"With the Chemex, even a moron can make good coffee.”

My friend, the cartoonist Roy Doty, was interviewed for this terrific profile of inventor and bon vivant Peter Schlumbohm, creator of the Chemex coffee maker. It was written by Tejal Rao for Gourmet.

The Chemex coffee maker is part chemist’s funnel, part Erlenmeyer flask, with a blond leather band in the middle corseting its hourglass curves. An iconic symbol of German modernism and simple, functional Bauhaus style, the device–a Pyrex glass container with a sturdy paper filter–produced M.F.K. Fisher’s favorite cup of coffee and still holds an alluring power over coffee purists and design geeks. Its success launched its inventor, Dr. Peter Schlumbohm, into the arms of the design establishment (the coffee maker has been a part of the MOMA’s design collection since 1944, just three years after Schlumbohm patented it), and in the early years of World War II, it was considered a patriotic alternative to products made from metals and plastics (which were essential to the war effort). A Time Magazine article from November 1946 quotes the ebullient inventor as saying, “with the Chemex, even a moron can make good coffee.”

...

“He loved to drink and he loved to eat,” says Roy Doty, a cartoonist who was a friend of the late inventor, “so going out for dinner with Dr. Schlumbohm was a horrifying experience.” Guests were treated to epic all-night food crawls in his huge Cadillac Coupe De Ville, which he pimped out with built-in shades and a solid-gold Chemex coffee maker bolted to the driver’s door. (When he traded in his car every two years, he removed the golden amulet and set it on the newer, larger model.) Like many German immigrants, Schlumbohm felt at home in Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood, once a stronghold of German restaurants and coffee shops. He drove his guests up into the 80s, handed anyone loitering near the area a ten-dollar bill to watch the car, and then marched in for his first course. Soon, they all piled back into the car and moved on to the next joint. “Eventually,” says Doty, “you’d be somewhere eating streusel with him and by that time it was two or three in the morning.” But three in the morning was nothing to Schlumbohm, who surrounded himself with fellow night owls and often made calls around that time to discuss his newest ideas.

When he did return home, it was, unsurprisingly, to a bachelor penthouse on 5th Avenue–a peeping Tom’s paradise overlooking Greenwich Village, with thousands of dollars worth of binoculars dangling from the windows, and ice buckets stocked with perpetually chilling German beers and wines at the front door for visitors. “He loved women, Dr. S., and women loved him,” says Doty.

Link

• [strider_mt2k]

  Wow.

  I thought I was doing SLIGHTLY better with a Bunn. :(

• [Roberta X]

  Chemex is still with us.

  http://www.chemexcoffeemaker.com/

  Independant coffee shops and several online vendors stock the filters — and at 200 to the box, a couple of boxes is nearly a year’s supply! There’s a trick to it: brew up a full pot and keep it in a thermal carafe.

  I’ve used Chemexes (Chemexii? Chemexae? Khem E7? Egypt again?) since I started drinking coffee, back when we had to hunt the beans with bow and arrow and roast them in the sunlight on hot rocks ‘cos nobody could afford fire.

• [mrfitz]

  It drips!

• [hukes]

  Reminded me of Mr Creosote (Monty Python’s Meaning of Life).

• [arkizzle]

  Maître-D: Would monsieur care for a wa’fer thin mint?
  Mr Creosote: Nah, fuck off, I’m full.

• [clea]

  i still have my Chemex, but alas, no filters. It made excellent coffee, and was also great for coffee flavored – ice cream, candy, pastries – because it made a concentrated but not bitter brew.
  i had no idea its inventor was such an awesome dude.

• [WeightedCompanionCube]

  Oh all right, just one….

  KERRRRRRRR-SPLOOOM!

• [Takuan]

  so, did Melita buy the patent?

• [Burns!]

  I want to be just like Dr. S when I grow up.

• [eustace]

  I have to use serious rocketry to get my coffeemaker up into middle earth orbit where the vacuum is pure enough for the Jamaican Monkey Death Bean I brew.

• [eustace]

  …and who do I find up there? Dr. S. Beat me to it again…

• [Gilbert Wham]

  Damn straight.

• [Aloisius]

  Dr. Peter Schlumbohm moved to the United States because of our patent laws.

  I can’t imagine someone doing that now, but it is interesting that at one time it was a strong draw for people.

• [jonathan_v]

  I’ve had one of these for years. it makes AMAZING coffee.

  i’m not sure what the patent is on – i couldn’t see it online. the glass itself is ‘interesting’, but the magic is in the filters.

  you pull them out of a box where they’re prefolded 2x into squares, and then turn it into a cone. it’s much different than the flat or valley style of other filters.

  the paper is also specially formulated. the filters are a really heavyweight paper. they seem- to me – about 4-5x the weight of other filters. you get no sediment in the cupyet a lot of aromatics and oils seem to come though. most other filters are not as forgiving.

  if you’re the kind of person who is into coffee and can tell the difference between the same bean being made in a press pot , vacpot or drip — you’d be into the chemex. if you’re in the vast majority of people who aren’t SO into coffee like that, you probably wouldn’t care.

• [Fnarf]

  Yeah, I’m not that particular about my coffee, though I remember my parents had one of these. But just as I was about to stifle a yawn and move on, I read the rest of the item, and was startled to discover that Dr. Schlumbohm is now MY IDOL.

• [Takuan]

  what’s wrong with hot tap water in a styrofoam cup with instant coffee crystals? Add some petroleum based whitener and some Sweet n Low.

• [RoadTransport]

  As I recall, James Bond had a Chemex coffee maker at home. Of course, your modern Bond would use an AeroPress… (cue argument)

  Which reminds me of the late Alan Coren’s peerless Bond spoof “Doctor No will see you now”, in which an elderly 007 is recalled to action. It begins:

  ‘Bond tensed in the dark and reached for his teeth…”

• [franko]

  dammit, i shouldn’t have read that. now i want one of his long-lost pyrex cocktail shakers!

• [Agent 86]

  Takuan, around here them’s lynchin words.

• [Takuan]

  just kiddin, like a good cuppa meself. Though the hot blood of infidels squeezed from their shrieking ,mortal envelopes into the skulls of black rams is nice too.

• [Thinkerer]

  The description isn’t quite right:

  “The Chemex coffee maker is part chemist’s funnel, part Erlenmeyer flask, with a blond leather band in the middle corseting its hourglass curves.”

  The grip is actually made of shaped wood, with a leather band holding the two sections together.

  It’s successor seems to be the much less decorative plastic filter funnel that you place over a cup or pot, but also seems to work with simpler filters and not shatter when dropped.

• [Thinkerer]

  I’d love to see Roy Doty, the creator of all those wonderful “Wordless Workshop” cartoons draw the progression of one of Schlumbohm’s dinner fetes.

• [Russell Letson]

  We’ve had one for decades–the down-market model with the black plastic waist-grip. It alternates with one of a number of press-pots for morning coffee, and we like both technologies, though Chemex filters are hard to find where we live, so we improvise with basket-style filters. That probably means we’re missing some of the tropical-fruit notes in our daily MJB, but I wouldn’t want to develop any more expensive tastes.

• [raisedbywolves]

  Both the coffee maker and the maker of the coffee maker sound stylish and all-around awesome. Who wouldn’t want to be remembered for such a cool design and completely hedonistic life? How inspiring!

• [Net]

  Yes, even a moron! I had one of these some 30 years ago. Got it from Crate & Barrel. Makes tremendous coffee. And it looks pretty cool too.

  Net

• [Anonymous]

  Has anyone compared these coffeemakers to the Aeropress? I have an Aeropress and love it — super simple to use and clean, and it makes great coffee.

• [Don Kiyoti]

  Roy Doty illustrated the Chemex instructions that I have which are from around 1962.

  The story I heard about Chemex production during WWII goes like this: Pyrex glass was deemed a strategic material which would have suspended production for the duration. Schlumbohm sent (or hand delivered) a Chemex to President Roosevelt who was quite the coffee drinker. Roosevelt was impressed and granted an exception which allowed Chemex to remain in production.

  And yes, Chemex coffee is the best.

• [w000t]

  I made, enjoyed, and subsequently gave away a laboratory glass coffee maker some years ago that was of a similar style, but of course much cruder. Here’s a list of some sources on the web to get the stuff to do the same:

  http://www.indigo.com/
  http://www.labdepotinc.com/
  http://www.nadascientific.com/
  http://www.crscientific.com/
  http://www.kimble-kontes.com/
  http://www.amkglass.com/
  http://www.vgdusa.com/
  http://www.thesciencefair.com/
  http://www.scienceartandmore.com/

  The simplest replica of the Chemex would be an Erlenmyer and a filter funnel (w/ filters, of course). Don’t put Erlenmyers in the microwave, for risk of superboiling–just heat the water however you normally would. I used a boiling flask to allow the grounds to steep loose in the water for a couple of minutes before pouring the whole business into the filter funnel. Another alternative is to use a filtration flask for an extra mad-sciency look. To make “espresso” just get a distillation column and a boiling flask…

• [franko]

  i’ve had chemex coffee, and i have to say, while good, it comes nowhere close to how good coffee is from a vacuum pot. [ducks]

• [Cochituate]

  Wow Mark, you know Roy Doty? I grew up on Wordless Workshop (Fathers in the 1960′s had to subscribe to POPULAR SCIENCE- it was the law), and loved the simple clear logic of the things that he drew. I subscribe now myself (after a 40 year gap), and while I love the PopSci Futures thingie they do, I miss Wordless Workshop.

• [KarlGustav]

  So that’s what that is! My parents had one, but they only used it as a vase. I’ll have to see if my mom still has it…

• [Maggie Leber]

  I recall having a Chemex in the 1970′s.

  They make decent brew, but are the very devil to clean properly.