Bleached, Natural, Square, Circle, Half-Moon, pre-folded, unfolded...

At long last I've fallen in love with a 10-cup chemex, more than any other pourover method I've tried so far. I'm using natural prefolded squares. I can't keep from wondering: Is there really much difference between all these filter options, and why would someone want bleached paper when natural is an option?

I also understand that the half-moon is only for the narrow 3-cupper, but does it perform as well as its big siblings? Do chemex lovers love single cups in the smallest chemex as much as they love their cups from shared batches in the big brewers?

I have yet to put a chemex filter in my V60 cone as even when I'm only brewing for myself, i just enjoy the clear glass. But I'm also of the mind that the flat glass and the way the filter adheres might be beneficial to its performance, whereas the ridged interior of the V60 prevents such flush adhesion and might possibly allow faster/exterior draining or cooling. Plus the thickness of the paper vs the smallness of the V60 hole could have the opposite problem -- too slow to drain. I guess the question is, is a chemex brew purely about filter performance (therefore potentially the same no matter what cone holds the filter), or does the upper cone design of the brewer also play an important part?

And finally -- if all chemex filter paper is created equal, is there still a particular shape some people prefer for use outside the chemex brewer, i.e. in a V60 or other cone? The half-moon, the circle, the square?

For many people, natural filters taste like cardboard, which is why they go for oxygenated filters (not bleached).

I like the metal Kone filter myself.

yakster wrote:...

I like the metal Kone filter myself.

+1. Browns were dreadful, whites were somewhat difficult to find and robbed the cup of flavor. KONE is a richer cup, packed with oils.

KONE. Naturals taste & smell like glue. Fun experiment: run boiling water through the empty filter in the chemex. Save the water, try it with the other style filter (bleached, natural) and then taste the difference in the water.

As to 3 cup vs the big boys, I prefer the 3 cup-- but I haven't touched it since I got my refractometer last month, so this opinion could easily change when I get the time to test my 3 vs my 8 and 13 cup models.

In retrospect, I think I liked the 3 cup because my immersion time and grind size were much shorter and smaller than my units for the big boys, which nearly always tasted too light or sour.