Tony Finch – blog

In hot weather I like to drink my coffee in an iced latte. To make it, I have a very large Bialetti Moka Express. Recently when I got it going again after a winter of disuse, it took me a couple of attempts to get the technique right, so here are some notes as a reminder to my future self next year.

It’s worth noting that I’m not fussy about my coffee: I usually drink pre-ground beans from the supermarket, with cream (in winter hot coffee) or milk and ice.

basic principle

When I was getting the hang of my moka pot, I learned from YouTube coffee geeks such as James Hoffmann that the main aim is for the water to be pushed through the coffee smoothly and gently. Better to err on the side of too little flow than too much.

I have not had much success trying to make fine temperature adjustments while the coffee is brewing, because the big moka pot has a lot of thermal inertia: it takes a long time for any change in gas level to have any effect on on the coffee flow.

routine

• fill the kettle and turn it on

• put the moka pot’s basket in a mug to keep it stable

• fill it with coffee (mine needs about 4 Aeropress scoops)

• tamp it down firmly [1]

• when the kettle has boiled, fill the base of the pot to just below the pressure valve (which is also just below the filter screen in the basket)

• insert the coffee basket, making sure there are no stray grounds around the edge where the seal will mate

• screw on the upper chamber firmly

• put it on a small gas ring turned up to the max [2]

• leave the lid open and wait for the coffee to emerge

• immediately turn the gas down to the minimum [3]

• the coffee should now come out in a steady thin stream without spluttering or stalling

• when the upper chamber is filled near the mouths of the central spout, it’ll start fizzing or spluttering [4]

• turn off the gas and pour the coffee into a carafe

notes

1. If I don’t tamp the grounds, the pot tends to splutter. I guess tamping gives the puck better integrity to resist channelling, and to keep the water under even pressure. Might be an effect of the relatively coarse supermarket grind?

2. It takes a long time to get the pot back up to boiling point and I’m not sure that heating it up slower helps. The main risk, I think, is overshooting the ideal steady brewing state too much, but:

3. With my moka pot on my hob the lowest gas flow on the smallest rings is just enough to keep the coffee flowing without stalling. The flow when the coffee first emerges is relatively fast, and it slows to the steady state several seconds after I turn the heat down, so I think the overshoot isn’t too bad.

4. This routine turns almost all of the water into coffee, which Hoffmann suggests is a good result, and a sign that the pressure and temperature aren’t getting too high.