Eighty years later, Chemex is still making better coffee

Coffee is The original biohack and the country’s most popular productivity tool. While we’re fighting the switch to daylight saving time, we’re addicted to caffeine Wired Our reviews team spent the past week writing about our favorite coffee brewing routines and devices that will keep us alert and maybe even happy in the morning. Today, we finally write about the mighty Chemex. You can also check out other Java.Base stories where Wired The writers share their favorite brewing methods.

that it A profound disappointment for me that despite reviewing consumer goods while working for the best periodical publisher in the world, I spend so little of my time interacting with things that might be present in the life of Don Draper or James Bond. Writing and editing at WIRED means testing some pretty cool things, but very few of those things are truly elegant, let alone perfect.

The exception is any morning I brew my coffee with Chemex. The Chemex Hourglass Coffee Maker is probably the most beautiful, and perhaps the best designed, thing I regularly lay my hands on. Strong, impact-resistant borosilicate glass holds a thick, compact paper filter at the perfect 60-degree angle to keep water exposed to the grounds before gravity fills the bowl below. There are no mechanical or plastic parts leaving anything untouched. My mornings start with beauty and consistency.

Although it’s usually seen as an icon of mid-century modern design, the Chemex is actually a bit older. The device was invented by a German chemist in 1941 and was already produced in the early 1960s when mad men He was appointed. When Chemex appeared in From Russia with loveIt was already older than Blu-Ray disc to us now. When he showed up On friends In 1994, It was a technology as old as today’s Betamax.

It’s been around for so long because there hasn’t been anything that does what it does as well, let alone looks as good as it does while doing it.

It’s common to discuss the learning curve in mastering Chemex, even compared to other pouring methods. I think this is exaggerated and somewhat unfair to the device. I suppose the Chemex is more difficult than grinding ground fulgers in a Mr. Coffee or punching a K-cup in an office machine. But that’s not really a fair comparison — the Chemex machine is for people who care enough about their coffee to make manual espresso or use an Aeropress. Compared to these methods, they are easy to use and very forgiving.

Yes, you can be extraordinarily fussy about your morning cup of Chemex, and if you’re strict about methods, it’s capable of making an unrivaled cup of drip coffee. Go to Stumptown Coffee, Onyx Coffee Labs, or Milstead and Co. Or any of the other high temples of coffee and order a Peruvian pour Timbuyacu Maragogype from a low-yield 50-acre farm in northern Peru, and there’s a very good chance they do it with Chemex. In Onyx, they may carefully pour 900 grams of water in 200-gram increments with 90-second breaks between each, then carefully pour water from a gooseneck kettle into the center of the cone until the final wash. The process will take six or seven minutes, and if you do it at home, it will not only show respect for the special $85-per-pound Panama Esmeralda beans, but it will also give you an extraordinarily clean and delicious result.