Make coffee using a Cucuma!

First of all :what’s a Cucuma? Well it can be called also Cucumella or, more simply, Neapolitan coffee machine. I already wrote an article about making coffee with a Moka. Now it’s time for an even older and more traditional way to do coffee.
Here in Italy we love our coffee dark and not transparent at all, like in an Expresso machine, and possibly with a little foam on top of it (from the water pressure not from the milk you might want to add to make a macchiato).

Doing coffee the American way, with paper filter and a lot of water won’t do for Italian people, or for me. Talking about instant coffee is like an insult which gives your host the right to behead you during a well mannered reception.
As impossible as it seems there is a way of doing coffee that actually might be able to satisfy a lot of people while maintaining a high standard of quality. The cucuma, or Neapolitan coffee machine, is so old that my Italian friend’s grand-mothers recall seeing her grand-mothers using it.

Here is what a Cucuma looks like.

Now let’s get started with this little tutorial. I want you to know that use of the cucuma is a little less automatic that in the case of a moka, in fact a cucuma have to watched over and maneuvered with the right timing to produce a good coffee, but relax even if you are a few seconds (or minutes) late you can still obtain a good enough coffee.

A cucuma is composed of 5 pieces : the Water Tank, the coffee tank (that will contain the coffee once it’s done), the coffee powder tank (for the coffee powder … duh!), the filter and optionally the Lid (use it only if you want to serve the cucuma at the table).

First step, take the water tank. Notice that in 99% of the models there is a little hole near the border. Fill the tank up to half a centimeter before this hole. This hole is pretty important as its purpose is to make the air come in and also it’s our only way to know when do we need to turn the cucuma.

Second step, take the powder coffee tank and fix it on top of the water tank. In most models of cucuma the biggest part of the powder tank is immersed in the water to hermetically close the water tank (except for the little hole I mentioned earlier). Of course, you have to fill the powder tank with grounded coffee beans powder (NO INSTANT COFFEE HERE !!!). Then take the filter and screw it or fix it on top of the powder tank.

Now fix the coffee tank on top of everything. Does it looks to be upside-down? yes? then it’s good … it has to, for now. Neapolitan use a small trick they take a small piece of paper and close the coffee tank so that the first coffee vapors carrying the flavor don’t exit before the cucuma is turned. Like this.

Like with the moka you need to boil the cucuma on the kitchen fire. Watch the flame so that it matches the diameter of the bottom of the cucuma. Or else it’s too strong and the coffee won’t taste good.

Once you see or hear some water coming out of the water tank’s hole you only have to turn down the fire and turn the cucuma upside down quickly. To do it fast just firmly grip the two black handles on the side (my model being a one person pretty cheap model it only have two plastic black handles on the side … more evoluted models have beautiful and quite handy wooden or inox handles), take a breath and turn it as quick as possible. The first few times you’ll have hot water coming out and you’ll burn your hands, you only need to practice it a little and then you’ll do it one-handed without even noticing the difference.

Now you only need to wait for 5 minutes or so for the coffee to slowly go down from the water tank, through the coffee powder and then inside the coffee tank. It’s a little longer than with the moka, but it’s worth it. Of course, using mokas and cucumas gives you better coffee, but 75% of the job is done by choosing a good quality raw product (grounded coffee beans) and use mineral water. Attention : You can spend 1000$ on coffee powder to get quality, but using it on paper filter coffee will still be a waste.

Last comment : Moka and Espresso machines might looks like they make a stronger coffee, but cucuma and paper filter coffee actually gives a higher caffeine concentration. The quicker the water comes out of the powder the less it contains caffeine.