Filtered vs Unfiltered Coffee

Filtered coffee, brewed through paper, is clean and bright, with a light body. Unfiltered coffee, brewed through a metal mesh or with no filter at all, is heavier and richer, with some sediment. The difference that matters beyond taste is the coffee’s oil: paper holds most of it back, and with it a compound called cafestol that raises cholesterol. Metal filters let it through.

For someone drinking a cup or two a day, that makes this mostly a question of taste. If you drink several cups of unfiltered coffee a day, or you have been told to watch your cholesterol, the filter is worth a closer look.

Which methods are filtered?

“Unfiltered” usually means anything without a paper filter, even if a metal mesh keeps the grounds out of the cup.

Swapping the filter moves a method between rows. An AeroPress with a metal disc, or a drip machine with a reusable gold-tone basket, brews unfiltered coffee in this sense. A French press poured through a paper filter afterward brews filtered coffee.

How the filter changes the taste

• Paper traps oils and fine particles. The cup is clear and bright, and individual flavors stand apart, which is why pourover is the method for tasting a single origin. The trade-off is a lighter, thinner body. Rinse paper filters before brewing, or they can add a papery taste.
• Metal lets the oils through. The cup is rounder and heavier, with more texture on the tongue and a little silt at the bottom. Flavors blend together rather than separating.
• No filter at all, as in Turkish coffee, gives the heaviest cup, with a layer of grounds you leave behind.

Neither is better. It is the same choice as between a clear broth and a creamy soup. For more on how each brewer shapes flavor, see how your brewer changes it.

Why unfiltered coffee raises cholesterol

Coffee beans contain oils, and in those oils are two compounds, cafestol and kahweol. Cafestol has been described as the most potent cholesterol-raising compound known in the human diet. It raises LDL, the kind of cholesterol linked to heart disease.

A paper filter holds back the oil, and the cafestol with it. A metal mesh does not. That is the whole difference, and it is why the brewing method matters so much here.

Researchers in the Netherlands measured how much cafestol ends up in a cup brewed each way:

Espresso is lower per cup only because the cup is small; ounce for ounce it is among the richest. Individual cups varied widely around these averages, depending on the coffee and the recipe. See the original study for the details.

How much does it raise cholesterol?

Controlled trials found that each 10mg of cafestol a day raises total cholesterol by about 0.13 mmol/L, or 5 mg/dL. Five cups of French press a day, at about 3.5mg each, adds up to roughly 17mg of cafestol: enough to raise total cholesterol by about 0.23 mmol/L, or 9 mg/dL.

Large population studies back that up:

• Norway, 2022. Among 21,000 adults in the Tromsø Study, people who drank three to five cups a day of boiled or French press coffee had total cholesterol about 0.2 mmol/L higher than people who drank none. Espresso raised it too, by up to 0.16 mmol/L in men (Svatun and colleagues).
• Norway, 2020. A study that followed more than 500,000 people for about 20 years found that people who drank filtered coffee died at lower rates than people who drank no coffee at all, and people who drank unfiltered coffee died at higher rates than filtered-coffee drinkers. The lowest death rates were among people who drank one to four cups of filtered coffee a day (Tverdal and colleagues).
• Sweden, 2025. Coffee from most of the workplace brewing machines tested contained far more cafestol than paper-filtered coffee brewed at home, with a median of about 15 times as much. Machines that mix coffee from a liquid concentrate contained little (Uppsala University).

The population studies show associations rather than proof, since people who drink different kinds of coffee differ in other ways too. The cholesterol effect itself is well established, though: it comes from controlled trials in which people were given cafestol and their cholesterol was measured.

Should you switch?

This page is not medical advice, but the evidence points to a few sensible rules of thumb:

• A cup or two a day, and your cholesterol is fine: brew whatever you enjoy. The cafestol in one or two cups of French press is a few milligrams.
• Several cups of unfiltered coffee a day: consider making most of them paper-filtered, and keeping the French press or espresso for the cups you most enjoy.
• You have high cholesterol or heart disease: paper-filtered coffee is the safer default. Ask your doctor, and mention how you brew your coffee, not just how much you drink.

Caffeine is a separate question, and the filter does not change it. See which coffee has the most caffeine.

Keeping the method, losing the cafestol

If you love a method that lets the oils through, you do not have to give it up.

• Pour it through paper. After pressing a French press, pour the coffee through a rinsed paper filter in a pourover cone. You lose some body, but keep the rounder, steeped flavor.
• Use paper in the AeroPress. It is the standard filter, and the AeroPress still makes a fuller cup than most paper-filtered methods because the coffee steeps.
• Try a cloth filter. In the Swedish study, pouring boiled coffee through a cloth filter removed about 97% of its cafestol.
• Keep the cups small. Cafestol adds up by the cup, so an espresso or two carries far less than a large mug of French press.

For cold brew, the paper pass in the recipe is optional for texture. Little research has looked at cafestol in cold brew specifically, so if it matters to you, keep the paper pass.