The Humble Brilliance of Italy's Moka Coffee Pot (2018)
atlasobscura.com
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I still think a proper espresso machine produces better... espressos, but in my tiny apartment the moka pot is a great alternative. There's certainly a fair bit of technique involved, so you probably won't produce your best coffee on the first go.
Even in a thread about coffee, it must mention ThinkPads
But I also have the same moka. It’s good
It's turtles all the way down!
[0] https://www.finnishdesignshop.com/design-stories/classic/ale...
[1] https://www.artemide.com/en/subfamily/18869/tizio
[2] https://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2015/01/08/thinkpad...
From my point of view, if what you are looking for is a very finicky way of making coffee, you have two options: a cheap moka pot or an expensive coffee machine. Then again, I do have a Silvia. Finicky has a certain appeal.
Wrong. Any kind of ferromagnetic sheet of metal (ie even your random iron pie pan) will pick up induction. I regularly use a standard moka pot on my induction stove.
I am super happy with mine, close to a thousand coffees made with 0 maintenance, for 5% of the price of a good coffee machine. And the only waste is coffee grind itself.
Long story short, we bought a stainless steel version, and I love it so much. Probably made 3,000 coffees with it, and it's almost as good as the day we bought it. No a single part replaced or damaged.
Really happy to hear they are coming back from the brink.
https://us.alessi.com/products/moka-espresso-coffee-maker-in...
I'm sure the locking mechanism and aesthetics are much better, and they're a pleasure to use. But something about a $10 thrift store moka pot works well. And no qualms about taking it on a camping trip, to use over a fire.
idk here even on amazon it's like 60eur new.
anyway, I'd bring a Giannina over a campfire than any aluminium thrift moka. sure bottom will blacken a little externally, but ours lasted so long they all eventually blackened outside anyway.
The 60€ price I mentioned was from the Italian Amazon.
- For some reason it succeeds at temperatures lower than other mokas I've had, which is good for the taste as well as for energy savings and the life expectancy of the rubber piece.
- It doesn't drip! All mokas I've had dripped at some point.
- It doesn't have a plastic handle that will melt if you forget to turn off the stove (yup I've done this).
I'm comparing it to an IKEA moka and several Bialetti mokas. Not fair in terms of price.
Probably yes. It's just a "new" technology, so I don't know what are their plans for the future.
edit: and how hard is it to find the correct temperature? I've often had the problem of my Bialetti getting to hot on the stove
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx5-tBAiOM0&list=PLKby2eyvN3... looks really foamy, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing?
The taste is really comparable with the espresso that you can get at the bar.
> how hard is it to find the correct temperature?
This is the real issue with Kamira. Finding the perfect temperature is a bit tricky and it's not easy to do if you are in hurry in the morning.
> looks really foamy, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing?
The foam is fine.
(She's recently been using a Nespresso ..spit Thing - a gift from her parents no less - over her usual Bialetti, and I refuse to make her a morning coffee using the damned thing. This might put us back on the path to morning harmony :) )
Worth noting they offer a really cheap personalized message option and are on black friday sale till the 30th!
I absolutely love it. It's the simplest way to make a good coffee, and the only form of coffee I enjoy more is a proper espresso made with a fancy machine.
I'm with you, but my mum (Italian) nowadays just refuses to drink espresso. She worked in hospitals, and they would make coffee with mokas all day long, so that's what she wants. At home, I have to keep a Bialetti and a single pack of Lavazza just for her, for when she comes over once a year.
> the Cuban concoction cafecito is made by quickly whipping the first few drops of moka pot coffee with sugar, creating a paste that both flavors the coffee and simulates a classic espresso foam.
All these products enjoyed (and still enjoy) great success around the world but all these companies are not in good shape anymore, mostly due to the fact that the product they built were long lasting, therefore they are not forcing customers to buy new products every few years.
I reckon the real problem is that the Chinese can now produce equivalent wares at remarkably lower prices (because hey, almost-slave labor is cheap), and the competition from actual-espresso makers (Nespresso) is now intense (because, again, they can produce in Asia and hence sell at low prices).
There is always demand for new kitchenware, as people grow and move out of their parents' house. But that demand is typically for cheap kitchenware, which you cannot make in "old countries" anymore without being destroyed on price by hungry upstarts.
I like getting good deals on things, but if its something that I'm going to use every day, I will buy a quality item over a cheap item because I know that it will cost me less in the long run.
I haven’t figured out the ‘why’ - dwindling middle class? Min-max consumer purchase patterns? Perhaps planned obsolescence is actually optimal on average? (e.g. home mechanics just don’t need Snap-On quality)
I’m not sure what you mean by consumer min-maxing, but perhaps this — one thing I’ve thought is that the amount and variety of crap you own in this culture is more important than the quality. And not from a utility perspective, rather because our dominant entertainment reinforces it. It’s a given that you must own a dishwasher, so you get a cheap one — yet it’s literally worse than hand-washing dishes, and needs to be replaced every 5 years. You can’t own one good kitchen knife, you must get a wooden knife block like the chefs have, even if all seven knives are crap.
Many of the cheap tools you buy at Harbor Freight will literally break the first time you use them as intended. This is all told a shocking waste of human effort — every scrap of resource and moment of time spent creating this crap is wasted, burned forever. When often just making something 20% better will leave it “good enough.”
Min-max’ing refers to an idea that instead of having evenly OK kitchenware (for example) you pinch pennies on the flatware and dishes and so forth so you can buy & enjoy an exotic Damascus steel knife, or fine teak cutting board. It actually dovetails quite well with your idea about being taught to aspire to things we can’t really afford.
There is definitely an aspiration to own more crap. My family is a key example of this and I used to be the same. Now I'm happy with my 1 good kitchen knife.
As for the gutting of the middle class, it feels like there has been a point sometime in the last 10 years where the ship sailed. Those on board with a house and life setup are destined only to get richer while the rest are left on the shore, paying rent for their lives.
Part of the problem too is fraud and its downstream effects on purchasing decisions.
I haven't bought a new kettle in about 12 years. Ours at the time was about 70 USD and now costs 250. In that time I've noticed counterfeits of our kettle become a problem everywhere.
A kettle is a simple thing. My wife's kettle she got for a tiny amount somewhere before it rusted out after years.
The first kettle we recently purchased for my mom, a well respected brand, rusted profusely within two weeks.
If you read reviews of kettles, they're filled with comments about them falling apart, rusting, the enamel chipping and the the steel rusting, and so forth and so on.
I doubt the company making this recent kettle wanted this spec; it probably is being produced under spec fraudulently.
What happens is, you buy an expensive kettle, and its a fraud, either because it's a knockoff, or because it's authentic but the actual production models are different from bidding prototypes. So now you're out the same as if you bought a cheap one. Is buying more expensive worth it?
After awhile it becomes pervasive because it's everywhere. It's hard to separate signal from noise in purchasing.
I completely agree about problems in the race to the cheapest, but sometimes I think even when the consumer is willing to pay a bit more for higher quality, if you can't discriminate anymore because of fraud it becomes rational to save your money.
(FWIW, we returned the kettle and got an even more expensive one — we'll see how this one goes.)
It's also that they have no problem copying designs instead of innovating and creating their own. So the western companies pays for R&D and marketing and the Chinese CopyCat just tries to match the product as much as it can and flood online retailers.
In fact Apple got some issues around this with iPad, whereas people are not upgrading their tablets (or laptops) as often as their phones.
If you have sturdy moka coffee pot, you will most probably get one in a lifetime. Same goes for other long lasting products (my mum has still her pressure cooker from Lagostina from a couple of decades ago).
Part 1 & 2 https://www.instagram.com/tv/CTE25jEFg8U https://www.instagram.com/tv/CTE6VpKjvzu
– Tried to once fix an electric kettle with duct tape.
[0] A slightly heretical alternative here is to use cable ties, daisy-chained if necessary for larger jobs.
Most of us don't have 15 minutes to wait for our coffee in the morning, but that shot was absolutely divine. Of course, I never did get the wood stove to exactly that temperature again, but now that I'm working at home, it would be worth experimenting with a PID controller.
These days, I use a phin filter and a hot-water pot. Highly optimized for getting me out the door quickly -- I can wash the filter, make a coffee, feed the cat and the kid all in a flurry and it's always to taste.
I feel like you've just given me my new life goal, a career and lifestyle that enables that.
Your goal is closer than you might think: I've found the time to brew my coffee when I quit the 9-5 rat race and I do remote consulting now, working my own hours. Good luck.
Drinking coffee like an Italian grandma makes me happy.
As an aside, in 2008, I saw a production of Tosca, by Opera North (Yorkshire, England). https://web.archive.org/web/20081025105247/http://www.leedsg... In it was a priest, who glumly watched the action unfold around him, powerless to stop it. His only consolation was the ritual of making coffee in his Moka. Sometimes I think about that opera while brewing my coffee...
I own a handful of Bialetti mokas of different sizes. A couple of those are from my teenager years, I don't even remember buying them, they might have been from my parents. I still use them multiple times daily.
Mokas are for life. As long as you replace the plastic gasket once in a while (a couple bucks) and you don't accidentally melt the handle (which you can replace anyway) they'll outlive all of us.
Replaceable parts are a few euros.
The Dualit toaster is another piece of "built to last" kitchen equipment.
https://www.dualit.com/products/classic-toasters
Pressed steel panels and all parts available since 1946. They're made for caterers so you probably won't ever need to repair it if you're using it domestically.
We've had ours since 2004ish and it still looks and works exactly like new.
The coffee is delicious and I don't have to use plastic pods. And I now spend a pittance on coffee
Hats off to the marketing team on Nespresso
I love that products and companies like these still exist, sad indeed that they have such a hard time to survive.
Brew time is pretty much precisely 6 minutes.
Set pot on stove, set timer. When bell rings, coffee is ready.
(A timer built into your cooker / microwave can also work, I find their alarms are not loud enough.)
The surface area of the pot bottom is the limiting factor more than anything else.
Sure, low heat and widely-divergent hobs exist. Standards and conventions help ensure reasonable convergence.
It wasn't clear to me whether the pot was no longer functional, or just whether the previously elegant aluminium surface was now rather ugly.
Practically unkillable if taken a bit of care. At home I use it exclusively for making coffee.
Findings are that drinking coffee from a moka pot made by aluminum will result in a TWI (tolerable weekly intake) of 4%, and that washing the pot in the dishwasher sigificantly increases the aluminum concentration in subsequence brews.
Incidentally, I have a Gaggia classic machine, a grinder and bean, as well as a Nespresso pod machine. The Gaggia is more customisable, but also more work, not just how to pour a cup, but the work establishing consistency in the first place e.g. finding a good grinder, and the right setting, how much coffee in the basket and how much pressure to apply, when to clean and what mods to use etc etc etc
Compared to all that, pods are just as available as beans/espresso grind (maybe more so) and v easy. You don't even have to watch the machine while waiting for it to heat up and pour, and with the right pods the results aren't vastly inferior to the espresso, but much more consistent.
I get the environmental critique, and the Nespresso system is definitely more expensive, lock-in, etc etc, but DAMN it's so convenient and good enough for the everyday workload of a single or couple.
I used to feed my addiction via Nespresso capsules and am glad I stopped because it was really expensive but also:
> Recent research (PDF) conducted by a UK-based coffee brand found that, of the 39,000 capsules produced worldwide every minute, 29,000 of them end up in landfills -- https://bbia.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CAF26_52_Sust...
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/k-cup-creator-john-sylvan-r...
* https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35605927
Discussed in 2018:
Some 13 years ago, for the office I got a "modern" Elettrika Bialetti which is a normal 2-cup ½ standard Bialetti with a resistor on the bottom to make it electric. It uses standard computer cables to get power. It powered 11yrs of PhD, postdoc, and academic work.
Last update for my Mokas (~6yrs ago) is to get seals made of silicone. They last a lifetime and now I don't even need to change the seal every four months anymore.
The sizes of "cups" when it comes to coffee seems to be a bit chaotic.
Tasse - 120ml (4oz-ish), this is historically the base UOM of "coffee cup" originally encountered on coffee things. Often carelessly translated to "cup" in countries new to coffee, regardless of overlap with existing alternate meanings of "cup" as a measurement.
Demitasse - 60ml (2oz-ish), a cup for espresso.
Mug - Wikipedia says 8-12oz.
The USA definition of "coffee cup" as an amount one would serve themselves ranges anywhere from 8oz through over 20oz, depending on who you ask. USA-made coffee machine markings also vary, but are always smaller than consumers expect. Currently Black and Decker's "cup" is 5oz and Bunn's is 7oz, which means Bunn's standard 10 cup machine makes substantially more coffee than B&D's standard 12 cup machine.
Unless of course it is a cup of coffee in a recipe, in which case consider the provenance of your recipe and which standardized (or not...) version of a "cup" measurement is indicated before proceeding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit)
But I somewhat dislike the aluminum ones as they tend to get somewhat yucky over time ... but Bialetti also sells a stainless steel one, the Bialetti Venus. Big fan.
I have a slightly different experience. I have 2 Moka pots, but both no longer seem useable after leaving it on the stove too long. Now anything I brew using them tastes burned. I've tried cleaning them, but I still haven't been able to get rid of blackish residue in the water reservoir base. Any tips on how to fix them?
The knockoffs don't function properly (burn and spit coffee) probably due to different dimensions - I invite anyone to explain what is so critical about the original design. Here's one that doesn't work: https://homla.com.pl/mia-mokka-zestaw-kawiarka-czarna-z-2-fi...
Maybe material/thickness which acts as thermal buffer and prevents too quick heating?
Wonderful technology. Like a Guy Clark song, it's 'Stuff That Works.'
Which is actually another problem - they don't work very well when partially loaded. So you can't own only one if you ever have guests and don't want to do multiple runs.
The moka pot is very hard to dial in and almost always burns the coffee. It requires care, focus, and attention. They're much more inconsistent than pour over and even the lever espresso machines I've used are less work.
I think moka pots are fun and worth experimenting with but I find it hard to believe people really love the results. But if you are always adding milk and sugar, then I can definitely see the appeal.
But this summer I rented a motor home for the holidays (yeah yeah covid vacation -again), which came with a Bialetti. So I looked up how to use it, and every morning I would make a couple of cups for myself and the wife, on the gas stove.
Perfect coffee every time, very easy, no problems whatsoever. The gas stove I used was on max every time, no changes, so maybe that's why it was consistent.. but I don't really see how it matters, as the heat is just making steam after all. So how can you get burned coffee?
Most other methods don't have you heat the coffee and the water together so you can only really burn it if you put it on a heating element after.
Just now, because of this thread, I have ordered a Kamira Espresso maker. We'll see how it goes.
As others have commented, the coffee itself is the most important thing to get right - a great bean brewed normally will beat a mediocre bean brewed perfectly :)
The only thing that saddens me a bit is that when (not if) I will switch to an induction stove I will have to buy a new steel pot, or switch to an electric one. Until then, she's my mainstay.
IMO one would be a fool to accept this risk, even if small.
I do however find it very weird. For example, how far-spread is Alzheimer's in Italy, where the Al intake must be through the roof. If this was to be believed, then all italians would have AD. (I am fully aware that logically, this is not correct, and that they could perhaps have developed some sort of immunity).
The same could be said about soda/beverage cans. Their use is so widespread that virtually everyone in America should have AD.
The scientific argument may have some truth to it, but I still find it weird that it's not "evident" in populations where Al intake would be through the roof.
They are coated inside.
- Al is a known neurotoxin
- Al does not, typically, rust, despite being far more thermodynamically favorable than Fe because a kinetic barrier, AlO2, forms stopping further oxidation
- AlO2 is an extremely durable coating. Extremely inert. It's crystal lattice constant is similar to Al's to it does not flake
- Al does rust in salty environments.
Conclusion:
The moka is fine. Just don't use vinegar or salt water to brew your coffee.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388725/
> Additional human inner aluminum exposure through the proper use of aluminum moka pots is negligible. Even under the worst-case scenario of washing the moka pots in a dishwasher, the uptake amounts to only 4% of TWI [total weekly intake]. The manufacturers expressly warn not to clean the aluminum moka pots in the dishwasher.
Or buy an induction plate adapter. I have not used one, so I cannot tell how practical they are, just saying they exist.
The author talks about the La Pavoni Ideale, but I don't get how they missed La Pavoni's current bread and butter, the Europiccola and Professional, both of which are more than small enough to fit in a kitchen, make great espresso, and have been sold since the 1960s.
Coffee brewing is like a thermodynamic engine diagram, lots of different routes along the temperature, pressure, mass, flow rate, ground size and packed density dimensions.
Sadly though, the truth is I can barely work my existing semi-automatic espresso maker until I've had my first shot of the day!
If I had a fully manual machine that first shot would end in some kind of Clouseauesque[1] destruction of my kitchen...
As mentioned elsewhere where in this discussion the Moka does not make coffee through boiling but rather via vapor pressure.
Best done with extreme caution, as near boiling water will do your fingers in if it goes over. I set the bottom on a grippy surface, wind the top on, and only have to get a grip on the base for the final cinch.
Yeah, that's probably the most troublesome part of my daily moka experience too.
I use a paper towel and grip it at the valve to minimise contact.
Pro-tip: get yourself an ove-glove or equivalent knock-off and never burn your hand again:
https://www.amazon.com/Ove-Glove-Resistant-Resistance-Househ...
Interestingly that's not my experience with Moka Coffe Pots. The 2-pot Bialetti I have takes a long while to heat and is almost always too small for the heat source I have available. Electric stove fields are too wide, and camping gas heaters seem to wrap the flames more around the pot than boiling it properly. After the water is steaming, you also need to sustain the heat for a bit to let the steam travel through. In total, it feels like a lot of wasted heat energy for a little bit of coffee.
I have a Flare Espresso machine (piston, manually operated) that just requires boiling water that I can get from a more efficient source like a pot matching the stove, a water boiler or even a good thermos (!) when travelling ;-) And the result I get out of that is a "proper" espresso because you can easily hit 10 bars of pressure, by applying gentle pressure on the lever.
Do you put cold water in the bottom thingy and heat it up on the stove? When I started using moka pots, I read that you should put pre-boiled hot water in there and then put it on medium to low heat on the stove. Even with that I still find it a bit too quick sometimes.
These days I use an aeropress more often, it's similar in terms of convenience but is faster and more importantly I find it doesn't require heating the coffee as much, which makes it taste better.
1 cup is for me and my wife (we wait while the other finishes)
2 cup is for when we a guest
9 cup is for my 70 year old parents. I cringe just seeing them drink 4.5 cups each.
It's possible that my taste in coffee has changed over time, though; back then I didn't really like strong coffee, now I do.
The article doesn't deal much with the character of the coffee produced, nor the effect of the huge difference in pressure between a moka pot and a (professional) Gaggia. My tame barrista makes a big deal about how important the correct pressure is. Also: I wonder whether the pressurised boiling chamber results in water that is hotter than 100C, yielding bitter coffee.
Every one of these four statements is so comically false that you cannot help to attribute a dose of bad faith in the author. You can buy a real espresso machine that fits in a 15cm x 30cm base (like two bottles of water side by side) for about 100EUR, which is definitely easier to use than a moka pot, and does not waste energy by heating the air in the kitchen.
EDIT: just look for "thin espresso machine" on a search engine, there's plenty of choice!
Most cheap espresso machines achieve crema and pressure via a pressurised portafilter [1].
Nothing wrong with having one as a beginner, but you're stuck with using coarser grinds because of the always-there pressure, and it limits the number of variables you're able to play with to "dial in" beans.
[1] https://coffee.stackexchange.com/questions/2641/how-big-of-a...
You can get a normal basket for it since the pump can hit the required pressures for espresso. But they use their own basket size, so just be careful what you get. The steam wand also uses a froth-aider so you won't be getting the silky microfoam that can pour art. I've used the Dedica before and it's ok.
For my money I'd get the Breville Bambino if you want this style of machine. I believe the latest model comes with a pressurized and normal basket. And the automated milk steamer is actually quite impressive. Milk foams up well enough to pour art and it does an admirable job at soy milk.
She's bosnian so she's made coffee with a turkish coffee pot directly on the stove most of my life. As a kid I would also grind beans for her in an old brass hand cranked grinder from Bosnia. When you grind the beans yourself by hand they do tend to be a bit coarser, fitting for the moka pot.
However the reason it is getting its lunch eaten is that people prioritize convenience and the Mokapot is a different product category although under the coffee vertical. A Mokapot takes bit of education and a bit of time in the morning to dial it in. The general coffee consumption market is not interested / technically savy to do this. It's losing because its a more complicated and higher quality product --> different consumers. I don't think those junky nespresso buyers would even be in the mokapot category to begin with. Its similar to how lyft/uber brought more people into riding cabs (also took cab market share).
When I need a break from the computer, I find the ritual relaxing.
Can't see myself buying a Nestle contraption.
It was inevitable that a thread on coffee would attract the snobbery.
I was literally raised with moka and coffee from Italian bars, and Nespresso is absolutely fine. For me, like for loads of other Italian migrants in "barbaric" Northern lands (where "baristas" couldn't make a decent cup to save their lives), it has been an absolute lifesaver. I know plenty of Italian foodies with absolutely no qualms about it. You can criticize the environmental impact (sure), the cost (eh), the commercial model (you in SaaS too?), the tax-dodging, whatever. But when it comes to quality, it's really just the worst hipster snobbery that stops people from accepting that it's actually pretty good. The machines can last for ages with minimal maintenance, and the coffee is good and consistent with zero effort. The rest is just audiophile-level bullcrap.
Is the coffee fine? Yes its fine, its not great but man are those machines so incredibly wasteful.
harvesting and roasting the beans is also incredibly resource intensive, but we do it because we consider it valuable
We make cafecitos with a Bialetti moka pot in my house. It took quite a few tries to get it right, the sugar paste especially, but they're a real treat now that we have it figured out.
Here's our recipe and a few notes: https://snippi.com/s/jrn4ig3 Note that we're using brown sugar instead of table sugar. This is simply a preference.
Enjoy!
Or... buy an Aeropress instead?
I've never had an aeropress so it's hard for me to compare quality etc., but when I've had coffee with friends who use them, the aeropress does seem bit more cumbersome and messy than the mokka pot.
But one thing where aeropress shines is cleaning. I'd use my moka pot more often, purely for consistency without effort, if it was as easy to clean as aeropress.
You're probably buying lighter roasts, which are in vogue but are more difficult to brew.
There's no reason to claim that the better stuff is not better, that's just pointless anti-elitism. As a kid, I certainly enjoyed a McDonalds burger over a rare tenderloin. The tenderloin obviously was better though.
You need to adjust it for each new roast, even when the bean is from the same origin as the previous batch you used. Fluctuations will be smaller though.
Also be aware that some people do not enjoy some roast levels.
I for one used to think I loved dark French roasts in my early twenties. Now I am more for the lighter floral notes in my filters and the earthier nutty notes in my espresso. But nothing ever as dark as French roast.
Rules of thumb;
* buy fresh whole bean
* that are all from the same source
* not a robusta
* that has its roast date on the packaging
* store in airtight container away from sunlight
* do not freeze the beans
* and use it within 3-4 weeks of that date (earlier for espresso)
* enjoy the coffee you like and do not let anyone else tell you otherwise. But perhaps, experiment with your tastes.
I have the luxury to have a stepless grinder, and I can observe the difference when I have to adjust the grain size between beans that are freshly roasted, stored in fridge and stored at room temperature.
At fridge temperatures, beans stay wet and oily much longer.
But surprisingly many believe that freezing the beans make for a good cup for longer.
Which is not going to be the case when the bean has not thawed and is so brittle it gives an uneven grind (and thus uneven extraction).
Better, if possible, is to buy smaller amounts more frequently and use them all up before getting more.
It isn't like you get high quality whole bean in bulk anyway.
And, ftr, I am tired of Starbucks coffees too. It's hard to find an in between.
I've had some really high end coffees that I thought tasted like garbage. Then again I wasn't prepared for what they were going to taste like. For instance, when I tried light roasts for the first time, I thought they were absolute trash. I only drank dark roasts though and based my expectations on that. I've since warmed up to them and now prefer a medium roast for my daily drink.
Some people have different tastes. Some folks really like the burnt flavors of Starbucks and associate it with coffee, so everything else tastes terrible. That's especially true if you don't drink coffee black and require a certain flavor after adding heaps of cream and sugar. Other people are more sensitive to bitterness or acidity and need something to cater to their tastes.
Personally I just stick with Peet's beans because I find them to be cheap and convenient and not all that bad. I still occasionally get a bag of terrible coffee from them, but it's terrible in the sense that I just can't get a cup of coffee that I like after adjusting all the parameters(temp, time, dilution(yeah, I use an aeropress), etc).
Tastes are a subjective thing. I've had $400 Michelin dinners that tasted like shit, and $8 burritos that were some of the best things I've ever put in my mouth. People like to get all judgmental about it but really you just have to know yourself and go with it.
I think there's less temperature control with a Moka pot, and I'd say cleanup is more effort than a simple aeropress puck.
I like the moka as well. But it's harder to master. It will play different on different stoves. The original is in aluminum, so won't work on induction. But when you get the nack it will make you steaming darkness.
In my personal order of importance for good coffee:
1. Beans
2. Water Temp
3. Method
4. Grind
A distant 5 is process and by process I mean exact steps, timing etc. If you follow the world champion steps[0], even loosely, it will significantly up your coffee game. While you don't need a fancy grinder at all, I def covet the EK43.
Also much love for a V60 for travel as well.
I used to use aeropress but the rubber plunger degrades and builds up grime, I also find pourover more fun to use.
Having a source of hot water ready to go makes it even easier.
However a moka pot generally doesn't make espresso as much as strong coffee. If you want something that makes espresso, check out the 9bar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcZMGx15QBU
Of course you'll want a good hand grinder for either, but especially espresso. You can't get anything close to espresso with pre-ground or a cheap grinder.
- Presses, like Picopresso, where you need to use your own muscles to create the espresso. If you got any pains in your hands or wrists there are a no go.
- Stovepots like Moka pots, but who create enough pressure, like 9Barista, expensive, needs to cool down between making shots
- Aeropress alikes, like Cafflano Kompresso, who are cheaper and lighter than the rest, but it depends on your control how the resulting espresso tastes.
Aeropress is for coffee. If coffee is good enough I recommend Espro P1 or P0, they filter is its money worth and they allow for making a mug of coffee on the go and keep it warm. I was able to make multiple on the go with just a small box of ground coffee and an insulation can with hot water. Personally I got a P1, and the lid can be hard to open, without also screwing open the middle part, but one gets used to it.
Espresso is nothing more than hot water pushed through coffee grounds at 7-9+ PSI or pressure. There are several travel brewers, such as the Flair NEO, that aren't particularly expensive and will brew perfectly fine espresso.
The issue, though, is that the main determinant for espresso isn't how you make it, but the quality and grind of the coffee bean. Are you willing to purchase a burr grinder and take it with you on vacation? If yes, and if you want actual espresso, then this is the best route to go.
From experience, a Moka pot will give you something slightly (but only slightly) closer to espresso than a french press. However, I've consistently gotten much better results with a french press. As far as going with an Aeropress over a french press, the former should give a cleaner result, but my best guess not ever having used one is that the final result will take about the same, without some of the finer coffee grounds getting into the cup (which can mostly be prevented on a french press if you do it right).
I think there's a small typo there, 9 bar would be more regular for espresso.
I agree otherwise. I treat moka or aeropress coffee as its own thing; it's not espresso and that's OK.
I see a lot of people talk about "grind" as important.
Really it's just a way of varying pressure and to keep it roughly in that 9 bar zone.
The only magic in a good bur grinder is its consistency. You can look at what you're getting out and bump the pressure up or down slightly compared to your last shot.
So as the beans dry out with age, you can increase the extraction so you don't get a flat, sour shot with no crema. If you put in a new bag of beans you can make the grind courser so that pressure is reduced and you` don't over extract.
I love a morning espresso but I'm less keen on all the connoisseurship around it.
Yep, my mistake : )
It's not just consistency. It's grind size distribution. The cost of a high end burr grinder is crazy and I don't understand what's going on but you can do simple comparative tests.
I have a 2 different burr sets for my grinder with different cutter geometries and the mechanical properties of the grinds and the puck are different. Never mind the taste. The way the water pours through the puck and what's happening inside the basket as you pull the shot is different. You can easily tell by the amount of channeling I get and the integrity of the puck after the shot.
The espresso also tastes different BTW.
I've also done blind taste testing with my grinder pitted against 3 other grinders. Having only tasted the coffee from 1 of these, I matched the coffee to the grinders only based on the theoretical properties of the burr sets.
I'm a simple soul, if I can't measure it really easily I don't worry about it.
It's not like any two beans are the same and I'm tamping them by hand anyway.
Worrying about the shape of the blades in the grinder is like worrying about the type of power cable on your hifi amp. It's too much connoisseurship for me personally but more power to you if that's your bag.
Spread a small amount of ground coffee out on a piece of paper. Observe the varying sizes and shapes within the grounds. Better grinders produce more even grinds which produce more even extraction during brewing.
It’s an exceedingly simple concept. As an extreme example try and brew an espresso using a simple blade style ‘grinder’. It will be impossible. The refinement of a good grinder is simply optimizing along this axis.
You like what you like.
I'm just saying that your dismissal of the effects of your grinder are very wrong. And the differences are easy see and measure.
Some Taiwanese folks crowdsourced a bunch of manual grinders in this forum thread to measure and compare grind size distribution [1].
It's usually my go-to thread whenever someone asks me for grinder recommendations, and care mostly about the end result.
[1] (link in Chinese) https://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=640&t=5747652
It was early and I hadn't had my morning espresso(s) yet : )
having said that the design is remarkably ugly. almost like some medical device - or maybe even like a bathmate? :D
Unfortunately, because the volume is small, I would have to use it multiple times, which was such a pain, I eventually stopped using it in favor of a V60 pourover.
I'd also add, you can get a ceramic bur grinder called the "Porlex mini hand grider" [0] which fits inside the Aeropress' cylinder.
It's a super compact way to travel with a press and a grinder!
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Porlex-Mini-Stainless-Coffee-Grinder/...
Otherwise spend a bit more money and get the 1Zpresso Q2. I think this is the cheapest grinder with 34mm stainless steel burrs you can get that fits inside the Aeropress plunger.
You'll thank yourself later for getting the stainless steel burrs.
Not that I want to pick a fight, but I'm sharing this more for other readers' reference.
I've had my Porlex for a little over 5 years now, use it around twice daily, and have had zero issues.
A quick Google search of ceramic vs steel burs also seems to indicate the ceramic offers better longevity.
Why else do you say Porlex is terrible, aside from being ceramic?
Its build quality is excellent. Well worth the price.
I have a theory that people who start with a Hario Skerton or its clones (all of which have ceramic burrs) tend to be turned off manual grinding because of how bad the grinding experience is.
Steel burrs supposedly cut better and faster.
Admittedly, I've tried my friend's Porlex Tall, and it wasn't unpleasant to use.
Stainless steel 34mm burrs also cut significantly faster and more consistently in a similarly sized grinder. This is the main reason you want stainless steel.
I wouldn't worry about longevity since we're talking about a decade or more for whatever type you chose. But yes, ceramic will last longer.
In fact if you don't want the grinder to fit in the plunger of an aeropress, you can get Taiwanese grinders with stainless steel burrs, well stabilised shafts, ball bearings, a milled Al body for less than the Porlex mini and only slightly more than a Rhinowares.
We use only those, in all sizes. And being really portable you can take them everywhere. Camping, vacation,... you name it. They only thing you struggle to get, even with the dedicated ones marketed as such, is the crema a barista machine will produce.
A moka pot will never be able to give coffee anywhere close to propper espresso.
That's not me being subjective. The moka can not create the pressure needed to extract the oils in the same way as a propper espresso machine. Not to mention that the water to oil ratio is way off compared to an espresso. And a fine enough grind level would simply fall through into the water tank.
A moka pot is one device on the coffee spectrum. It doesnt need to compete or be like any other equipment. It is it's own thing.
https://www.wacaco.com/pages/nanopresso
Produces a consistent cup of espresso with crema and all. You can also buy the "barista kit" to pull double shots.
Luckily, I got everything cleaned up, and made a new gasket from bike innertube rubber, which worked OK. Then I discovered that I could buy a new gasket. One sign of a classic product is when you can buy spare parts for it.
You should try it.
With water at 4C, puts the most water inside the pressure chamber, leading to the greatest pressure change for a given delta(T). Instead, if the water is just below boiling, the water going through the grinds must be higher than 100 C (since the pressure raises the boiling point).
It'll brew faster, and there is an argument to be made that quicker brews lead to less burning. But the T would be highest.
Boiling less quickly (i.e. using lower heat) might put the coffee in contact with boiling water for longer. So it would seem high heat and cold water would be the way to go if you want to minimize the temperature-time product of the beans-to-water contact.
In the three-chamber design, there's a tight seal between the lower chamber (filled with water), and the cup (filled with grounds), connected by the siphon pipe.
As the water is heated, even before it reaches boiling point, it's being forced up through the grounds. The last dregs of water are steam-hot, but earlier is not. And the liquid water keeps the temperature of the entire pot (including coffee) at or below the boiling point.
The pressure and heat should result in a strong, rich, but not bitter, brew.
Leaving the pot on the stove after it begins to "spit" (as steam sputters up the stempipe) will burn the coffee (and seals and pot). So Don't Do That.
What truly killed Bialetti Coffee Pots is the sharp decline of gas stoves in Europe. Electric stoves heat up much slower and turn coffee preparation in pots into a lengthy procedure.
I’m not a coffee snob and can’t tell difference between regions and so on. But coffee fresh roasted, using an air popcorn maker in my case, tastes amazingly better than anything else.
I just get green coffee samplers since I don’t care about one region vs another, just fresh roast, wait a day or two, fresh ground gives great results.
It would be more correct to say that 90% of italian homes have at least one... We for example have three: one is the one we're phasing out (three cups), the new one (four cups) and we have a snoopy-themed moka that I don't really want to put in contact with fire.
You must understand my amazement. To blow up, the Moka must not have had a functioning safety valve (check the side). Furthermore, the grid must have been so crusted up that, in the days (months!) leading up to the fateful event, it would have taken a very long time to brew what would have necessarily been an extremely bitter coffee.
The only was I see this happening is it:
- The Moka is fake and it blew up on its first use (since the grid must not have had the holes pressed into it)
- You weren't aware that the grid is removable and didn't clean it. I also like to push against the safety valve form the inside every now and then.
But if #2 why did you put up with a bitter coffee that would take ages to brew?
As other people mentioned, beans quality is important. Assuming freshly roasted and ground beans are 100, freshly ground 1-month old roast is 50 and 1 month old grind is 25
For me _personally_ I much prefer my coffee to be "kopi tubruk", though: Pour boiling water over medium-ground coffee.
Might not be for everyone, but that's what's great: There is no one 'correct' way to do it. There are tradeoffs and you choose which tradeoff you want.
Any recommendations for fair trade coffee? I usually drink equal exchange, but it's not the best coffee.
It's small. It's 0 maintenance. It's works during blackouts or on a camping stove. Maybe not as fast as an applicance, but still fast.
Compared to a bulky, single-purpose appliance which gives an aftertaste after a couple of months, yeah it's more convenient.