Haven’t finished cleaning the outside yet (hence the sticker residue) but the inside has been deep cleaned. It took about 19 minutes to do 200ml of coffee, and the end result was horribly burnt and bitter so I’d definitely not recommend it, but it’s a cool novelty! It will never be used again I doubt, unless I’m trying to commit taste bud murder, as this was genuinely the worst tasting liquid I’ve ever tried, but I might put it on a shelf as a decorative piece or something. The design is truly really cool, it’s a real shame it doesn’t make decent coffee. Maybe I need a better technique, but I love regular moka pot and used this one in a way I thought might make good coffee, so it might just be a bad brewer. If anyone has experience with it though I’d love some advice, maybe I just can’t make good coffee out of it and it’s a skill issue. I hope that’s the case, I’d love for it to make good coffee, but I don’t think I can assault my taste buds with that monstrosity again so I’m worried about playing with it.
You need to brew very gently. Moka pots are finicky and they don’t forgive your mistakes.
If you’re ok with any random coffee, it’s really easy, and that’s why they are so popular. If you want to make good coffee, you really need to know what you’re doing.
See also: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BfDLoIvb0w4&ra=m
I’ve watched that whole series before, plus a fair bit of stuff from Matteo D’Ottavio and Lance Hedrick’s new video on them as well, because I use the 3- and 6-cup mokas pretty regularly. It could be the size is just not what I’m used to as this one is quite large. But due to the large size I’m wary to experiment because if I make another bad pot of coffee, that’s a lot of beans wasted.
When experimenting, you shouldn’t use your finest beans. When I’m getting to know a new method, I usually start with the cheapest light roast I can find in a supermarket. It’s nowhere near a specialty coffee, but it’s still a lot nicer than any medium roast I’ve ever found. As it costs about 18 €/kg, making mistakes doesn’t get too expensive. This method is ok if you’re testing a new method and you’re brewing coffee for a large crowd at the same time. Alternatively, you could brew for yourself, but you would need to drink more than a few cups.
Another option would be to use decaf, which comes with different compromises. It’s about twice the price, but you can drink a lot of it. When I was getting to know my cheap espresso machine, I went with decaf. I ended up making six double shots in a day, and that amount of regular espresso would have been way too much for me. With decaf though, I was fine. If I had used regular coffee, I would have needed to spread these experiments over several days, but with decaf I was able to do all of it during a single day.