The Chemex Masterclass: Brewing with Clarity

Opening Pour

There are faster ways to make coffee. There are easier ways to make coffee. But there are very few ways I enjoy making coffee more than a Chemex.

For my wife Sarah and me, the Chemex has become part of our morning rhythm. It's an intentional, slow start to the day. Grind the coffee, heat the water, make a few careful pours, and then wait. Even my daughter has started joining me sometimes, helping with the process in her own little way. There's just something about it.

And beyond the ritual, Chemex makes phenomenal coffee. If you really want to understand how much a brewing method can change what you taste, try this experiment: take a coffee you love and brew it through a great drip brewer, then take those exact same beans and brew them through a Chemex. Taste them side by side. It's remarkable how much clarity a Chemex can bring. Fruit becomes easier to find, chocolate becomes more distinct, and tasting notes that blend together in a traditional drip coffee suddenly seem to separate themselves in the cup. The brewer itself also happens to be a work of art.

I've loved Chemex for years, so today rather than just giving you a recipe, let's learn how to really use one.

My Everyday Chemex Recipe

Here's the recipe I'm currently using at home:

55g coffee
850g water
200°F water temperature
Medium-coarse grind
About a 4-minute total brew time

I use a standard 6-cup Chemex, which is a fantastic size for making coffee for two people or serving a few guests. My pouring schedule is simple: 100g, 400g, 650g, 850g. Start by pouring 100g of water over the grounds and allowing the coffee to bloom, then continue pouring in stages until you reach your final weight. Aim for the entire brew to finish around four minutes.

That's my recipe. But here's the important part: it doesn't have to be yours.

Understanding the Ratio

This is where learning a little coffee math becomes incredibly useful. My current recipe of 55g coffee to 850g water works out to roughly a 1:15.5 ratio, meaning for every gram of coffee, we're using about 15.5 grams of water. You don't need to obsess over the decimal. I generally play somewhere between 1:15 and 1:16 with my Chemex.

Want an easy starting point? Take however much coffee you're using and multiply by 15.

30g coffee × 15 = 450g water

That's it. Once you understand that relationship, you can scale your Chemex up or down without needing a new recipe every time.

Brewing for One

You don't have to make a large batch every time you pull out the Chemex. When I'm brewing just for myself, I'll do something around 32g coffee and 500g water. That's roughly the same neighborhood as my larger recipe, just scaled down for one person. If you're using a smaller Chemex or brewing a true single-serving recipe, your grind and technique may need to move a little closer to what you'd use for a traditional pour-over. That's why I don't want you to get locked into thinking there's one sacred Chemex recipe. There isn't. Start with the ratio and adjust from there.

Grind Matters

For my larger Chemex recipe, I'm grinding coarser than I would for standard drip coffee, and that's important. When you're brewing 55g of coffee in a Chemex, you've created a fairly deep bed of grounds, and all 850g of water has to work its way through that coffee and through the Chemex's heavy filter. If your grind is too fine, that process slows way down.

Chemex is one of the coarser manual brewing methods I use, outside of something like a French press, especially when brewing a larger batch. Your total brew time is a useful clue here. If you're running dramatically longer than four minutes, your grind may be too fine. If everything races through significantly faster, try going a little finer. Don't chase perfection on the first brew. Make a cup, taste it, adjust, and try again tomorrow. That's part of learning the craft.

Your Coffee Changes the Recipe

Different coffees respond differently in a Chemex, and that's where things get interesting. Right now, with some of my more fruit-forward coffees like Ethiopia and East Java, I've been leaning a little stronger, closer to that 1:15 ratio. I love what that does to the berry, citrus, and fruit characteristics in those coffees. Another coffee might taste better to you closer to 1:16. That's why you'll see my recipe move around over time. I'm always tasting and adjusting.

Which brings me to a confession about my current 850g recipe. There's another highly scientific reason I landed there: 850g happens to perfectly fill Sarah's and my favorite coffee mugs. That's it. I've done the math, experimented with ratios, and played with extraction, and somewhere along the way we found a recipe we love that also happens to make exactly the amount of coffee we want every morning. That's what a great home recipe should eventually become.

Think Like a Barista

Ratios are a framework, not a law. Understanding them gives you the ability to recreate and scale a great cup without needing a new recipe every time you change your coffee or your batch size. The ratio gets you close. Your palate gets you the rest of the way. Change the coffee, move your grind slightly, taste what happens. Eventually you're not just following my Chemex recipe anymore. You're building yours.

Quick Recipe Recap

Josh's Everyday Chemex — 55g coffee, 850g water, 200°F, medium-coarse grind, about 4 minutes total brew time.

Pour schedule: bloom at 100g, second pour to 400g, third pour to 650g, final pour to 850g. Let the final pour draw down completely.

Smaller Brew — 32g coffee, 500g water. Same approach, scaled down.

Use these as your starting point, then adjust for the coffee you're brewing and the cup you enjoy.

Closing Thought

Coffee can be incredibly convenient. Push a button, grab a cup, run out the door. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think there's also something valuable about having a way of making coffee that asks you to slow down.

For Sarah and me, that's the Chemex. It's become part of our morning routine, and now it's something I get to share with my daughter too. A few minutes together, making something carefully, before the rest of the day gets moving. And at the end of those few minutes, we get a couple of our favorite mugs filled with some of the best coffee I know how to make. That's a pretty good way to start a morning.

Brew it better,
Josh
Founder, Brew It Better