For the life of me I can't get the coffee from a Chemex to taste good. The same coffee I make in my crappy drip machine (I roast it myself) tastes pretty great, which is the weird thing. I make sure the temp of the water is 195-205, the ratio of coffee is right (I've tried different amounts), the grind is the right size (again, tried different grind sizes), pouring techniques, etc, but nothing works. It all tastes like crap. I'm using the bleached circle filters and an 8 cup Chemex, with a Baratza Virtuoso for a grinder. Should all the grounds be on the bottom or on the sides or what? Should I only fill it up with water up until where the original amount of coffee was? What should I be focusing on and why is my coffee turning out disgusting with the Chemex? Thanks for any advice!

I hope I'm not doing something illegal. This picture ultimately came from Mat Perger. If you look at the flow chart you need to extract less. The first thing I would do is grind coarser and for time being use same technique.

Try George Howell's recipe:

http://www.georgehowellcoffee.com/brew- ... p-for-two/

It's super simple to follow. It should result in a cup with pronounced sweetness.

Make sure you are using water that conforms to the SCAA standards. You may be able to find Gerber Pure at a CVS pharmacy or similar.

Maybe try a lighter roast?

This may get me booed off this board, but with Chemex I find that adding a bit of hot water to the coffee after brewing works really well for me -- it seems to open up the flavor of some coffees like adding a bit of water to scotch opens up a scotch. While I love a super strong ristretto-style espresso, my brewed coffee tastes tend to go in the very mild and clean direction.

My single serving Chemex routine (using Red Bird espresso beans now, which I don't think is the best for this type of drip, but it can still be good):

27 grams of coffee medium to medium fine grind. Use about 60 grams of water to let grounds bloom for 30-45 seconds (stir). Put in water to get it to 300 grams, when it's getting drained towards the end, but there is still water, slowly add into until I get to about 462 grams of water total. Taste it and if it is a bit strong/bitter, add a touch of hot water.

Like I said, I tend to like my brewed coffee mild, and this recipe works for me (basically scaled down from a 700 gram water/40 gram coffee recipe).

You haven't give enough information for us to identify the problem(s).

Bitter almost always means over extracted.

At a guess, you're grinding too fine and dosing too low.

Chemex should be a fairly coarse grind as brew goes; about the same grind as press. Which is to say, a good deal coarser than your "crappy drip machine."

However, be aware that a coarse grind needs a controlled pour. It makes me feel like an idiot to say so... but that's the truth of it. I wet with a spiral pour, allow the coffee to bloom, then it's straight down the middle -- and damn slowly. A 1L pour into a 60g dose (close to max for an "8 Cup" Chemex), should take a little longer than 4 minutes, total; including a 30 - 45sec bloom.

A lesser volume will pour a little faster, and want a slightly finer grind. Grind, flow rate, and volume are inter-dynamic and present something of a moving target. You might thing about pouring one amount, until you get it right.

195 - 205 is quite a temperature range. I brew medium roasts at 202F according to the readout on the heating base of my pouring kettle; but I don't know how you measure your brew temp.

A sneaky cause of over extraction comes from coffee expressing from the side of the filter, rather than the bottom. Make sure your filters completely adhere to the glass and nothing's leaking out between filter and glass; that's mostly a matter of wetting them and orienting them so that their fold seam is in the pouring groove.

The online Chemex brew tutorials from Blue Bottle and Stumptown are each very good, and very mainstream.

Finally, consider replacing your paper filters with an Able Kone. It's makes better coffee and makes it more consistently than paper.

Rich