Along our coffee journey and learning about espresso

On our many travels to Italy, we have asked our native Italian friends, why and how their moka pots were used for coffee

Our [coffee] journey had begun with instant powders as it often does for many first timers. So, when we graduated to a drip coffee machine on our kitchen counter, we believed it was ultimate coffee snobbery! We thought, we had coffee-arrived. Not!

In those days, we understood nothing of fresh ground coffee, roasts, grinding our beans, freshness of the brew and other nuances; But today, we think of ourselves as students again, because coffee continues to educate and refine our tastes and preferences.

We are sharing some of the key aspects we learnt about moka pots. They are those very intriguing geometric objects with a conical base and an inverted cone atop it. They steam like kettles sometimes and burble like an empty stomach if you listen close. Then out of the spouts of those moka pots, comes strong black coffee liquid

Italians enjoy it exactly as it pours out as espresso, sometimes with a few drops of milk, and not often with sugar. America has even taught them to add water at around 90º C / 190º F to make it into an Americano

Espresso has several fun meanings in English as “express”. It is one of the many expressions of coffee brewing, it is expressly processed from coffee grounds into a drink, at express speed for express consumption, and it is expressly designed to suit your personal tastes

Typically moka pots start is sizes of 2 cups, and we have seen them as large as 32 cups. Italian “cups” are tiny little things and the moka pots on this particular web-store, make 6 Italian cups which roughly translates to 2 large Americano

We saw moka pots in every one of our friends’ homes. Not just in Italy, but also in Germany, and The Netherlands. Europeans seem to cook a lot more at home than we do in North America, and they delight in brewing their own coffee to start off their day. Even though Espresso is cheaper at delis than in the USA or Canada, they prefer their own flavors

What was interesting for us was some moka pots looked a tad dirty. That varied by family. So of course we asked our friends why they chose not to care about how the pots were cleaned; Because to us they appeared visibly brown on the inside, and appeared as if coffee had caked on over time

Many Italians seem to believe that you should never truly wash your moka pots with soap and scrubber, but just rinse them to get the best pleasure from the coffee you brew. They said, “we will use our fingers and give it a hand-scrub, maybe once in a while, but it's not really necessary all the time”. We were apprehensive, but when they brewed us a cup, mmmmmm, we could not complain

“Why do you care if the boiler looks burnt and blackened outside?”, they asked us, “because it does not affect the taste”. We had assumed that a user would like to get rid of soot and remove the burnt look off the metal. We learnt that our friend’s grandmother used to make coffee in the same pot, on wood fires, nearly 40 years ago. This generation had never see the boiler pot (the lower cone of the moka pot) without the burnt look and that is how they inherited the moka pot. “These utensils do not die. Nothing really happens to them”

We got into many other details and asked them more questions

Why is the lid loose and does not fit tight? Well, it is only a splash cover. It does not need to do anything more than stop steaming coffee from spraying all over

Why are the spouts shaped all the same way? We don't like the coffee dripping on the body of the moka pot. Those spouts evolved over maybe 200 years? And so the look is fixed

Why do you use aluminum? Many people prefer the boiler pot in stainless steel, because it is safer than aluminum if we leave it damp all day long. But the brew collector must be aluminum to make better tasting coffee after you condition the moka pot

"... aluminum naturally forms an oxide layer, providing a protective barrier that is resistant to corrosion. This layer plays the main role to minimize the direct interaction between aluminum and the acidic components of coffee. The effectiveness of this oxide layer reduces aluminum leaching. This is a critical factor in the use of aluminum in for food, including when used for coffee"