Simple and easy-to-use CHEMEX brewing technique-misunderstanding of CHEMEX coffee maker

For professional baristas, please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

At the end of 2016, at the invitation of Viti Coffee, a well-known domestic coffee equipment manufacturer, we asked the person in charge Frank (hereinafter referred to as: F) to talk about the unknown history of CHEMEX and its cooking know-how. The following is a transcript of the conversation between Coffee Hollow (J) and Viti about the CHEMEX coffee maker, which was published on the Coffee Hollow Facebook fan page.

J: I occasionally hear that CHEMEX is not easy to cook. What does Frank think of it?

F: I think the equipment is a matter of opinion, especially in Taiwan, where we are deeply influenced by Japanese cooking, so we have a limited understanding of CHEMEX. In this 2016 World Trade Coffee Show, we want consumers to know more about CHEMEX, so we are planning a CHEMEX hand race, and Stefanos Domatiotis and Berg will be invited to judge on the spot.

In fact, you really don't have to think too much about the equipment, it just depends on how you use it. As Matt Perger once said, to him, the espresso machine is actually a hot water and pump machine (laughter). Of course, this is a very simplified statement, in fact, the point is that the device depends on how the user uses its features and gives play to its characteristics.

J:CHEMEX has always sold these coffee pots, rarely launches new products, and is there any special reason why it doesn't put special emphasis on Marketing?

At one point, the brand F:CHEMEX was almost bought by Intelligentsia, but later, because the mother of Adams Grassy (the boss of CHEMEX) decided to run it herself. In hindsight, some people may think that CHEMEX might be even different if it were sold to Intelligentsia.

When I went to the coffee show in Boston, I saw a lot of publicity from CHEMEX. I thought they spent a lot of effort and budget on publicity that year, but in fact, most of the publicity in that year was done by SCAA, perhaps because compared to Japanese brands such as Hario and Kalita, SCAA thought CHEMEX was a pointer brand that represented the American coffee tradition.

In the United States, coffee shops in major cities and training center are La Marzocco with CHEMEX. For them, CHEMEX is a device that conforms to the concept of pourover in the United States, and it is also quite easy to brew and use.

J:CHEMEX usually people will mind because the flow rate is slow, worried that it is easier to produce miscellaneous smell than extraction, what do you think of this?

F: in the method of cooking, if we cook it in the general way we know, it will easily take four minutes or even four and a half minutes to finish, but in fact, we can test it and see that if we switch to one-time water injection, its flow rate will not be too slow.

Because the CHEMEX filter paper is 20-30% thicker than the general style, and unlike the Japanese filter cup wall with many exhaust ribs, the air flow only depends on the front single exhaust groove, so it is normal to have a higher resistance and slower flow rate. Of course, thick and high-quality filter paper is definitely a major focus of CHEMEX, because it makes the coffee taste cleaner. Beside the point, like Khristian Bombeck, the designer of Steampunk and the boss of SAI, the original filter paper of Steampunk was made by buying filter paper from CHEMEX.

We know that filter paper has the greatest resistance among all kinds of filter materials, especially CHEMEX filter paper, so many people think that the taste of CHEMEX is between pourover and immersion. The reason why coffee shops in the United States like to use it so much is that this feature can protect against stupor, just like we now think about smart filter cups.

If you use CHEMEX to compare the smart filter cup, I think the biggest difference is that the smart filter cup to soak as the main way of extraction rate will be relatively low, this point recently Matt Perger has discussed the difference between drip and immersion, he believes that drip is more efficient, the reason is immersion, the final coffee powder adsorption liquid is more coffee rather than lighter water, some extractable substances are still left in the powder. One gram of powder on the data can absorb two grams of water, so using the immersion extraction method, more coffee liquid may not be extracted than the filtration method.

Simple and easy-to-use CHEMEX cooking techniques:

Use a CHEMEX coffee maker for six people

Grind 21g coffee powder of medium thickness

Steaming for 30 seconds

After steaming, continuous water injection is completed to 310ml.