1 min
3-5 Min
2-8 pers
Coffee
Italy
With a Moka pot, you can easily brew a rich and flavorful cup of coffee with a distinctive intensity so similar to Espresso, but way easier (and cheaper). Experiment with different coffee bean varieties and ratios to achieve your desired taste profile. You can even use it to make non-water recipes, like the vermouth recipe in the blog.
Espresso is the Olympics for coffee nerds, and well, these guides are here to be anti-science project but still great coffee. Plus, as many Europeans will tell you, a Moka pot makes a super simple and very similar brew. We know the vessel looks intimidating, but it’s very simple when you break it down, which we’ve done here—we’ve created a guide to the easiest faux espresso (with a Moka Pot) Coffee at home.
If you’ve read the Easiest Pour Over Coffee, you’ll know that we started as tourists in the coffee world— working in fashion and lifestyle creative for brands we used to be on the road 250+ days a year, and quickly made a habit of trying the local coffee offerings.
Once on a month long break between European shoots, I spent my time in Sorrento, Italy, riding the circumcuvia up and down the coast. The espresso was amazing from the coffee bars, but many of the smaller restaurants served moka pot, and I quickly became a huge fan.
Like I mentioned earlier, these guides are not meant to be the fully science geek version on how to make technically perfect coffee, with the water exactly 207 degrees, etc. They are meant to help you make great coffee while you are sleepy and just waking up—when most people drink it, and make the experience of your first cup a meditative way to start the day, not a chore.
The humble Moka Pot is exactly that— and like 1000% cheaper to own. And hey, if you really love it and you then want to push your home barista skills, free to explore our Espresso guides that get to the geeky parts, but if you are just looking for a simple, pretty-much-just-like-espresso brew— you are in the right place.
Ingredients for Moka Pot Coffee
- Water (that you’d drink straight)
- Coffee beans
- Moka Pot
Directions
Step 1
Prepare and Measure:
Gather your Moka Pot, our freshly roasted coffee beans, and a grinder.
Unscrew the Moka pot and separate the bottom chamber (water reservoir, shown far right), the middle chamber (coffee basket, shown middle), and the top chamber (coffee collector, shown left). Use the middle chamber to measure your unground beans, adding just a little more for volume. Grind them to a medium-fine consistency, more like sugar than table salt.
Fill the bottom chamber with fresh cold water up to the designated fill line. Place the coffee basket on top of the water chamber.
Step 2
Assemble and Heat:
Fill the coffee basket with your grounds, and do not tamp down.
Screw the top chamber onto the bottom chamber, making sure it's tightly secured. Place the Moka pot on a stove over medium heat. Ensure the handle is positioned away from the heat source to prevent burns.
As the water heats up, the pressure will build, forcing the water through the coffee grounds and into the top chamber. You'll hear a gurgling sound, indicating that the brewing process is underway. Keep an eye on the top chamber to ensure it doesn't overflow.
Step 3
Enjoy (we told you it was easy):
Once the top chamber is filled with coffee, remove the Moka pot from the heat source. Give the brewed coffee a gentle stir to homogenize the flavors. IF you’d like, you can use a towel or oven mitt to hold the bottom chamber and unscrew the top chamber, but it’s not necessary.
Pour the brewed coffee into cups or mugs and serve immediately. You can enjoy it as is or dilute it with hot water or milk to create your preferred coffee beverage.
Conclusion
Note: It's essential to clean the Moka pot after each use by disassembling its components and rinsing them with warm water. Avoid using soap or abrasive materials to preserve the natural coffee oils that enhance the flavor. Here are a few ingredients tips that make a huge difference:
The grounds: At Tete, we micro-roast, or small batch roast, your beans only when you order them. It’s the biggest factor in coffee flavor, and you’ll not find coffee this fresh anywhere else.
Second largest difference in coffee taste are the ratios. You’ll want to follow each coffee’s ratios or establish a baseline of about 11:1, then find your personal favorite. Mainly it’s that each coffee has a different weight and density, and the longer your coffee has been exposed to air after roasting and grinding it dries out— it will not be the same grounds you measured yesterday, it’s always, always, changing.
Keep in mind that more grounds isn’t always better—depending on the bean and roast, more or less grounds dramatically changes the flavor profiles. A cup that was sweet at 20 grams might be quite bitter at 25 grams. But a cup you’ll add milk to might need the extra punch to break through the milk and bring you the right flavors. It’s all an experiment.
The water you use is actually the most important. At a bare minimum, you must use water you’d drink straight, but what you really want is delicious water— the right balance of alkaloids and minerals drastically changes the brew. In NYC we are blessed with great water— ask anyone and they’ll say it’s the water that makes our pizza and bagels so divine…. But we get that’s not the case everywhere, some municipalities heavily chlorinate the water, etc. In So Cal, we just use a Filter 5 gallon jug, and allow it to sit for 24 hours to evaporate any residual chlorine. So if you filter your water, use that. If you drink bottled water? Use that. It sounds insane until you realize that the majority of your coffee is the water, right—but it’s true. We will say that the issue with the bottled water is that it’s missing minerals that helps bring coffee flavors forward through a complex chemical process. Super coffee geeks buy replacement minerals. They are pretty cheap and you can find on Amazon.
