Moka Pot, can we enhance quality coffee by using this old style ritual?
We do think it’s possible, with just a few hacks and a bit of patience.
Moka pot is one of our favourite brewing methods, its traditional, iconic and it represents a ritual that goes far beyond coffee making.
To enjoy a quality coffee, like a specialty, at its full potential we suggest you use a few tricks that will make it easy and delicious.
The feature that normally makes it challenging to brew this type of coffee with a Moka pot is the brewing temperature: the Moka on direct heat tends to get too hot, so the coffee will be over-extracted and will taste bitter and even burned if used the traditional way.
With the following suggestions, you will be able to make up for those issues and to prepare a perfect cup of rich and sweet specialty coffee.
1 – RATIO MATTERS
The perfect ratio of coffee and water is about 1 to 10, on a 3 cups Moka pot we suggest you weight 150 gr of water and 15 gr. of coffee. If you are feeling brave and you want a stronger coffee, with some light roast profile, you can dare to weight a little more coffee ground (if it fits) but the golden ration for Moka brewing is 1:10 and it’s always a good starting point.
The ground should be poured inside the funnel, levelled and the border should be cleaned so as not to wear the gasket.
NEVER EVER overdose, NEITHER press the ground, NOR make a mound, all those habits will bring too much pressure, so they force water through the coffee puck by channelling. The result is the exact opposite of what you were hoping, an under-extracted, burned coffee, the ultimate evil.
1.1 – SAFETY FIRST
Water should never exceed the safety valve, what’s the point in having one if you mess with it?
2 – COFFEE IS CONSTITUTED OF UP TO 90% WATER
Don’t use water you wouldn’t drink: if your tap water doesn’t taste good or is too hard, don’t use it for your Moka.
3 – THE FRESHER, THE BETTER
To get a good cup of coffee the most important thing is coffee, you didn’t see this coming, don’t you?
Let’s get real, you should buy grate beans of coffee and then you should grind the right dose just for your brew, so as to preserve its freshness and to enjoy all the aromas and flavours at their best. You should not use blade grinders or blenders because they overheat the beans and make a lot of fines. Fines will get over-extracted making your cup bitter. You would better use a mill grinder: your granny’s hand grinder is excellent too, once cleaned up. The level of grind is very important too, we suggest to make it slightly coarser than espresso grind and finer than V60. The coarser is the grind, the lighter will be the coffee.
4 – BITTERSWEET TEMPERATURE
Moka works thanks to a syphon system, this means that water in the boiler reaches a temperature of about 90° C to generate steam and pressure inside the boiler and push water, trough funnel coffee ground up to the collector. To avoid overheating of the ground coffee, you can speed up this operation by using warm water at bout 50° C and putting the moka on medium heat.
Moreover, it’s very important to stop the extraction before the leftover water in the boiler start to boil, the tail of an extraction made at 100° is not pleasant at all, it burns coffee and extract an excess of caffeine, which is way too bitter and unhealthy. So, as the coffee start to rise, you should remove it from heath, before the classical bubbling noise of the moka. You will get a shorter coffee than you expect but its sweetness will make up for the lacking in quantity.
5 – WASH ME
Cleaning the Moka pot is important, you should always wash it thoroughly, in every part, even inside by removing the gasket and filter so as to reach the inner part of the syphon from time to time. IT IS NOT TRUE that you should keep it dirty: coffee is rich in oils that will turn rancid and, moreover, the dump environment favours the proliferation of moulds. Although you may not use a scotch Brite pad on Aluminium so as to keep the oxidation of aluminium surface which you get at the first use, also with just water, and that makes the material inert, which is good for health and taste wise it prevents metallic taste in your brew.
6- THE TRICK IS THERE, BUT IT ISN’T SEEN
Did you know that you should change from time to time gasket and filter in order to keep your Moka at its best?
On this occasion, it is possible to make a little swap that will improve dramatically extraction with no big effort, here is the trick.
At HMC we selected for you a kit of silicon gasket + high-quality filter by E&B Lab: with this solution you will get faster extraction and, at the same time, a brighter and cleaner coffee.
So how about giving your beloved Moka a thrill?
Or if you want to give your kitchen a touch of style, or if you want to convert a friend from the average cup of Joe into a whole new world of homebrew deliciousness, you can find on our website E&B Lab Moka pots, all stylish with competition filter by default.
A small step for a man, a big success for the coffee lover.
Now you are ready for your favourite ritual, feel free to experiment, but don’t forget: over-extraction is bad, naturally sweet coffee is good. Have a good coffee!
By Alice Monti
