History and culture
The Costa Rican chorreador tradition
The chorreador — a wooden stand holding a cloth filter sock — is a traditional Costa Rican brewing method predating modern pour-over equipment, still used domestically alongside contemporary methods.
Each section below is labelled by how well-established its claims are — look for the label under each heading.
Cloth-filter brewing on a wooden stand
Documented history · Costa Rica
The chorreador uses a cloth bag (the "bolsa" or sock) suspended in a wooden frame over a cup or pot; hot water is poured through coarsely ground coffee held in the cloth, dripping through by gravity — a traditional Costa Rican household method documented as predating and continuing alongside modern pour-over drippers and filter machines.
A living tradition, not a museum piece
Documented history · Costa Rica
The chorreador remains in genuine domestic and tourism-facing use in Costa Rica today rather than being purely historical, though contemporary specialty consumption in Costa Rica (a significant arabica-producing country, see CoffeeHQ's Costa Rica origin profile) also includes modern brewing methods side by side with it.
Related
Preparation traditions
How this history is practised today, in CoffeeHQ's international preparation atlas.