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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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A good way to reduce acidity without adding anything to the coffee is to prepare it Chemex-style. The types of disposable filters it uses soak up a lot of the unpleasant oil-caused factors in coffee without affecting the flavour, especially the acidity.
The inventor of the Chemex was only a modest success as a chemist, but he was quite good at marketing. He gave away free Chemex sets to famous people. A sort of "bribe the influencer" strategy. For example, the reason the the fictional James Bond is a fan of Chemex-brewed coffee is because Ian Fleming was a fan, and Ian Fleming was a fan because he was gifted a set and enjoyed it.
But despite the commercial shenanigans it really is a great way to enjoy black coffee for those with sensitivities to certain oils.
I use a chemex, with a re-usable cloth filter. It gives a slightly different brew, and can be a little more work to clean up, but it generates much less waste. (the cloth filters only need replacement once every 6 months or so, and are fully bio-degradable.)
Its just paper cones/disks. Whatever metal or plastic mesh you might be using must have had an environmental impact being mined and manufactured. What the equivalent is in biodegradable paper disks might be hard to calculate, but if whatever you are using right now amounts to like 7 years of paper like it is for plastic bags well, the decision is yours. Some people also reuse paper filters a few times.
If you're using the filters afterwards as compost it's perfectly friendly. The entire thing is just unbleached paper and coffee grounds it'll make your garden shine
I don't have one but from my understanding, it's basically that but instead of having super boiling water dripping wherever in a pile of grounds and seeping through at an arbitrary rate, it's you choosing a proper lower temperature, wetting the grounds completely in a controlled manner and the coffee seeping through at a studied rate guaranteed by the shape of the design
Basically, yeah. But there's no heating element constantly cooking the coffee like in the average drip machine.
Sort of. But it involves a ton more control over every aspect letting you really bring out the flavor of the coffee. Also you tend to grind smaller so extraction takes more time.
the filters tend to be thicker, and you can control the brew temperature and process a lot more than with a drip machine, so with technique you can get more control over the strength, flavor, etc of the coffee that comes out. But its a difference of quality not of kind really, IMO.
At-home drip machines don't produce great coffee in my experience, and I think that's largely due to uneven spreading of the water over the grounds, potential over-extraction, and often too low or too high of water temperature.
Yeah, the paper filters are a must for the soaking-up of oils. There's nice reusable metal filters like the Able Kone but they just filter out the grounds like any other metal filter brewing method, they do nothing to change the taste. Chemex with a Kone is just french press with extra steps.
It's different because the grounds don't steep in coffee for several minutes, the coffee escapes seconds after being extracted. The grounds aren't pressed together either.
So I actually like oily coffee, I'm talking more the harshness. I cant really explain it because its so rare I drink it black.
But also I'm not messin with fancy brew methods day-to-day. I have my moka pot and french press for treats but in the morning i take approx 30 seconds to set my drip machine up and do other things.