Need to talk about coffee stuff today guys. Gotta keep my mind off the news as much as I can.

I still use my chemex for washed multicup brews. I think it excels at this, and I love the asthetic. I have a handmade wool cozy for it and a 3d printed lid to keep these larger brews warm though and while the cozy is protective, I do worry about breaking this fragile brewer.

It seems like the Miir directly addresses the thermal and fragility concerns and still allows use of the chemex filters. Seems hard to argue with that.

Other than nostalgia and maybe not wanting to spend a cool $80 right now, any reason to hold on to the Chemex?

  • bjorney
    2•20 hours ago

    stainless has ~10x the thermal conductivity of borosilicate glass

    Glass has double the heat capacity, and I would assume greater mass due to thicker construction. So unless you are preheating fully to boiling temps first every time, there will be more heat loss to the glass over the course of ~1-3 minutes

    • @[email protected]
      2•16 hours ago

      For what it’s worth, wetting paper filters is usually done with near boiling water in the chemex, so it IS preheated with the regular process. Preheated steel also won’t retain as much heat. I don’t disagree with your post as written, it just doesn’t match the reality of what’s usually done

    • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
      1•18 hours ago

      Conductivity is more germane to heat loss through the material. Borosilicate glass’ specific heat is also roughly twice that of steel, at around 0.830 J/g C to 316 steel’s 0.468 J/g C. Glass will absorb and retain more heat for longer;steel will absorb energy and heat up more quickly, and dump it just as fast.

      I mean, we’re taking about millimeters of material; the quality of the cozy will have far more impact than the container material.

      • bjorney
        1•17 hours ago

        Glass will absorb and retain more heat for longer;steel will absorb energy and heat up more quickly, and dump it just as fast.

        Which was my point - 400g of room temperature ceramic is going to absorb way more heat from 250ml of boiling water than would be lost from the glass-air (or even steel-air) interface during the 2 minutes it takes to do a pourover.

        If both cones are preheated thoroughly, yes, the steel cone will shed heat faster, however I feel like this is also negligible compared to evaporative heat loss and subsequent transfer to a cup