I finally have a Chemex, but I have a few questions.

Hey there. I'm no expert, but I'll try and answer your questions:

1. I bought a small brush from Target. Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-Bottle-Brush/dp/B00004OCLJ/ref=sr_1_20?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1359564218&sr=1-20&keywords=dish+brush
2. I mess with my grind settings pretty regularly. I use a Porlex hand grinder, and I am for something a little more course than table salt, but finer than you would for a french press. They say extraction time should be ~3minutes.
3. I typically pour a little less than 1 fl oz of water for the bloom. As I understand it, you don't really want coffee to begin dripping to the bottom of the base; you're just trying to saturate the grinds.

A bottle brush and purocaff( joeglo or any other brand work well too) are great for cleaning the chemex. you can also use citric acid if you don"t have access to those. I usually shoot for a 5 min brew time on my chemex and my grind is right at what some people call drip grind. As for the bloom make sure you put a divot in the middle of the dry coffee, the reason for the pre-wet is to degas the coffee and actually allow the water to extract the coffee. Use just enough water to wet the coffee but not enough to actually let it drip through. the amount of time depends on how long the bloom last for (how fresh or old the coffee is). i usually let it go until it stops growing. typically 30sec.-1min

1.) Untie the wood thing and it is dishwasher safe from all reports.

2.)What kind of grinder are you using? I do about 3 dots from French Press on my Bodum Bistro, but I'll give the same advice I got. Make a few cups keeping all variables the same except grind size. See what you like best.

3.) I go 2x the coffee by weight (60g water for 30g coffee, generally). Just look for the coffee to bloom (this will happen with fresh coffee) and then start pouring once it deflates. This should be about 30-35 seconds in depending of how fresh the coffee is. You should smell happiness.

What I normally do to clean on a daily basis is boil an extra bit of water in my kettle and after I am done brewing I pour the left over hot water in the chemex while slowly turning it. Basically clean the chemex with the boiling water. I always do a deeper clean later but to make it quick and simple in the mornings this is the best method I have found.

Plus when I brew in the mornings I always boil twice as much water that way I have some to pre-soak the filter, some to warm up my coffee cup (which I also use the boiling water used to pre-soak the filter) and I have some to clean the chemex with after brewing.

Using a scale to measure out the amount of water to use has helped out a great deal with this, I don't have to measure before boiling. It definitely keeps the process precise.

also to comment on the grind. I did find that I need to use a finer grind than when I used my Mellita pour over. I was getting pretty bland coffee so I experimented with the grinding and found a finer grind is better. Just mess around with it to find a sweet spot.

and for the bloom, if you are measuring it out, I use 20 grams of coffee for 400 grams of water and when I make pre-soak the grounds I use about 15 grams of water to start the bloom. While it's blooming I usually take that time (30 seconds or so) to run some rice through the grinder to clean it, empty the cup out and pack up the grinder. I can usually get that done in less than a minute after which I start pouring the water to start the brewing.

To clean, I just dump in water and shake and swirl and dump it out, usually three times or until i can no longer smell coffee.

For cleaning, I just put some warm soapy water in there and swirl it around few times. Then rinse until all the soap is gone.