This article could be biographical of me though. I have indeed gone many times to a quasi-legal coffee roaster based in an industrial garage (until they got booted). They did indeed treat their beans the way the article describes. They even had a rare batch sourced from one of the few growers in China. I make a Chemex pot, like, every day. If I can’t find other people at work to give it out too I end up drinking a whole pot myself. Snark aside this article is the millennial coffee experience.
Bah. You can let go of that shit. Good beans, freshly roasted, freshly ground, done drip. That's it. I used to do mine through a filter holder into a thermos (per Alton Brown) until it became way too handy to have that pot done at 5:30am so now I have a fancy-pants Quisinart but all it does is drip hot water on grounds and put it in a carafe. That whole Chemex thing is dumb. So long as you're using fresh beans and you're grinding them close to when you're using them everything else is theater. Sucking in cgod and ButterflyEffect for reinforcements.
I'm with you. I use a £20 hand grinder to grind some fresh beans and make a pour over in 3/4 minutes. I do it by eye, drink it black and enjoy it. You can be pedantic about anything, I guess. But I live in one of the 'top ten hippest areas in Britain' and haven't experienced anything to level that this article is mocking, even in the most trendy of coffee places.