water and coffee used, explains different grind settings, how they affect you coffee, and records each of your brews, like a diary.
Then came the idea for a recipe discovery. Meeting many coffee roasters I’ve come to learn that every coffee produced by the roaster has some sort of brew method that meets the demanding eye of the quality control department, typically the very person that improves the roast profile.
I have started building the discovery part of the app in the shadows, over the course of a year, as there have been many feature requests by the Filtru community, specifically support of Bluetooth-enabled scales.
Filtru has grew to be quite popular amongst coffee aficionados. It has been featured in TIME’s Top 25 Apps of The Year, I have given a TV interview for Tele5, where I got to explain how I make my morning coffee with the app, and many more publications and websites have written about this app.
Not rest on one’s laurels, I am continuing my effort to make Filtru the no.1 coffee app out there. Later this year I have planned 3 significant product launches, expanding the use of digital technology for the coffee industry.
I am hoping, through these upcoming features, Filtru will reach many more people, educate them about the coffee industry, the importance of commodity vs. specialty, and hopefully step-by-step allow them to appreciate the fantastic taste of a manually brewed, single origin coffee cup of joe.
- Bobby Bobak
Creator of Filtru