Stove-top Nightmare

                      

I have recently had my single worst coffee experience. Actually, my worst ever coffee related experience was probably also one of my first memories: one morning, I was crawling around on the floor beneath our old Rayburn whilst my mother was making the ritual mid-morning brew. A few coffee beans had fallen on the floor, and I, presumably attracted by the rich, alluring aroma, immediately sniffed one of the stray seeds …with a little too much gusto, as it was promptly sucked up my nose, where it securely lodged itself at a frightening depth in my nasal passage. Needless to say, a certain amount of panic, wailing, and tears ensued as my mother tried to dislodge the bean from it’s temporary home. After some time she managed to achieve this, and a visit to the hospital was avoided, but I was left with the lasting mental scars! Thinking about it, this little incident is probably the moment when the story of coffee became inextricably linked to my own. For many years after this, my relationship with coffee was fairly pedestrian, but eventually - and, I feel, inevitably – I came to work with coffee for a living, and although I now extract coffee from the bean, rather than the bean from me, I think the bond is well and truly cemented.

Anyway, my second worst coffee experience relates to these little gadgets above which are known as stove-top ‘espresso’ makers, moka-pots, or by their various brand names, and I’ve heard some pretty favorable reports about them in my time working with coffee. For example, I know that they are used by a huge percentage of Italians in their own homes to make their coffee, rather than opting for more high-tech home espresso machines – which would seem to be a fairly sound endorsement of their abilities. I’ve even heard some people say they actually prefer the type of espresso you get from these machines (one of whom is a fellow barista!?). Given their simplicity and convenience, and their rather disconcertingly good reputation, I was keen to try one, and so imagine my eager curiosity when my girlfriend brought one back (an ‘Andora’) from the kitchen shop where she works!

On the one hand, as a professional barista who devotes himself to (trying) to produce the most beautiful and true elixir possible from the coffee bean by means of the modern espresso technique, I was somewhat fearful of the moka-pot’s abilities after hearing it’s favorable press (if this simple little home contraption can produce espresso close to what I can, then I’m in trouble! I was thinking) – but on the other hand, I was quietly confident that whilst it would hopefully produce something very nice – and give me a means to produce something approaching espresso at home – it wouldn’t be able to come close to the real thing.

After all, the coffee these pots produce is certainly not true, modern espresso as we know it when properly produced by a skilled barista. These little pots work by using steam pressure alone, and therefore only operate at about 1.5 bars, instead of the 9 bars (approx) used to make true espresso. Also, the the grind they use is apparently a courser, filter grind, and I guess the temperature of the water that brews the coffee must be 100 degrees C or more, because the water is forced up through the internal tubes only when the water is boiling and producing steam – therefore potentially burning the coffee. There is no water filtration, no real way of controlling the extraction time for optimum results, etc, etc. All in all, their technical credentials as for as espresso goes are somewhat laughable – but, nonetheless, I am respectful of any technique that can produce some type of beautiful coffee, and I endeavoured to use it to the best of it’s potential.

I obtained some nice, medium roast, freshly ground Kenyan coffee. We then loaded the pot and followed some basic information that I’d read on the net: we didn’t tamp the coffee because apparently you’re not meant to, we then placed it on the (gas) hob on a low heat and stood watching it in eager anticipation; I had read that you should keep an eye on the pots so that when they begin to boil and produce the coffee you can switch off the heat to minimise the burning effect. This we did. Sure enough, after a while, the pot began bubbling and spluttering, and coffee emmerged from the top of the brewing spout. It was disappointingly thin and crema-less, but I was still hopeful that it would taste good – after all, espresso isn’t the only way to make nice coffee, of course (and I was secretly happy that there was no evidence of crema!). We tried turning off the heat straight away so as not to burn the coffee in the hope the residual pressure would complete the extraction – but the flow immediately stopped, so I turned the heat back on on the assumption the continued boiling was necessary to produce the pressure to brew. We brewed only maybe 3 or 4 fluid ounces from this ‘6 tazza’ pot, then shut off the heat.

Now for the tasting! We poured the coffee into some carefully pre-heated cups. At this, point I was already dubious – the fluid looked pretty lame, and the smell in the kitchen was somewhat questionable. Then I smelt the aroma in the cup (although stench would probably be a more fitting description) – it did not smell good at all – yes there was coffee-smell, but it also smelt very acrid and metallic. I sipped the drink, and whilst still hopeful, was by no means going to swallow it without first letting it sit in my mouth for a second or two… It barely lasted that long. I can only describe the concoction as Hell water. We both immediately spat out the hideous brew, half gagging on it’s noxious properties – burnt, and with an horrible chemical/metallic overtone.

Now, maybe our pot has a problem. If you can tell what that may be, then please let me know, because for all that I wouldn’t want it to be able to replicate true espresso, I’d like to think it could be better than this. But even if there is something faulty with our moka-pot that has caused it to go so horrifically wrong, from what I’ve seen, I don’t think it would make anything quite like the real thing anyway…