The Chemex 8 Cup holds roughly 1.2 L of brewed coffee and is the size coffee shops and bigger households reach for when one batch needs to feed three or four people. It is also the size that most closely matches the proportions of the original 1941 design — the profile most Chemex photographs tend to show.
Brewing at this scale asks for more deliberate technique. The deeper coffee bed takes longer to bloom evenly, and the larger water volume means a longer drawdown that can trend toward over-extraction if the grind is set the same as on a smaller size. A typical recipe uses 60 g of coffee to 900 g of water (1:15), a grind one notch coarser than your 6 Cup setting, water at 94–96 °C, and a total brew time of 5:00 to 6:30.
Split the pours into four or five distinct phases, and give the bed a gentle Rao-style swirl at the end to flatten it before drawdown completes. The payoff is the same crystalline cup the Chemex is loved for, only with enough volume to share — and at a body that stays genuinely clean even at this scale.