Yes, we threw away our expensive home coffee maker. Oh, we have so many reasons. We switched to a contemplative, meditating method that takes no more time but produces a cup worth savoring.
But first, you might think that owning a coffee shop means we have easy access to the fanciest machines on the market. Well, our commercial machines are great, but we’ve gone simple at home.
At home, we’ve embraced a chemist’s simple borosilicate glass carafe -- a Chemes introduced in 1941 -- paper filters, a good grinder, a gram scale, and filtered water we bring to boil in an electric kettle and then let rest briefly, just long enough to stop roiling. That’s not much. It’s the same process we use in the cafes for pour-over coffee.
Why these elements? Well, the economics are reasonable as the entire collection is less than the cost of so-called “better” coffee machines. Then what’s wrong with the coffee machines? Well, temperature and time. A few, expensive machines meet standards for temperature and brewing time. That’s important and brings us back to that chemist, Peter Schlumbohm.
Brewing coffee is an exercise in chemistry. Inexact chemistry doesn’t produce good results. Ask Kermit’s friend, Beaker, or maybe you remember chem class. Bad results disturb our morning routine.
Home machines substitute time – a longer extraction – for temperature. That tradeoff produces a bitter cup. The longer the extraction the more of the stuff in coffee we don’t like gets into the cup. A bitter cup is no way to start your day, especially headed into traffic. You know those bitter drivers.
Here's our recipe guide to getting a quality, meditative, savoring cup at home using a Chemex brewer.Stop in and we’ll demonstrate how you can make world class coffee at home using the Chemex system. You’ll even get to enjoy the coffee we teach you to make in the café. Chemex are available at both cafes. How’s that for a happy coincidence?