Yesterday, I decided I want to be finished having to choose between waking up to crappy coffee already made and spending 20 minutes every morning making good coffee. This is America, damnit, and this is exactly the type of tough problem Americans solve.
Since the best coffee I know how to make is made with a six-cup Chemex, and since I already own a Cuisinart automatic coffee machine with a stainless steel carafe and no warming plate*, that was all the equipment I needed.
And it worked great. Just fill the machine’s reservoir with 3 cups of water, remove its filter basket or swing it out of the way, set up the Chemex as you normally would for three cups (except don’t wet the filter if you’re going to leave this overnight), and place it where the carafe would normally go. Set the machine’s timer and walk away. Walk to your bed, lie down, and fall asleep. In the morning, you will have three cups of delicious coffee waiting for you. It’s a thing of beauty.
*Of course, it’s not without a few caveats. The first is that this won’t work if your coffee machine has a warming plate, because that would destroy the Chemex. So don’t try that. Also, I had to use only three cups of coffee, or else it would have overflowed. That’s because the coffee machine pumps hot water faster than the Chemex filter can drain it. Another thing is that the coffee machine doesn’t heat water quite as hot as a boil. So, for me, the result was slightly more sour and less full than normal - but only by a tiny, tiny bit, and it was still so much better than what the Cuisinart machine makes otherwise. Finally, the machine spits water so forcefully onto the grounds, that there was a bit of a splatter mess on the counter. Just wipe it up and stop whining. This is the best cup of coffee you’ve had in a while. Try not to look ungrateful.
So that’s it! Badass coffee brewed while you sleep! This concludes the lesson.