Make coffee using a moka!

First of all, a moka (at least the classical Italian moka, the napoletean one is quite different) is composed of three parts : a water tank, a filter and a tea-pot-shaped coffee tank (from left to right in the picture above).

You will notice a little screw on the side of the tank, that’s called a valve; it’s pretty useful if you don’t want your moka exploding if you forget it on the fire. Just fill the tank up to that valve with mineral water. The good part of the moka is that every dimension of it is calculated to produce the right amount of coffee using the right amount of ingredients, so you don’t need to make any measures.

Put the filter on top of the water tank, pointed part inside the water , don’t worry it won’t sink and it will fit just alright. Then fill it with coffee powder, don’t press it down and leave a little extra on top (like in the above picture).

Then, just screw the coffee tank over the water tank and filter. Easy!

Just put it on the fire. If you have gas kitchen (the best IMHO for cooking) just mind that the flame stay “inside” the limit of the bottom of the water tank of the moka (like in the pictures above), if your flame go around it or worst go up the moka (like in the picture bellow) it means it’s too high and the coffee will go out too fast and boil (which is bad as it ruins the flavour and the caffeine) and you risk to burn (or melt in my instance, like you can see in the pictures it happened at the beginning) the plastic handle.

Unfortunately, I never had an electric kitchen (lucky me) and I don’t really know the intensity you should use … try it on the smallest “fire” anyway, just mind that the coffee don’t start boiling before every drop has came up in the coffee tank.

Here is how you can see that the coffee is ready (don’t open the coffee tank during the boiling, like I did, unless until you are perfectly familiar with your moka, like I am, or you might get burned).

When you hear (or see) vapour coming out, just turn down the fire and wait for the sound to settle down. then serve and drink.

Done