chemex help

[omnigrid]

A friend of mine gave me a 6 cup Chemex with a stainless Able Kone filter. How much coffee and water should I use for making two cups of coffee? That's all I drink at a time. I am getting the hang of the pour, but I feel like my coffee/water ratio is a bit off. Most of the recipes I've seen online are in grams, but I dont have a scale on hand.

[rydesteel]

just make one cup at a time to preserve temp 32-35 grams and 12 oz water is about 2 heaping Tbls. I use a cheap digital scale for pour overs.

[boxerboxer]

Cheap digital food scales are so handy for coffee, baking, etc. I'd strongly recommend picking one up.

[lukasz]

Amazon.com: Escali P115C Primo Digital Multifunctional Food Scale, Chrome: Kitchen & Dining

[C.Dyer]

Get a scale, it'll be your best friend for this. I'm sure you know this, but a good grinder is critical too.

I'm all pourover all the time for home coffee. I use a chemex, and have a Kone also. I find some beans do better with the Kone than others, so I'm about 50/50 between Chemex paper filters and the Kone.

My starting point for chemex is 22 grams of grounds to 350 grams of water. It's all to taste, and so much depends on the grind, but rydesteel's ratios sound really overly strong to me. 32-35 grams of grounds per cup is *WAY* beyond what most sources will tell you. You'll typically see something in the range of 7 grams of grounds per 100 grams of water; that's a good rule of thumb.

It's hard to verbally describe a grind, but for the paper filter, I do a semi-coarse grind, though still far finer than what you'd do for french press. For the cone, I go several notches finer than the paper filter, though we're not getting quite down into the espresso ranges here. I'll adjust the grind up or down a notch depending on how many cups I'm making, and each new sack of beans requires a little experimenting for ideal grind and whether it works better in paper of the Kone.

Anyway, if you want to really kick this thread into the nerdosphere, I'd be happy to go take it there. But we can stop here for now...

[Octave]

Also worth investing in a thermometer. Do your initial pour (wetting the grounds for a bloom, 45sec or so) at 205f, do the rest of the pour at 195-200f.

[jaup]

I find with making smaller amounts of coffee in a larger chemex doesn't really work that well, the extraction is not as good and coffee seems to cold extremely quickly. You need to preheat it really really well and the cups.

I've been using one for a few years and it mainly comes out when we have guests over, for 2 or less people I just use a simple pour over into a server, such as a hario v60 or any if those cheapy plastic ones.

Ratios mentioned here are really good starting points, the 7g - 100g is a really good ratio and then you can just adjust the grind to get a good pour.

[Dude]

There are as many ways to make chemex pour over coffee as there are ways to season a cast iron skillet. You'll find out what works best for your taste (grind, roast, etc). This is mine:

30grams of beans, a "fine-coarse grind" or a 4 on a scale of 1 (bean) to 10 (powder).
16oz of water, heated to a boil and then cool about 30 seconds.
pour a little water to prewet/rinse the filter. dump out water into drinking vessel.
Dump in grounds
pour about 1 oz water in to prewet grounds, wait about 30 seconds.
pour water in about 4 oz at a time - or enough to cover the grounds (I don't know why I do this, I just do.). Let it drain most of the way and top up grounds, repeat. etc.

A couple things I found helpful.
1. I drew two lines on the chemex. The first at the 16oz level (I filled up a mug of water, dumped it into the empty chemex and drew a line at the water level). The second line is at the 32oz level. My kettle is 1 liter exactly - which translates to two 16oz of coffee.
2. If your isn't as hot as you want, when I'm halfway through the pour, i put the chemex on stove (make sure it's gas) and put the heat on low. Keeps the coffee hot. Chemex specifically says not to do this on an electric stove. They make a metal wire to put on top of the electric coil. I have one if you want it - i never use it.
3. Chemex filters make a very smooth, neutral cup of coffee. The metal cones are nice and reusable but make for an acidic cup of coffee. Not a bad thing, some people don't like that taste. Experiment with it.

Just like bikes, or really anything discussed on this forum, making coffee via chemex can get meta, quickly. So experiment around and find what works.