Chemex

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The Chemex Brewer lives on Floor 7 in the San Francisco MozSpace. (If there are other Chemex brewers in the wild at MozSpaces, feel free to add them here.)

A Chemex is a special kind of one-piece pour-over made of borosilicate glass, which you use with a scale to weigh coffee and water to make a precise cup in a way similar to how chemists make solutions. Here are manufacturer directions for those of you who really like the full story. The simplified directions below for people who just want a cup of coffee now are adapted from Chromatic Coffee's directions, which you might like to print to take to the kitchen. You can also make iced coffee with the Chemex using a similar methodology.

Brewing with the Chemex takes roughly 10 minutes including preparing the various elements and makes about 2 mugs of coffee. While there's suggested timings, precise timing is not all that important with the Chemex - the main thing is to keep the grounds covered with water once brewing starts, but not add so much water that the grounds end up floating in it.


How to use the Chemex:

  1. Fill the metal pouring kettle with the curvy thin neck using the electric kettle. You also may wish to fill your mugs with boiling water at this point to warm them up, so your coffee will stay hot for longer.
  2. Weigh and grind 50g of coffee. (If you are in SF, coffee from the big grinder or preground coffee is perfectly fine if you are in a hurry, but the small grinder produces a grind ideal for use with the Chemex.)
  3. Place the filter in the Chemex brewer. The filter comes folded in fours - three of the sides should be towards the spout and one should be towards the opposite side. Use the pouring kettle to soak the sides of the filter and stick the filter to the glass. Pour the water out of the Chemex.
  4. Place the Chemex on the scale and put the ground coffee in the filter. Tare the scale. Use the pouring kettle to add approximately 100g of water to the grounds. Ideally you should pour in a spiral motion from the center outwards, but this is not essential. Wait 30-45 seconds for the coffee grinds to bubble (this is called blooming).
  5. Continue to add water using the same pouring technique at a rate of around 75g every 15 seconds, until you get to 650g of water. Serve and enjoy!