I thought I knew what coffee was: a blazing hot convergence of burnt styrofoam slurry, battery acid and steam, its top glistening with an oil slick of “creamer.” Why folks stood around in the basement of the church politely tittering over cups of the stuff was a matter I could not fathom. I was officially not interested.
Then I went to Switzerland to work on an archaeological site alongside primarily French, Italian, Swiss and Spanish colleagues. At the end of every sunburnt day of slogging dirt, one of the workers had a curious habit. He’d carefully measure out very black coffee grounds into the bottom of a strange, almost awkward-looking pot, then screw the top down.
He’d place the thing on the stove, hovering nearby with a sort of relaxed urgency, and wait until it gurgled and poured steam into the room. It smelled like nothing I’d ever associated with coffee: rich, warm, even inviting. So much so that when he offered me a cup, I found myself saying yes.
What that cup held was not coffee; it was coffee. All that aromatic goodness had somehow been translated into the brew. How could this even be called the same thing as the stuff burning to an acrid crunchiness in industrial-sized glass pots back home? This Swiss concoction held some sort of earthy essence I’d never tasted. I was a convert.
I came back home and searched out something I’d only heard tales of: coffee beans. I had always thought coffee came in cans and only in cans. I ground them myself and embarked on a whole new voyage of taste, though I still turned down that swill I used to know as coffee. I had become a coffee geek. It might have been dangerously close to putting on airs, but I didn’t care.
Somehow, in the years since, I never bothered to find out about that stovetop contraption that made me a convert in the first place, mostly because I never saw another one on this side of the Atlantic. I’m sure they were around, known to plenty of coffee lovers more informed than I was. Recently, though, a new friend who’s lived in Italy for years broke out one of the things, and filled me in on just what it was: a Bialetti Moka Express.
The Bialetti is a commonplace object in Italy. Some sources claim one can be found in as many as 90 percent of Italian homes. Its octagonal shape is nothing to write home about—it’s a practical-looking item that would seem right at home in a 1950s kitchen. It’s been around since before World War II, and provided, for the first time, a way for Italians to get something resembling the espresso made in impressive coffee bar machines with minimal effort at home.
The design is simple. The bottom of a moka pot holds water, and above it sits a metal filter full of coffee. The top part screws on; in its center is a column with two outlets at the tip.
Apply heat—any kind of heat, from campfire to electric range—and the magic starts. The water heats up, and the expanded water vapor in the bottom chamber forces the water up into the coffee grounds. Eventually, the increasing pressure forces the water (now coffee) up through the column. It slowly pours into the upper chamber. When the water starts to boil, the final bits of coffee spew forcefully out, and steam rushes from the pour spout. At that point, the moka pot is removed from the heat source, and the process is complete.
This mechanism is often dubbed a “stovetop espresso maker,” but it’s not quite true. The coffee is dense, but in truth it’s only nearly espresso. Those who insist on espresso—the stuff made by higher-pressure machines—won’t find this a true replacement. Let go of the need for the real thing, however, and you’ll find yourself with a unique, rich brew somewhere between espresso and Turkish coffee. A little does go a long way—serving it with an equal amount of milk works just fine.
The moka pot has an unexpected bonus: it makes coffee so differently from standard drip machines that many a cheaper ground coffee offers stellar results. A comparison between a couple of bottom shelf brands (containing sawdust-like robusto beans) and locally roasted dark whole arabica beans offered the inescapable conclusion that the cheap stuff came out strong and tasty, the expensive stuff thinner and less compelling. Many a moka pot user swears by Illy espresso, but less expensive choices like Lavazza seem to work nearly as well.
The Bialetti Moka Express is an oft-imitated design—a trip online in search of one turns up many a look-alike. But the multitude of moka pots available offers a choice of materials some users will find important. The research has been far from conclusive in linking aluminum intake to the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease, but the concerned will find plenty of stainless steel moka pots, including several designs from Bialetti (their original is all-aluminum). Some of them are made in India rather than Italy, but offer sleeker, more modern designs and the same unique brewing method.
