Coffee is The original office biohack and the nation’s most popular productivity tool. When we lose sleep to the transition to daylight saving time, caffeine addicts WIRE The review team writes about our favorite coffee-making techniques and devices that will keep us awake and even happy in the morning. Today, operations manager Scott Gilbertson explains the ultimate simplicity of the moka pot. In the future, we will add more Java.Base Stories about others WIRE favorite ways of writers.
Years of travel and the love of making has given me a special appreciation for simple materials. A pen and paper it’s still an easy way to write. A cast-iron pan is the easiest way to cook. And the moka pot is the easiest way to make coffee.
What I love about a moka pot isn’t just the results I get from it. I love the flavor, especially when paired with a good dark roast, chocolate, and smoke, but the mocha pot is almost beyond delicious. It’s also about clever simplicity and a design that has endured for nearly a century.
A Simple Beginning
Photo: Scott Gilbertson
The exact origin of the moka pot depends on who you ask, but it was first made and popularized by an aluminum maker named Alfonso Bialetti and his son Renato, who began mass producing them that same year. Today, Bialetti Industries still does Moka Express. The iconic image of a short, squat, squat man is actually based on Bialetti himself.
If you want some idea of Renato Bialetti’s dedication to the device that made him famous, consider that when he died in 2022, his ashes were buried in a large mocha pot. He was not the only one who respected the design. The moka pot is displayed in museums around the world, including Museum of Modern Art. Its iconic octagonal shape makes it one of the most recognizable coffee makers in the world.
A moka pot is a pressure cooker (or stove top, although this requires close attention) coffee maker that acts as a percolator. Moka Express has four parts, divided into two rooms. At the bottom is a reservoir of water that burns in the stove. In this, you place the alcohol basket that holds your grounds. The top has a long tube in the middle of the holding chamber. Under the top piece, there is a metal filter with a rubber (or silicone on some models) gasket. Screw the top and bottom together.
When the water is heated it flows up, through the ground basket, and finally out of the pipe. The drill sits on the foundations and the metal filter keeps everything in place. It is ingeniously simple.
