Before 1908, when you brewed coffee, filters were made of cloth. Sometimes coffee was filtered through socks if you were in a pinch. Yummy!
After getting fed up with her coffee's bitter taste caused by cloth filters, German homemaker Melitta Bentz literally took a page from her son's schoolbook and filtered her coffee through it. She quickly patented her contraption and became a coffee filter mogul.
The paper filters went on to win awards at the Leipzig Trade Fair and her company still exists to this day.
Thank you Melitta Bentz for bringing the sock brew to extinction! Would you ever in a million years use a sock for your coffee??