Chemex

The Chemex coffeemaker was designed and patented in 1941 by Peter Schlumbohm, a chemist working in New York who held more than 300 patents over his career. The shape is a laboratory funnel joined to an Erlenmeyer flask, in one piece of borosilicate glass, with a pouring spout, an air channel and a small dimple on the lower bulb used to judge volume. A wooden collar and a leather tie make the grip. Schlumbohm also designed the filter, a heavy bonded paper based on laboratory stock, and the two have been sold as a system ever since.

The first five hundred were assembled in his Manhattan apartment in 1942, after Macy’s agreed to advertise it. The Museum of Modern Art showed it in 1943, and in 1958 the Illinois Institute of Technology put it on its list of the hundred best designed products of modern times. After Schlumbohm died in 1962 the company passed to his vice-president, then changed hands several times, and in 1980 it became the family business it still is. The Classic Series as it is sold today, six-cup CM-6A included, appears in the company’s own timeline at that point. Production is in Massachusetts, where each carafe is inspected, polished and hand tied, and the filters are cut in house.

The range is wider than the one carafe: the Glass Handle and Handblown series, the Ottomatic electric brewer launched in 2014, the double-walled Funnex for a single mug, and the filters in several folds and two paper colours.

What they are good at. A design that has not needed to change. The carafe is the brewer and the server, it has no moving parts, and the glass takes nothing from the coffee and gives nothing back.

What to know before buying. The filter is the method. It is much heavier than cone paper, which is where the clean cup and the slow drawdown both come from, and it ties you to one maker’s papers for as long as you brew this way.

Who it suits. People who brew two or three mugs of filter coffee at a time and want them clean rather than heavy. The method itself is covered on the Chemex page, and the pour over kit guide sets it against the cones.