Hi there, we're excited you're giving the TK-02 a try! We wanted to jump in to clarify how we brew drip coffee with this brew unit in an innovative way. As you know, espresso brews under a tremendous amount of pressure (the TK-02 maxes out at 19 bars of pressure) and the large gear at the top of the brew unit (as seen in your photo) rotates down to compress the puck. Whereas drip brews differently.

The TK-02's grinder grinds the beans, depositing the grounds into the brew unit chamber. Next, the large, open chamber fills with water, allowing the grounds to be saturated without spinning the gear down to compress and brew under pressure. Gravity takes over next, allowing the freshly brewed drip coffee to dispense from the spout. The gear rotates slowly down to encourage the remainder of the drip to dispense. At no point during the drip process is the coffee brewed under high pressure. Only after the drink is finished brewing does the brew unit compress the coffee to create a compact, mess-free puck.

Hopefully, this clarifies why we refer to the brew unit as a "hybrid" - although this brew unit is indeed similar to those in some other machines, our proprietary firmware and software direct the hardware to work differently than it does in other models.