just got my bialetti a bit ago since my french press broke and i’ve been experimenting with the process to get better results, here’s what works for me:
- start by bringing some water to boil in a lil pot
- once it boils, pour the water into the basin of the moka pot (some places say to hit below the valve but I fill up to the threads almost)
- in the lil ground holder, I do cafe bustelo and a PINCH of salt to cut the bitterness, DO NOT COMPRESS!! just shake the lil thing lightly til the grounds settle. the water has a harder time getting through if you compress the grounds. and don’t fill all the way to the rim
- put the moka pot together and put on the burner on medium heat, once you hear it start to brew for a bit, pour whats brewed into your mug, then rest back on the burner and repeat a few shorter brews to get it all. taking it off the heat intermittently keeps the grounds from overcooking and introducing more bitterness
- I like a room temp coffee most days so I pour into a mug with a big ol ice cube, like what you’d use for whiskey in a glass. would recommend
Nov 19, 2024
Related Recs
I think the key to a good moka pot coffee is minimizing time on the stove element:
- Preheat the stove burner
- Boil water before putting it in the pot
- Extract with the lid open so you can pull the pot immediately when it’s done
- If you wanna be a freak about it you can weigh your beans and water (I never bother)
But if the issue is you are unhappy with your espresso quality, I think it might be worth it to dial in your grind (I like a ~22s extraction but this is all preference). The way I think about espresso is that weight of beans/volume of water/extraction time remain consistent while grind can vary to hit those parameters. This is what was working for me on one of those big Faema beasts tho so ymmv.
HOWEVER I personally cannot be bothered with most of this unless I am getting paid. I french press or steep my shit most days and it’s perfectly nice
Aug 23, 2024
☕
Great option for your morning coffee. It only makes one mug or two espresso but its strong n tastes good. I like to use bustello with mine but am gonna try some portuguese coffee with it soon. A little cinnamon n frothed milk. Mmm
Mar 1, 2024
☕
I love making coffee in my moka pot and if I travel for work, I can bring it with me and try beans from new places. The sound of the espresso bubbling inside is weirdly centering. Morning routines work! I make a pretty decent flat white. If I'm feeling absolutely insane? affogato for dessert. World's my oyster.
Jun 19, 2023
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
6d ago
📴
I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that aren’t an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to — which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since you’re listening to something really just because it’s the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take what’s served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, it’s meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework that’s still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether it’s available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so i’m forced to consider its value (usually i’ll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as i’ll buy a few releases i’ve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they don’t get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until i’m done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isn’t coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, I’m getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether it’s bandcamp daily, y’all lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because it’s kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences it’s like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because there’s no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now i’m listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing i’ll say — because in yappin about this i’m realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of “vibes” and “aesthetics” and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship i’m forming with what i’ve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didn’t have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. that’s ok! maybe I rank it lower but now i’ve actually taken time to consider it, it’s in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often i’ll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
4d ago