Hacker News Reader

Comment by tussa | Hacker News Reader

For me it's also the process that makes it so rewarding. The grinding, packing, listening to it bubbling on the hob, the smell, the gurgle at the end and finally the pour. Then you also get a nice cup of coffee! It's an amazing "gadget".

If you enjoy coffee and haven't tried one, you're missing out.

View on HN

I brew on a Bialetti Venus every day with induction. I think you are doing it wrong. I find that the awful bitter tastes come late into the process accompanied by yellow colors and bubbles/splutters. Avoid at all cost.

My method: 1) Fill the basket level. You may tap/shake any clumps to get it level but do not tamp. 2) Heat it on 1000 watts until the first drop of coffee comes out the pipe and then reduce power 400w. 3) When you notice any hint of yellow, or any bubbles/spluttering or you have enough coffee then immediately dump it into a pre-warmed mug of milk. Ideally you want to stop the process before any bitterness arrives.

> I think you are doing it wrong.

I'm going to swallow my pride with stoic calm on this one in case you are correct. Thanks!

I can't believe we have the exact same process. Even the power down.

But... Black coffee for me.

That is interesting. I don't have one but was thinking of getting one of the induction-ready pots. How fine of a grind do you use?

Serious question: doesn't pouring into milk negate/mask much of any bitterness anyway?

It does, but then you're also removing part of the coffee taste.

Yes, this is exactly why many baristas will choose a darker or more full-bodied coffee for an espresso type drink vs a lighter roast for something like a pour over.

Darker roast coffees are also much more forgiving in general, since they already have some bitter taste to them in the first place.

It's still a better end product to brew the coffee or espresso well in the first place vs try to mask faults (bitterness, sourness, etc) after the fact.

I have one and have tried it quite a few times, being very careful to follow whatever procedure I'd been shown. To me the coffee has always tasted burned. But... I buy much better coffee now.

It is fun and I like the ceremony, so I'm going to check out the video someone linked to above.

All I know is, buying light-roast coffee and a proper burr grinder will change the way you view coffee. I even wrote a little app to calculate the exact amount of water per gram of grounds, and then you can enter the total weight of the vessel (intended for Chemex-style pour-over) and a wet filter. It saves that and then tells you how much the whole thing should weigh when you've added enough water.

They are indeed hypnotic to use, cheap and quite practical.

The trouble is I've never been able to get coffee to taste as good out of one of these compared to almost any other method of making coffee - eg. filter, espresso, French press. I'm not sure whether it's my technique, the grind I use, or something intrinsic to the process itself.

I wouldn't say it's you. Moka pots aren't great, though they are convenient-ish. ;)

As https://coffee.stackexchange.com/questions/5197/is-the-moka-... says, preheating the water might help if your results are overly bitter.

There is absolutely a technique to it. Watch Moka Pot Voodoo [1] by the Wired Gourmet. The key to getting good taste is to carefully control the temperature of the coffee puck and flow rate of water through it. Pre-boiling the water in the bottom chamber before dropping in the coffee basket and screwing on the lid solves the first problem: keep the coffee from overheating. Moving the Moka pot on and off the heat in order to maintain a gentle, steady flow solves the second.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-PeYeiqPLU

I understand that packing the coffee in a moka pot is a real faux pas

My dictionary says

"faux pas: an embarrassing or tactless act or remark in a social situation"

I can't work out how packing the coffee in a moka pot is a faux pas.

Depending on your level of coffee nerd/snob factor, "doing it wrong" can indeed be a source of embarrassment. I don't think this is limited to coffee snobs, either.

Making & serving coffee is often a social ritual, so doing it "wrong" is a faux pas.

Ah but it is also a faux pas to apply social ritual rules outside of the formal dining areas of the house. Nobody's tamping down the ground coffee in their moka pot in the receiving room or the dining room.

If a guest is invited into the more intimate areas of the house like the kitchen, (food safety issues aside) they can no more object to what they see than a theatregoer given a backstage tour could complain that the actors are out of costume.

> If a guest is invited into the more intimate areas of the house … they can no more object to what they see than

My brother, I can assure you that this is not actually how that works in the real world

It is among the kind of people who use the terms "faux pas" and "social ritual" and who think it's possible to use a moka pot in an "embarrassing or tactless" way.

If I'm having the queen around for high tea it might be a "faux pas" to serve biscuits in a plastic packet or tub, and proper to arrange them artfully on a china plate. But if we're following that ritual, the queen absolutely does not enter the kitchen.

If on the other hand the guest wants to engage in the "we're just regular people" ritual they gain the right to enter the kitchen - but lose the right to complain when the biscuits are served straight out of the packet, or to use the term "faux pas"

The faux pas is the admission that you’ve done this amongst peers who expect you to know better (presumably; personally I’d drink caffeinated dirt)

Yes, yes it is. Source: did that once, got a minuscule amount of coffee in the top part and an about equal amount coming out of the sides.

If you are doing it at home, then there is no one to judge you.

Just make good coffee, and stop using those pod abominations.

I'm all in favour of a better word. What's a good one of for pouring the granules into the sieve and leveling it off?

"Packing" definition doesn't require stomping although it's often applied, both with coffee and suitcases.

If you pack too hard, the steam can't go through the coffee and if you're lucky, it'll come out the overpressure valve and if you're unlucky (or overfilled the water) you can blow up the pot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com