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Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

French press coffee isn't so healthy either because of stuff like cafestols in the fines (small diameter grounds) that slip through the french press screen. To get rid of those you want a brewing scheme with a paper filter. The simplest no-plastic approach is a Chemex. They have a history and they also look cool as heck. Unfortunately, since they are made of glass, they can break if you're not careful. https://chemexcoffeemaker.com/

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Nice lazy method: overnight cold brew + pour into a [glass] pourover w/paper filter.

Make a lot to only use a couple paper filters a week. Most days, your coffee is already ready in the fridge, no wait (unless you wanna microwave it or something).

Make it really strong and dilute with a lot of [non-dairy] milk to go easy on the stomach.

This is what I do in the summer for cold coffee. Just throw a few tbsp of grounds and fill it up with water to the 32oz line and leave it overnight. Pour through a hario v60 with a chemex filter in the morning. You can also do it in batches and pour the filtered coffee into a larger jug and put that in the fridge and serve on demand from that. Filtered cold brew should stay good in the fridge for a while.

How do you heat it up then? Or is it supposed to be drank cold?

I drink my cold brew cold, although technically the "cold" in "cold brew" just implies that the extraction isn't from hot water.

I leave it on the counter to extract, and store it in the fridge.

I heat it up in the microwave all the time. Smooth as a pour-over and much less of a hassle to make.

That is the advise I got before, but I find this is super difficult to hit the right temperature. I either get boiling coffee, or luke warm.

When you get used to the microwave you have, you can hit the same spot every time. It's a formula depending on your cup, the wattage of he microwave and time.

I can hit the temperature I want every time on a Bosch microwave from 80s which has two power levels and a rotary, mechanical timer.

It’s also helpful to know where the standing waves in your microwave are. Put a layer of shredded cheese on a big tortilla (so you can eat it and it’s not a waste) and run it till it melts the cheese. Observe where the cheese is melted and not melted. Put your coffee cup along the same band of melting. That makes your heating more consistent. Fortunately, mine has it’s strongest focal point dead center (which, I suppose, is not a surprise from a design perspective… still good to know).

Also volume of liquid and temperature of liquid and cup.

I generally fill the cup to the same level, and fill it from the same source in the house in 99% of the time, so they are implicit constants in the equation, at least for me.

I've never liked cold brew, though of course that's just me. Blecch.

In case anyone is wondering why a paper filter is necessary.

https://www.harvardhealth.org/healthy-aging-and-longevity/wh...

Statistician here. I pulled up the article that the press release seems to mention: https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/article/27/18/1986/6125530

For all cause mortality among people without cardiovascular disease, they split into groups of men and women and then further into groups of no coffee, filter only, both brews, and unfiltered only.

For both men and women without preexisting cardiovascular disease, both brews had the lowest all cause mortality. I'd expect that "both" would be between "only filter" and "only unfiltered". It isn't because "both" is a separate population from the "only" groups, indicating that confounding may be substantial here. Nevertheless, for people without preexisting CVD, all but one of the confidence intervals for the hazard ratio is entirely below 1, and the unfiltered for men includes 1. I wouldn't draw any strong conclusions from this.

My recommendation would be to just drink your coffee, take your blood pressure regularly to see if you're hypertensive, and check your cholesterol with labs if you're regularly hypertensive.

It could be because people who drink no coffee already do it because of a condition (not necessarily cardiovascular), so their mortality is higher.

Or coffee drinkers are more active and doing things

The article doesn't really make it clear how much of an effect this has

> People younger than 60 who drank one to four cups of coffee, particularly filtered coffee, had lower rates of artery disease and death

> The study is observational and doesn't prove that filtered coffee is healthier than unfiltered coffee

> a cup of unfiltered coffee contains 30 times more diterpenes than a cup of filtered coffee

This sentence in particular is kinda meaningless without specifying the specific amounts and what they mean. For instance, saying "an unfiltered cup of coffee contains 30 times more salt than a filtered cup" would not mean much if one contains 1 ug and the other 30ug, but would be very significant if it was e.g. 1 vs 30g

Diterpines affect LDL cholesterol

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coffee-and-cholest...

What about the really fine sieves stainless steel filters ?

Which is ironic because if you’re into Chemex you’re into vinyl, in my experience.

I used to be into vinyl, but then I read that plastic is bad for you, so moved to wheels of steel.

What is the advantage of this over a normal paper filter coffee maker?

It's hard to find plastic-free normal paper filter coffee makers. A few exist but mostly only for small batches. Also, the porcelain or glass ones are breakable just like the Chemex. I'm a bit suspicious of copper (Hario makes one of those). Kalita has a stainless steel one but it's small and expensive. I'd be interested if you know of anything else.

The Chemex filter do tend filter out more of the subtle coffee flavor. I find V60 to be the right balance in flavor and ease of use.

Other than the fact that it does looks cool, what is simpler or better about this over a hario V60 ceramic dripper directly over a mug?

I should have said, I like to make large batches, and wanted an alternative to a drip machine. Drip machines are typically 12 or 14 cups. I had a 13 cup Chemex but it broke (my fault). I might get a 10 cup one sometime. I'm currently using a Melitta 10 cup pourover pot, which has a plastic filter cone. I'm not yet dead from it, but I do want to move away from it.

There is no difference only preference

You can put a Kalita-style "wave" filter over the mesh screen and get pretty close, not to mention better coffee anyway. Similar goes for the classic Bialetti moka pot, an Aeropress filter over the metal screen both filters out the cafestols and cleans up the cup in general.

If you don't want to use paper filters, you can use Swiss Gold, generic all-steel or cloth ones as well. Also there's Stanley's all steel pour-over.

When you want to go low or no plastics, there are many choices now.

Yeah there are plenty of metal filters if you're ok with not having a paper filter. If you do want a paper filter (for health reasons or because you prefer cleaner coffee) there aren't that many choices.

The funny thing is the default coffee filter I always get is marked as compostable on packaging. It's probably plastic-free as well, then.

I have been using the same Japanese V60 for over a decade and half now. It's like a Chemex but for a single cup at a time.

The Chemex can also be a little annoying because of the tendency of the filter to block the 'spout', causing the brewer to stall, and requiring a chopstick or straw to avoid. That said, I use my Chemex twice a week.

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