Coffee Drip Bags vs Coffee Teabags: What’s the Difference?
Coffee bags are convenient. Open a packet, add hot water and you've got a coffee without a machine, grinder or pile of brewing equipment.
But there's an important difference between coffee teabags and coffee drip bags, and it changes how the coffee is actually brewed.
Despite the similar names, they aren't the same thing.
At Cannon Coffee, we use hanging drip filters, sometimes called coffee drip bags or pour-over coffee bags. Rather than leaving the coffee sitting in your mug to steep, hot water passes through freshly ground coffee and a paper filter before dripping into the cup below.
In other words, it's essentially a little single-serve pour-over.
What is a coffee teabag?
A coffee teabag works much like its name suggests.
Ground coffee is sealed inside a porous bag, which is placed directly into a mug of hot water. The coffee sits in the water while it brews before the bag is removed.
This is known as immersion brewing.
It's the same broad principle used by a cafetière: coffee grounds and water remain in contact during the brewing process before being separated.
It's certainly convenient. But it isn't the only way to make convenient single-serve coffee.
What is a coffee drip bag?
A coffee drip bag works differently.
Inside the packet is a small paper filter containing freshly ground coffee. The filter opens out and hangs over the sides of your mug.
Then you simply pour hot water over the coffee.
Instead of the coffee sitting in the water, the water passes through the bed of ground coffee and through the paper filter before dripping into your mug.
Open. Hang. Pour. Enjoy.
That's it.
No coffee machine.
No grinder.
No cafetière.
No V60.
No washing up.
Just a mug and hot water.
Is a coffee drip bag actually pour-over coffee?
Essentially, yes.
If you've ever used a V60 or another manual filter brewer, the principle will be very familiar.
With traditional pour-over coffee, ground coffee sits inside a paper filter in a dripper. You pour hot water over the grounds and gravity draws the water through the coffee and filter into the cup or server below.
A hanging coffee drip bag takes that basic brewing principle and makes it single-serve and portable.
The filter and coffee are already portioned for you, and the filter hangs directly from the mug, so there's no separate brewer required.
For coffee people, think miniature ready-to-go pour-over.
For everyone else: put it on your mug and pour water through it.
Coffee drip bag vs coffee teabag
The biggest difference is what happens to the water.
With a coffee teabag, the coffee sits in the brewing water.
With a coffee drip bag, fresh water passes through the coffee before dripping into the mug below.
That distinction might sound small, but these are two different brewing methods.
We prefer the drip-filter approach because it produces the kind of clean, flavourful cup we associate with properly brewed filter coffee, while keeping the convenience that makes coffee bags useful in the first place.
Why does Cannon Coffee use drip filters?
Because convenience shouldn't mean settling for bad coffee.
We're a speciality coffee roastery. If we're going to put one of our coffees into a single-serve format, we still want the finished cup to actually taste like the coffee we roasted.
Our drip filters let us take freshly roasted coffee, grind it appropriately for filter brewing and portion it into an incredibly simple format.
You don't need to understand grind sizes.
You don't need scales.
You don't need to own a grinder.
And you don't need to know how to dial in a V60 recipe.
We've done that part for you.
How do you brew a Cannon Coffee drip bag?
It's deliberately simple.
1. Open
Remove the drip filter from its outer packet and open the top of the filter.
2. Hang
Open the paper supports and place the filter securely over the rim of your mug.
3. Pour
Slowly pour hot water over the ground coffee, allowing the water to pass through the coffee and drip into your mug.
4. Enjoy
Once brewing is complete, remove the filter and enjoy your coffee.
That's the whole brewing setup.
Are drip coffee bags as good as a V60?
A V60 gives an experienced brewer much more control.
You can change the coffee dose, grind size, water temperature, pouring technique, agitation and brew time to chase a particular result.
A drip bag isn't designed to replace that experience.
It's designed for the times when taking a grinder, scales, kettle and V60 with you would be ridiculous.
And there are quite a lot of those times.
When are coffee drip bags useful?
They're particularly handy for:
- travelling and hotel rooms
- camping and festivals
- offices and workplaces
- early mornings
- holidays
- train journeys
- keeping in a bag or desk drawer
- guests who want a proper coffee
- gifts for coffee lovers
- anyone who likes good coffee but doesn't own brewing equipment
They're also useful if you're curious about speciality coffee but don't particularly fancy turning your kitchen into a small laboratory.
Do you need a coffee machine for drip bags?
No.
That's one of the main reasons we like them.
All you need is a mug and hot water.
The coffee is already ground and the filter itself acts as the brewer.
It makes speciality filter coffee accessible to someone who owns absolutely no coffee equipment.
Are Cannon Coffee drip bags instant coffee?
Definitely not.
Instant coffee has already been brewed before being processed into soluble granules or powder.
A Cannon Coffee drip bag contains real freshly roasted, ground coffee.
You're actually brewing the coffee when you pour the water through it.
That's why you'll see the coffee grounds sitting inside the filter.
So which is better: coffee drip bags or coffee teabags?
Both formats exist because people want a convenient way to make coffee without equipment.
We simply prefer the drip-filter method.
For us, it offers a better balance between convenience and proper filter coffee.
You still get the wonderfully simple experience of opening a packet and making one cup, but the brewing method is much closer to the pour-over coffee we'd normally make with a V60.
That's why Cannon Coffee Brew Bags aren't coffee teabags.
They're proper single-serve pour-over filters.
Discover 24 different coffees this Christmas
We've taken the same idea one step further for Christmas 2026.
Our Coffee Advent Calendar 2026 contains 24 different speciality coffees, with one individual 13g drip filter to brew every day from 1st–24th December.
Every coffee is roasted by us in Surrey, ground for the filter and individually packed.
There are no pods, no instant coffee and no coffee teabags — and you don't need a grinder or coffee machine.
Just 24 different coffees, a mug and a kettle.