Vacuum brewers are pretty much what happens when a French Press pot mates with a drip brewer. The water is heated in the lower globe and rises up to the top globe where the coffee is. Once the water’s all out of the bottom, the heat’s cut off, and the resulting vacuum pulls the coffee-laced water back down to the bottom globe.
About the only difference between vacuum and drip is that in a drip brewer, water falls through the coffee by gravity, and in a vacuum brewer, it’s pulled through the coffee by vacuum suction.
We have, in the past several years, used a percolator to make coffee while camping. Frankly, it doesn’t make very good coffee – the Folgers single-use instant coffee bags make coffee that’s superior to the percolator – but the smell, sound and imagery have their own merits that, for me, outweigh a bad-tasting cuppa joe.
My mother uses an electric percolator like this. My dad uses a drip coffee machine right beside it. They get up at different times, and he likes his coffee so strong it’s nearly solid.
As for me, I like the percolated coffee as well as I like drip coffee which is to say, not very well. I drink it, but I prefer tea or lattes. I can’t tell a difference between drip and percolated coffee.
-Lil