Chemex

For many, the Chemex is the ultimate home-brewing filter device, and was called by the Illinois Institute of Technology “One of the best-designed products of modern times”. Created in 1941 by American Peter Schlumbohm, it has enjoyed over half a century of popularity, and can be found in homes and cafes across the world. It is famed for its clean, juicy cups of coffee, its unique design features, and its aesthetics. The design falls under standard cone-shaped brewers, but with the interesting choice to have the brewer and decanter built from a single piece of glass. The smooth walls of the brewer reduce bypass significantly, and it utilises a spout on the side to function as both a means of reducing pressure inside the brewer to allow it to drain, and as a nice way to pour out your delicious coffee once brewed. Its paper filters are also unique, and whilst they make a few variations, they are all much thicker than your usual filter papers, resulting in the famous cleanliness of its brews. The standard and most popular Chemex papers do however feature a significant flaw, that the folding papers produce a 3-ply filter on one side, and 1-ply on the other, thus creating uneven extraction — and this is the primary reason it has failed to gain popularity in the specialty café world. Luckily there is a little hack you can do at home to fix this with just a pair of scissors, and you can find out about it online. The chemex itself comes in a wide range of variation, primarily focused on creating larger or smaller amounts of coffee, ranging from the small 3-cup size, all the way up to a over-the-top 10cup brewer.

We are using the original 6-Cup brewer, and whilst it is possible to brew larger or smaller amounts in this brewer, it will suffice to say that the Chemex was designed to be a social brewer, with its simplicity and large capacity, and so our recipe is designed to brew a bigger amount of coffee, great for 4 people, and still taste delicious. We also love to use the Chemex Filter hack mentioned earlier, and whilst this is entirely optional, it is recommended for more consistent, cleaner cups of coffee.