The Chemex
In this blog you will learn the basic technique to dial in a great tasting Chemex that you can share… or not. A Chemex brewer is an all-in-one brewer (brewer & serving vessel) that allows you to make several amazing cups of coffee with minimal investment.
Things to note – a Chemex is great for several servings at a time; low-ish maintenance; do not reuse filters. Link to the brewer and it’s respective filters below. Links to everything else in the “Intro to Home Brew” blog.
Ingredients:
- 35 grams of course ground coffee
- 500 grams of almost boiling water
This recipe uses a 1:15 coffee to water ratio.
Equipment:
- A Chemex
- Chemex specific filters
- Great water (read our intro to home brew blog)
- Great coffee (again, read that intro!)
- Gooseneck kettle (please, the intro blog)
- Scale
- Timer
- Mug
- Optional: stir spoon
How to brew:
- Heat a kettle full of water to 210°F or 99°C.
- Weight out and grind 35g of beans – course grind.
- Open up the filter so three flaps are on one side and one on the other.
- Place filter in the Chemex and rinse thoroughly with hot water – this will heat your vessel, remove paper taste from the filter, and seat the filter firmly in the brewer.
- Dump out your rinse water – seriously don’t forget this!
- Pour coffee grinds into the middle of the wet filter and give it a few taps to even out the surface but be gentle.
- Place entire setup onto scale and tare it (zero it out).
- Begin timer – we’re shooting for roughly 4.5 minutes brew time, meaning we want our brew to finish as close to the 4.5 minute mark as possible.
- The bloom stage – this is the de-gassing phase – start your pour by wetting all of the grinds with roughly 50g of water – give it a gentle swirl and let the coffee bubble up for roughly 30 seconds.
- The meat of the brew – pour in concentric circles or whatever method allows you to continually and evenly soak all of the coffee – bring weight up to 350g roughly.
- Let coffee brew for a second or two and observe your timing (this will allow you to make potential fine-tuned adjustments to the grind size for later brews).
- Pour one ring around the edge of the filter breaking off the grinds clinging to the side of the filter – don’t spend too much time pouring directly onto the filter though.
- Finish the pour off at roughly 500g.
- Now either gently stir with a spoon or swirl the brew to even out the coffee bed to allow the water to evenly extract through its finish – #flatbed.
- Pour brew into your favorite mugs and enjoy!
- Optional: Clean up after yourself