Rather than just pouring a steady stream of water into the center of the grounds, Ottomatic wets down all of the grounds with hot water, pauses to let them bloom, then pulses the water through its shower-like head to maintain the temperature as coffee flows into the pitcher. Serious coffee drinkers will already be familiar with both the dosage recommendations and how to tweak them, but it’s a small difference between these models.Ī critical feature of Ottomatic is the sprayhead, which replicates the process used to prime coffee grounds in a standard Chemex pitcher. Chemex merely provides a paper manual with suggested gram and tablespoon measurements for the coffee grounds relative to either the water or brewed coffee. Although there’s room to argue that different coffee beans may benefit from individualized prep temperatures, Chemex’s presets for extraction and holding are the optimal temperatures recommended by the Specialty Coffee Industry and International Coffee Organizations, respectively, and roughly match Wilfa’s settings for the Precision Coffee Maker.Īs shown above, the Wilfa model notably offers one adjustment: a dial that can adjust the coffee’s concentration relative to the amount of water in the tank. Prior to extraction, it heats the water within a 197.6F to 204.8F range – comparable to the Bonavita’s 200-205F and notably hotter than Keurigs, which max out at a generally too-low 192F – then uses the hot plate to hold the coffee at 176F to 185F. That also means that there are no temperatures to set: for better or worse, Ottomatic handles everything. (You can see the brewing process in action above.) A light bar next to the hot plate switches from white to red while the coffee’s being brewed there are no other indicators, dials, or switches to consider. You then place the pitcher on the hotplate and a coffee ground-filled filter inside the pitcher, flip a power switch on the base, and walk away for around six minutes. Using the included pitcher, you fill the tank with up to 10 cups of water, using lines that mark the 3-, 5-, 6-, and 8-cup points. Unlike the typical Chemex process (boil water in a kettle, pour the hot water into the Chemex pitcher in two stages, then figure out how to keep the coffee hot), Ottomatic handles almost everything within its all-in-one design. Measuring 11.5″ tall by 11″ wide by 7.5″ deep, it combines a silver metal and black plastic base with a non-removable clear plastic water tank on the left, a silver metal sprayhead in the center, and a hotplate on the right. Read on for all the details.īy traditional coffeemaker standards, Ottomatic has a very attractive design. Chemex designed Ottomatic to look beautiful and radically simplify the fussy pour-over process. Priced above top-ranked established coffee makers such as the single-cup Keurig K75 and small pot Bonavita BV1800, Ottomatic is designed to compete against premium metal and glass models such as the Wilfa Precision Coffee Maker - machines that are equal parts art and science. While Chemex isn’t catering to the exact same audience, the company has acknowledged the value of a streamlined brewing process with this week’s release of Ottomatic ($350). Following Chemex’s instructions, identical coffee beans and water produce a noticeably better cup of coffee than the typical home coffee machine – the reason many coffee shops offer Chemex-brewed coffee at a premium.īut traditional Chemex brewing requires learning, takes time, and demands a lot of user interaction: everything from hitting the right water temperature to the multi-step pouring process requires a lot more attention than just pressing the “start” button on a Keurig. The Chemex process involves placing freshly ground coffee beans inside a Chemex-brand filter atop the Chemex-brand pitcher, then “pouring-over” hot water in a manner that guarantees optimal extraction of coffee from the grounds. Yet Chemex’s 1941-vintage Coffee Maker has spent decades as a gold standard for pour-over coffee: featured in the MoMA collection, this Bauhaus-inspired design combines an hourglass-shaped glass pitcher with leather-bound wooden grips and special paper filters, producing delicious coffee. At a time when people are increasingly buying “natural” and “organic” foods, the word “Chemex” mightn’t sound like an ideal name for a maker of coffee brewing gear.
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