This is The Ultimate Moka Pot Technique,

and this is going to be a little bit different

to my other Ultimate Technique videos,

because, well, there is no one moka pot.

They go from being great big things

down to being nice and little and small,

there's different styles,

but they all kind of work the same way.

But it's a versatile brewer, it's a tricky brewer,

and what I'm going to do today is give you some constants,

a few things that I would do for every single brew,

and then a few variables to tweak

to get the best out of each of these brews.

If you watch this and just do the constants,

I think you'll get a better brew,

but I would recommend taking the time to understand

how to get the very best you can from the moka pot.

Let's begin, though, with a very quick explanation

of how a moka pot works.

For this we took a moka pot like this and sliced it in half,

and you can see there's really three chambers

to pay attention to.

The lowest chamber is your boiler.

You put your water in here

and as you boil the whole unit, once it's sealed together,

the steam and expanding air

will press the water up the funnel

through into the middle section

which is where the coffee sits.

And that pressure built by the steam

and built by the expanding air

will press the very hot water

through the coffee into this chamber,

filter it out, and then push the liquid up here

and into our collection receptacle in the top

from which we can then pour and drink.

It's a beautifully simple brewer.

It's kind of fun that it kinda brews upside down;

instead of water on top,

coffee and then drink at the bottom,

it goes the other way.

The big challenge with a moka pot

is preventing the whole thing getting too hot

and having incredibly hot water from the boiler

pass through the coffee,

which tends to give a great deal of bitterness to a cup.

That's what we want to avoid.

So now I'll take a classic pot,

this is a six-cup aluminum Bialetti,

and I'll walk you through the constants first

and then we'll brew with it afterwards

to go through the variables in a bit more detail.

First constant is put boiling water

in the base of this unit.

Putting boiling water in the base of this thing

brings the temperature down to the kind of low 90s,

which is perfect for putting on the heat

and starting to brew with.

You can, if you want to, boil your water in the base first,

but do let it cool down a little bit.

I wouldn't recommend starting

with the water super close to boiling point.

Starting with freshly boiled water in the base

means you have a faster brew,

more suitable brew temperatures,

And I know that sounds surprising,

but trust me, it works better this way,

and you'll get a better extracted,

more delicious cup of coffee.

Constant number two, you want a full basket of coffee.

Now most of these brewers

work on approximately a 10 to 1 ratio.

If you fill the water on a boiler to just below the valve,

typically it will hold around 10 times more water by weight

than you can fit coffee in the basket.

Bear in mind though

that filling the basket is a volumetric fill

and a light roast will weigh more than a dark roast will.

So it's difficult to say you must use exactly 10 to 1,

but I tend to recommend that as a good starting point.

This holds just under 300 grams of liquid in the base,

but I'm still gonna aim

for about 30 grams of coffee into here,

ground freshly, right before we brew.

Next up is puck prep, and consider this an optional extra.

I think it does help make the coffee taste better,

but don't freak out if this isn't an option for you.

Firstly, once your coffee is in the basket,

feel free to give it a little tap to settle it down.

If you have a needle distribution tool for espresso,

this is a great time to use it.

It helps distribute the coffee in the basket

and also get rid of any potential clumps

that might be there.

Feel free to give it another little tap

after you've settled.

The other extra is one of these,

it's an AeroPress paper filter.

In a 3-cup unit and bigger,

you can get an AeroPress filter just here

underneath the top part of the section.

This will add another layer of filtration

alongside the metal piece here

which gives you a cleaner cup

and also it seems a slightly better extraction overall.

With the slightly larger units,

I'd recommend choosing a little water to wet the filter,

not to rinse it for paper taste,

but to help it stick in place

so it doesn't move around when you're prepping your pot.

And the last constant for brewing

is avoid the hot sputtering phase at the end of brewing.

When you brew, keep your lid open

and keep an ear and an eye out on your brew.

A watched pot is a good pot in this situation.

At the end of a brew,

we definitely want to avoid uncondensed steam

passing from the boiler right through the coffee,

causing an angry spurting, sputtering phase.

If that happens,

it's making your coffee taste very bitter,

and at that point you want to rinse the pot

under the cold tap to cool it down immediately

and to stop brewing

before it adds too much bitterness to the cup.

These constants I think will make any brew better,

but we can take it even further.

Let me walk you through a brew

of a particular coffee from start to finish

and give you the additional variables

that you need to worry about.

So of course the biggest variable you are gonna use

is gonna be the coffee that you choose to brew.

Here I'm brewing a relatively light-roasted coffee

that is roasted for espresso,

but is still on the lighter end of things.

That's gonna dictate a couple of key things.

Firstly, how fine I grind the coffee.

The lighter the roast,

the finer you'll need to grind it

to get a good extraction from it.

Lighter roasts are harder to properly extract

than darker roasts.

Here I'll be finer than filter coffee,

but certainly not close to espresso.

Good bit coarser than espresso,

but finer than you might want to brew a one-cup V60.

If you brewing a pretty fine AeroPress,

you're kind of getting in the ballpark

for a brew of this size.

Secondly, it's gonna determine how full my boiler is.

Now in some situations

I want to fill the boiler a little bit less.

A less-filled boiler will brew a little earlier

and will have a lower overall brew temperature.

So if I was brewing a darker roast,

I might only fill this boiler

two thirds to three quarters of the way full.

But with a lighter roast,

I need all the water I can get

to properly extract the flavors

from this lighter-roasted coffee.

Therefore, I'm gonna fill this

right up until the base of the safety valve.

This technique is aiming to get

as much water as possible through the coffee

before it starts to sputter and get angry.

If you do that well,

you can really beautifully extract

pretty light-roasted coffees and have a very tasty cup.

With a darker roast it can be advantageous

to have less water in the boiler below,

not just from a brew temperature perspective,

but it will stop you brewing that little bit earlier.

Your end cup will be stronger, thicker, richer,

but that's often what people want from a darker roast,

just with less of that harsh bitterness

at the back of your throat.

Freshly boiled water into the base, coffee in,

and then you're gonna need a towel

just to hold the base as you screw it together.

Now this is where things get a little bit more complicated,

and this is really key to the whole technique.

When we heat this pot,

we want to generate enough heat in the boiler

to create steam pressure

to press that hot water through the coffee.

What we don't want to do is keep heating that pot

to the point that there's loads of pressure,

the water gets really hot

and the whole thing overheats and tastes bad.

So what we're gonna look to do

is heat the pot until liquid begins to flow through coffee

and then try and maintain that pressure,

not increase it much at all from that point onwards.

So here, on this gas,

I've got a little adapter plate here

to keep this thing nice and safe,

which will have an impact,

I'm gonna put a relatively low flame on it.

And I would recommend that for most heating situations.

With an electric hob,

I would recommend preheating the hob

before you even think about making coffee,

otherwise you'd be waiting a very long time,

but with gas, with induction, with an adaptor plate,

I would go for a relatively low heat,

certainly below half power.

Heating the water gently is key to the technique.

I've seen people have some success

by putting the pot in a frying pan

to help buffer the heat from the flame.

That's just a little bit wasteful

'cause you are really heating

a lot of excess metal to heat a pot,

not a truly efficient affair, but it kind of works,

and so I quite like adapter plates like this

for gas and induction.

As soon as it's on the heat,

I'd recommend opening the lid

so you can see what's happening.

We're gonna pay a lot of attention

to the liquid coming out of the pot,

because as soon as liquid appears,

we wanna essentially reduce the heat

as much as it's possible

without causing the whole thing to lose temperature

and the brew to stall.

So in this case when liquid starts to flow,

I'm gonna turn off the gas

knowing that my adapter plate is still very hot

and adding heat into the system.

If I was on an electric hob

I might move my pot just to the side,

'cause it does stay hot for quite a long time afterwards.

And on gas, if I'm on a direct flame,

I'd wanna run as low as I possibly could.

Same with induction, with an induction-friendly pot,

you wanna run as low as is possible

once liquid starts to flow.

If that liquid flow increases in speed,

I'd temporarily remove the pot from the flame.

If it slows down and seems to stall,

I'd wanna add a little bit more heat in again.

With the adapter plate it's kind of easy

because I can just turn off the heat,

and generally speaking,

the plate will supply enough heat for the rest of the brew.