Chemex!!

Depending on the day this is my favorite brew method, a blasphemous thing to say for sure but you won't find me drinking espresso all the time. The Chemex will give you an incredibly clean and crisp cup, while maintaining strong aromatics and body. The key is the special Chemex filters which are oxygen cleansed and thicker than conventional paper filters. The thicker filter is able to trap more of the undesirable elements and sediment than ordinary filters, resulting in a clear and rich cup.

The tricky thing about this brew method is finding the exact grind size to match your coffee and water ratio while achieving a four minute brew time. A general rule is to use a fine grind that yields a four minute brew time with a coffee/water ratio of 12g to 6oz. This method uses percolation and infusion to brew the coffee. Steeping occurs in the initial stages of brewing as well as gravity forcing the water through the ground coffee. As you can imagine, the more coffee being used will provide more resistance to the water trying to pass through it, and thus you will need a slightly coarser grind when brewing a larger volume.

Okay lets brew some coffee. First you will need to fold and rinse your filter and warm the brewing device. Fold the filter in half, then in half again to form a cone. Put the cone in the top of the vessel with the tri-fold along the spout side. It is very important to wash the filter to remove any paper taste from the brew. In the above picture we have everything we need, along with the pre warmed/wet chemex and filter. Now we weigh our coffee and water to the correct ratio and bring the water to a boil. Once this is done let the water cool down a bit to around 203 degrees and grind that coffee fresh, using a fine grind.

Dump the ground coffee into the cone filter and start a timer to check your brew time. First we will pour a little water over the grounds to wet them. Try to pour just enough so that all the grounds are wet, but none of the water is actually passing through into the bottom of the vessel (far left picture above). After about thirty seconds its time to pour the rest of the water (or if you're brewing a large volume, just up to the top of the brew vessel) over the grounds. During this step it is best to use a circular pour motion staying mostly in the center of the cone, this prevents grounds concentrating in the center and choking the end of the brew. The middle picture above is the brew just after the initial pour, on the right is about halfway through brew time.

Now we're almost finished brewing. Above is what your Chemex should look like after about three minutes or so. When the time reaches four minutes there shouldn't be any water left in the cone. Now for my favorite part of the Chemex...clean up. Just throw the filter out and enjoy your coffee. If after four minutes there is still water in your filter, next time coarsen your grind up a bit. Finished brewing too soon? Fine your grind and it should be just right. Enjoy!