Moka Pots -How Italy Does It

On our many travels to Italy, we have asked many questions about moka pots to native Italians

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 we believed it was ultimate coffee snobbery! We thought, we had coffee-arrived

Not!

In those days, we did not clue into fresh ground coffee, types of roasts, grinding our own beans, freshness of the brew and other nuances; Now we do.  Yet, we are students again, because coffee continues to educate, and refine our tastes and preferences.

We learnt some stuff about moka pots

Moka Pots are those very intriguing geometric objects made of 2 conical shapes, kind of reflecting each other top and bottom. They steam like kettles sometimes, and burble like an empty stomach if you listen close. Finally out of the spouts of those moka pots, comes strong black coffee liquid

Italians enjoy the brew 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

English, uses several meanings of “express”.  It is one of the many expressions of coffee brewing, it is expressly processed from coffee grounds, at express speed for express consumption, and it is expressly designed to suit your personal tastes

 Seriously, all that is true

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, The Netherlands and Austria. 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.  Espresso is cheaper at coffee bars in Europe than in the USA or Canada, but still most brewers prefer their personal taste before they leave home

They looked dirty

What was interesting for us was some moka pots looked a tad dirty. That 'dirtiness' varied in each household.  So of course we asked our friends why they chose not to clean the pots a little better; Because they appeared visibly brown on the inside of the upper collector

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

Blackened outside

“Why do you care if the boiler looks burnt on the 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 seen the boiler pot (the lower cone of the moka pot) without the burnt look and that is how they inherited it. “These utensils do not die. Nothing really happens to them”

We got into many other details and asked them more questions, and here are the replies

• Why is the lid loose and does not sit tight? Well, it is only a splash cover. It does not need to do anything more than stop steaming coffee from spraying out. We put the lid down only when the brew starts percolating up
• 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 200 years. And so the look is fixed. Now, we only like that kind of spout 
• 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

For many families, those pots have been in their homes for decades and over generations. This was a tradition which they had perfected, on a humble cooking utensil, and when something performs so well, they find no need to change things

But we remained concerned about the use of aluminum

We laughed, till they provided a more scientific explanation

"... aluminum naturally forms an oxide layer with coffee, providing a protective barrier that is resistant to other reactions. 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"

Our takeaway