Back in the day, before the word “barista” was widely used, peo­ple used to pull out ‘ye old carafe’, ket­tle and fresh cof­fee to brew a cuppa. Pre barista com­pe­ti­tions, pre Starbucks on every cor­ner, there was a time when espresso was the stepchild of brewed cof­fee. Flash for­ward just a few years, Howard built it and they came, drip brewed or pressed cof­fee took a back seat to the more up-tempo, trendy espresso options. Flash for­ward to present time, now the tables, or brew­ers, have turned and we are enjoy­ing a renais­sance of drip brewed, by the cup or carafe, of spe­cialty cof­fee. Hallelujah.

What fueled this growth? – over­all qual­ity and avail­abil­ity of cof­fee, roast­ers, and sophis­ti­cated con­sumers demand­ing to enjoy deli­cious cof­fee in its most sub­lime state. Enter the Chemex – clas­sic form and func­tion. From the Chemex web­site, “Few prod­ucts in this cen­tury can match the flaw­less blend­ing of design and func­tion of the Chemex®.  Its visual ele­gance has earned it a place in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of New York’s Museum located in Corning, New York.  The Chemex® cof­feemaker was also selected by the Illinois Institute of Technology as one of the 100 best designed prod­ucts of mod­ern times and found in the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.” How cool is that? “The German Chemist Schlumbohm cre­ated Chemex in 1941 after mov­ing to NYC in 1936. He was very famil­iar with lab­o­ra­tory equip­ment and meth­ods of fil­tra­tion and extrac­tion. “ Liz Grassy con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion of Chemex from Pittsfield, MA. The Company has always existed in the United States and will remain here. Liz con­tin­ues, “When my hus­band and I bought the com­pany in the 80’s we loved the prod­uct and the col­or­ful his­tory of it and its inven­tor. My hus­band in par­tic­u­lar enjoyed the sto­ries and lifestyle of Peter Schlumbohm, who was quite a col­or­ful char­ac­ter in his day.  We did rec­og­nize that it was an iconic piece that is time­less. We have cer­tainly seen a surge in the pop­u­lar­ity of our prod­ucts.  Within the past few years, with sin­gle brew cup­ping, the demand for the Chemex® has grown con­sid­er­ably.  We also believe that the spe­cialty cof­fee indus­try has con­tributed greatly to the surge. With increased knowl­edge of cof­fee, con­sumers have found that brew­ing with Chemex is a pure and sim­ple way to get the most from their coffee.”

When Chemex first entered my life I was a col­lege stu­dent. It was an inex­pen­sive way to brew cof­fee man­u­ally. Espresso and Cappuccino were out of the pic­ture unless I had the cash. My mom had her per­co­la­tor table­side every meal, and every vis­i­tor to the house was offered fresh cof­fee. I under­stood the social impact of fresh brewed cof­fee and car­ried on the tra­di­tion. Filter papers were costly, I would buy cot­ton pil­low­cases and cut the cor­ners for reusable fil­ters, pre-moistening them as not to absorb the cof­fee oils.  Not long after, my jobs cen­tered around cof­fee houses so there were always fresh beans and fil­ters at hand.

Love at first sip.
In press pot brew­ing often there is sed­i­ment in the cup. Brewing with paper fil­ters, Chemex cof­fee is clear and clean. In cupper’s ter­mi­nol­ogy that trans­lates to the cof­fee hav­ing no dirty after­taste. Pure describes the trans­parency of the cup and fla­vor. All things being equal, com­par­ing drip to press using the fresh­est high qual­ity spe­cialty cof­fee brewed, the cof­fee fla­vor from the Chemex drip sys­tem comes through to the cup. Infusion time is manip­u­lated through the barista deter­min­ing brew strength with the rate of water pour. I appre­ci­ate the ‘room for growth’ in the open top fil­ter of Chemex. Sometimes with an elec­tric brewer, the fil­ter bas­ket explodes with fresh cof­fee degassing and spilling dur­ing brew­ing. This works well for dou­ble strength brew­ing for iced cof­fees or slow drip method with­out the worry of hav­ing too much cof­fee in the fil­ter. On the main bowl of the carafe there is a small bub­ble that marks the halfway point of the carafe. Not exactly rocket sci­ence, but for those of us who pre­fer “at a glance” ball­park brew­ing mea­sure­ments rather than legal weights and mea­sures, the bub­ble works just fine when infus­ing water.

Love at first sight. The Chemex style is par­tic­u­larly attrac­tive in restau­rants and din­ing use since it can be brewed table side allow­ing the server to explain about the cof­fee ori­gin, and taste pro­file while pro­vid­ing per­sonal, atten­tive ser­vice as the guests enjoy the table­side show. The design of the fil­ters and open top of the glass carafe lull the cus­tomers with intox­i­cat­ing aro­mat­ics. Often times, guests will ask about the cof­fee brew­ing tech­nique dur­ing the process so they can repli­cate the deli­cious cof­fee once home. A good thing.

Schlumbohm also designed a water ket­tle with heat­proof borosil­i­cate. The ket­tle for boil­ing water has no lid, instead it is enclosed with a “steam stop­per” that pre­vents the steam from heat­ing the neck of the ket­tle. The neck stays cool and is used as the han­dle. This is THE per­fect wed­ding gift.

I asked Liz if the inter­na­tional noto­ri­ety was also local. “No, there are not any parades, streets named after us, or hol­i­days in our honor.  We are known among the cof­fee enthu­si­asts in our town, and have a great rela­tion­ship with our local stores and cof­fee shops.  We are work­ing on col­lab­o­ra­tions and would like to build a stronger con­nec­tion with the Pittsfield and the Berkshire com­mu­nity.  But, it almost never fails that when Chemex is men­tioned to some­one, they always know what it is, and can recall hav­ing one or their Grandmother hav­ing one.  But now as the pop­u­lar­ity has grown, it is also pop­u­lar with the younger gen­er­a­tion – the roast­ers and baris­tas that we are con­nect­ing with.” History repeats itself.