Make no mistake: A Kyoto cold-brew maker remains the ultimate thrill ride of the coffee-maker world, with its open-air drops and corkscrew turns. But it's a slow-going process that obeys the rules of gravity. If you want a fast-paced brew show that will challenge your faith in physics, a siphon or vacuum brewer is the way to go.

A siphon brewer works like this. There are two chambers: A coffee pot on the bottom and a large tank to place your grounds at the top. They’re connected by a tube, and a coffee filter separates the two. When heat is applied to the vessel at the bottom and the water boils, vapor pressure pushes water into the top chamber like magic.

There, the water mixes with the coffee grounds in a most violent, entertaining, and ultimately delicious fashion. Turning the heat down or off reduces the vapor pressure, and the coffee flows back down into the lower chamber, filtering the grounds out in the process.

Siphon brewing has been around since the early 1800s, and there have been a few mass-market vacuum machines available for a while. My parents have long made their joe with a Bodum Electric Santos coffee maker, and the coffee-snob boom has brought analog siphon brewers from Hario and Yama into the spotlight. But now that KitchenAid has entered the game with the Siphon Coffee Brewer, the technique has officially gone mainstream.

The KitchenAid model is electric like the Bodum maker, but it has a far more reserved design. The top chamber, where the action happens, looks like a Paris Metro lamp. The new KitchenAid machine also makes a full pot of coffee—eight cups, to be exact—unlike the smaller siphon machines that make up the market today.

You’ll have to wait a bit longer for the show to start; the KitchenAid Siphon Coffee Brewer is due in June for $250.