The moka pot is a stove-top or electric coffee maker that brews coffee by passing boiling water pressurized by steam through ground coffee.

Named after the Yemeni city of Mocha, this brewing device was invented by Italian engineer Alfonso Bialetti in 1933 and it quickly became one of the staples of Italian culture. Today, this Italian icon is most commonly used in Europe, and Latin America, and its use is consistently increasing the numbers of moka lovers in the United States.

The moka pot has become an iconic design, displayed in modern industrial art and design museums such as the Museum of Modern Art of New York.

Due to the relatively high time of contact between water and coffee, the high water temperature (around 96-98°C or 205-208°F), and the high coffee to water ratio, the extraction will produce a “short” coffee that is strong, rich, loaded with caffeine and has pleasant hints of bitterness.

Let’s see in detail how to prepare the best coffee with a moka pot 

• Ratio

  • There is not much control over the ratio. Simply fill up the filter with ground coffee and fill the base with water until it reaches just below the valve.

  • If you are a coffee geek like us, you might want to know that the calculated ratio is something around 200g/l .

• Grind

  • Fine grind is more commonly recommended for Moka, but in our experience, it can lead to an excessively bitter cup loaded with unpleasant aromas. We don’t recommend this in order to achieve the best possible results.

  • A coarser grind will let the water and the pressure extract the coffee in a more gentle way, unleashing all the good aromas from your coffee beans. We recommend using a medium-coarse grind, which will be amazing.

• Water

  • Always use filtered water and the pot will do its job.

• Brewing:

  • Grind the coffee just before you start brewing or use pre-ground coffee.

  • Fill the base with filtered water up to the safety valve

    • For a quicker brew, pre-boil the water and then pour it into the base. This will lead to a faster brew and generally to a sweeter, cleaner cup.

  • Add the filter on top of the water and fill it with coffee

    • Put a lot of coffee in the filter. The coffee particles will take the form of a little mountain - in Italian, it’s called a “montangetta”. Now with a spoon or the back of a knife cut off the montagnetta. The result will be a flat coffee panel. This is very important. If the filter is overfilled, once the top of the moka is mounted and screwed in, the upper part of the pot will press down the coffee powder, creating too much resistance for the water to flow through. This can lead to burned coffee and adding unpleasant aromas.

  • Now carefully assemble the pot screwing the top part on the loaded bottom one

  • Place the pot on a low/medium-low heat and open the lid

    • When the water starts to boil in the lower chamber, the pressure created by the steam pushes the water through the pipe that feeds it to the coffee

  • After a few minutes, coffee should slowly start to appear in the top chamber. Pay attention to when the gurgling starts, then it’s time to turn off the heat.

  • Remove the pot from the stove and place the base of the pot under cold running water. This fast drop in temperature will cause the steam to condense and will stop the brewing process. This will help to keep the coffee from burning due to the very high temperature of the pot.

  • Open the lid, stir and enjoy your Astraordinary coffee!