There’s an enigmatic reference in From Russia With Love to James Bond’s favourite coffee maker, the Chemex.
Weird name for a coffee maker, I thought. I wonder what it’s like?
I decided to look it up, to see if it was still available, as Ian Fleming wrote From Russia With Love in 1957, and lots of the other brands he mentions have disappeared.
It turned out the same company is still making it, so I bought one and tested it out. Here’s what I discovered. But first, here’s the passage in From Russia With Love:
The Chemex in From Russia with Love
The Chemex makes its fleeting appearance as James Bond has his breakfast:
Breakfast was Bond’s favourite meal of the day. When he was stationed in London it was always the same. It consisted of very strong coffee, from De Bry in New Oxford Street, brewed in an American Chemex, of which he drank two large cups, black and without sugar.
Fleming goes on to describe the rest of Bond’s breakfast:
The single egg, in the dark blue egg cup with a gold ring round the top, was boiled for three and a third minutes. It was a very fresh, speckled brown egg from French Marans hens owned by some friend of May in the country. (Bond disliked white eggs and, faddish as he was in many small things, it amused him to maintain that there was such a thing as the perfect boiled egg.) Then there were two thick slices of wholewheat toast, a large pat of deep yellow Jersey butter and three squat glass jars containing Tiptree `Little Scarlet’ strawberry jam; Cooper’s Vintage Oxford marmalade and Norwegian Heather Honey from Fortnum’s. The coffee pot and the silver on the tray were Queen Anne, and the china was Minton, of the same dark blue and gold and white as the egg-cup.
Now, this doesn’t entirely make sense as he mentions a Chemex and a Queen Anne coffee-pot, when a Chemex is a way of making and serving coffee, so there’s no need for the coffee pot too. Though I guess there’s no need for the eggs to be brown either, so presumably it was just Bond’s foible to have his housekeeper make his coffee in one pot and serve it in another.
What sort of Coffee Does James Bond Drink?
Fleming doesn’t say in From Russia With Love. All he says is it’s very strong and, from a shop called De Bry in New Oxford Street, London. De Bry was an upmarket confectioner with branches in Paris and London, but it also sold coffee. They closed a long time ago.
However, in Live And Let Die, while Bond is in Jamaica, Fleming mentions his preference for:
Blue Mountain coffee – the most delicious in the world.
Blue Mountain coffee is usually described using words like smooth, balanced, chocolaty and rich, rather than ‘very strong’. Still, I think we can speculate it’s probably what he drinks at home, too, assuming that by ‘very strong’ Bond means he doesn’t skimp on the amount of coffee.
Where Did James Bond Get His Chemex?
Well, it doesn’t specifically say, but I think we can make a good guess. In both Live and Let Die (1954) and Diamonds are Forever (1956) James Bond travels to the USA. I think we can assume he brought it back from his American travels.
Bond’s remark in From Russia With Love that he’s recently split up with Tiffany Case, who’s American, inspires the other possibility. Perhaps she introduced Bond to the Chemex. Maybe she bought it for him as a present or simply left it behind when she walked out on him after finding him too difficult to live with.
Literary Analysis
I’m a writer, so I’m interested in why Ian Fleming included long descriptions of James Bond’s preferences in his novels. Skip this bit if you just want to know what the Chemex is like.
Fleming used descriptions of James Bond’s lifestyle and appreciation of well-designed, functional objects as a way of characterising him as a man who pays attention to detail. He peppers his narratives with descriptions of Bond’s preferences in precise, even pedantic, detail by using two methods: adjectives and expansive modifying phrases.
To show this, I’ve rewritten the breakfast passage in From Russia With Love with all the adjectives and modifying phrases taken out:
Breakfast was Bond’s favourite meal of the day. When he was stationed in London it was always the same. It consisted of coffee, of which he drank two cups, an egg, and toast, with butter and jam, marmalade or honey.
So—how fascinating—he has coffee, a boiled egg and toast for breakfast. Worse, most of Bond’s preferences are simply Fleming’s, so all the author is actually doing is describing what he had for breakfast. It’s so boring written ‘on-the-nose’ like this that it’d hardly be worth including in the novel.
Fleming’s skill, then, is in taking something as uninspiring as the revelation that Bond has a boiled egg for breakfast and turning it into a characterising vignette. James Bond’s possession of any kind of coffeemaker is part of this. Something as sophisticated and American as a Chemex would be practically unheard of in post-WW2 Britain, a world where rationing had only just ended. Fleming himself said that he knew that his descriptions of glamorous locations and luxury goods were a big part of his novels’ appeal.
Okay, so that’s why Fleming had James Bond liking coffee brewed in a Chemex in From Russia With Love, but what’s so special about the Chemex itself?
The Chemex: A Design Classic
The Chemex coffee maker was not new even when Fleming included it in From Russia With Love. Peter Schlumbohm, a German chemist and inventor who had moved to the USA in the 1930s, first produced it in 1941, during WW2.
It’s a deceptively simple-looking thing: an hourglass-shaped glass flask with a wooden collar around its neck held on by a leather tie. But Schlumbohm had spent a long time perfecting it, using his scientific knowledge—it resembles an Erlenmeyer flask, which is commonly used in chemistry. This presumably is also where the odd name comes from—I couldn’t see the marketing department approving it.
The Chemex was immediately popular, partly because of its functional Bauhaus-influenced style, and partly because it was made entirely of glass and wood at a time when metals like steel and aluminum were needed for weapons production. Indeed, it was first recommended by New York’s Museum of Modern Art as a ‘Useful Object in Wartime’.
The Chemex wasn’t just an economical wartime expedient, though. The Illinois Institute of Technology rated it as “one of the best-designed products of modern times” in 1957 and it’s still in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, as well as many other art and design museums.
Testing Out The Chemex
So, first, the Chemex makes Americano-type filter coffee. I’ve already got a Rancilio Silvia espresso machine and like the espressos and lattes that makes, so a Chemex will never be my only coffee maker, however good it is. But I also use a cafetiere/French press to make Americano-type coffee, so there’s a chance the Chemex might replace that.
First Impressions
I bought the ‘eight-cup’ Chemex and my first thought when I opened the box was that it was smaller than I expected. When it says eight cups, it means 5-oz cups. A 5-oz cup is small—think small teacup or large espresso cup sized. If you like your coffee by the mugful, then you’ll get about three from the ‘eight-cup’ Chemex.
Some other notes:
- The wooden collar is so you don’t burn your fingers as you try to pour the coffee out. This works.
- It has a small ‘button’ which shows when the pot is half full. I suppose the point of this is that it’s hard to judge halfway because of the conical shape.
- The Chemex is full when the level of the coffee reaches the bottom of the collar.
- The Chemex uses a much thicker ‘lab-grade’ filter, rather than the thin paper ones you get in most filter coffee machines. This is the main reason why the coffee it makes tastes different to normal filter coffee.
How to Make Coffee in the Chemex
So, I unboxed the Chemex, grabbed one of the Chemex filters I’d ordered at the same time, and put the kettle on. Here’s what you have to do next:
- Grind your coffee about as coarse as you would for a cafetiere/French press, maybe a little coarser.
- Put the filter inside the Chemex, line up the folds with the spout and rinse the filter in place to seal it. Remember to drain the water out.
- Add the ground coffee.
- Boil your water and then let it come off the boil—it should be about 90°C/200°F when you pour it over the coffee.
- Pour just enough water over the coffee to wet it
- Let the coffee ‘bloom’ for 30 seconds. This just means leave it for the water to soak in.
- Pour the hot water over the coffee, filling until the water is almost at the top of the Chemex.
- Add more water as necessary and let it filter through until the Chemex is full to the base of the wooden collar.
- Lift the filter out of the Chemex.
- Pour the coffee into a cup.
How Chemex-brewed Coffee Tastes
I thought it tasted superb. A few things that I noted were:
- It suits strong coffee (as Bond mentioned) because its good filters mean you get the full taste without the bitterness.
- Make sure you put enough coffee in. One rounded tablespoon per 5-oz cup is what they recommend.
- So that’s eight tablespoons in my eight-cup/three mug Chemex.
- I accidentally only put two-thirds as much coffee in as recommended one time, and the result tasted like normal filter coffee, so the Chemex definitely needs the full amount of ground coffee to give the best result.
- Chemex coffee is not the hottest, because of the time it takes to filter through. If you like your coffee boiling hot, then a Chemex is not for you.
- The Chemex’s glass is strong enough to leave on a hot plate to keep warm, supposedly, though I haven’t tried that.
- Also because of the time it takes to make the coffee, it’s not for a quick cup on the way out of the door. I’d use it to make a pot when I was relaxing.
- Chemex-brewed coffee is flavourful rather than sharp tasting. If you like bitter-tasting coffee, a Chemex is not for you.
- A Chemex will never deliver intense espresso-type coffee. It’s not designed to.
- On the other hand, if you like to bring out the subtle nuances of your coffee beans, that’s the Chemex’s strength.
- I’d use it with my favourite, most expensive coffee beans, maybe even James Bond’s favourite Blue Mountain.
- I thought Chemex-brewed coffee went well with cream rather than milk, but that’s probably personal taste.
The Chemex: My Verdict
Makes terrific filter coffee. It’s going to replace my cafetiere/French press.
Want to Try It?
The Chemex is available on US Amazon here and UK Amazon here
You’ll also need Chemex filters which are available on US Amazon here and UK Amazon here.
And if you want the full James Bond coffee experience, Blue Mountain coffee is available on US Amazon here and UK Amazon here.
Agree? Disagree?
If you’ve tried a Chemex and have an opinion on it, then please email me. Otherwise, please feel free to share the article using the buttons below.
