(upbeat music)
- Today we're looking at another brewer
in our classics of coffee series.
This is the Bialetti Moka Express.
It is, I think, perhaps the most iconic
coffee brewer ever made.
You may disagree with me there.
You can leave a comment down below telling me why
and how I'm wrong, but I would say this is kind of it.
This is shorthand for coffee at a whole bunch of situations.
You could show me a silhouette of this coffee brewer
from any angle, and I would know exactly
which coffee brewer it was.
The story of the moka express, the real triumph
of the Bialetti coffee company is an interesting one.
The invention of the device goes back to 1933.
And if you read about it, there's a little bit of confusion
over who the real inventor was.
Alfonso Bialetti had started his aluminum company in 1919.
He'd returned from an apprenticeship in France
and come back home to Pierremont.
So obviously his name goes on the patent,
but you'll see a name which is Luigi de Ponti.
He, I think was an inventor who worked for Bialetti,
so I suspect the patent kind of would belong
to both of them.
Now, it's actually really difficult
to find an original patent.
You can find an image online, but you can't seemingly find
the actual patent from 1933.
It may not actually have been filed at that point.
Without seeing the original patent or the original
sort of documentation of the invention,
you can't necessarily be a hundred percent sure
what the actual innovations around the product were,
but we have a pretty good idea.
Now, if you go back a little bit, and for that you need
an encyclopedia of coffee makers.
I happen to have one just here.
This is an incredible book.
It's by Enrico Maltoni and Mauro Carli,
and it documents coffee makers throughout history
with stunning pictures.
Now you can see there were steam powered espresso machines
that predated the moka express.
But in many cases, if you look at the brewer from say,
Oikos from 1911, you can see that it's using
sort of the steam pressure to drive hot water
over the coffee, and it's still kind of producing
like a little miniature pour-over.
The same is true if you look at this particular brewer,
same sort of idea, electric this one,
but the original patent goes back to 1878.
So using steam in a coffee maker was not
necessarily particularly new.
Seemingly the real innovation was stacking the brewer
in such a way that you could use the power of steam
to drive water through coffee,
instead of move it above coffee.
This way you could also brew a little bit quicker,
which was increasingly a problem people wanted to solve.
And thus the moka express was born.
And actually the original prototype didn't look
quite like this, but it did look very similar.
Now, in 1945, Alfonso's son, Renato, had returned
from the German prison of war camps
and had taken over the family business.
And this change was transformational
for the Bialetti company.
Renato focused the company on the moka express
and soon turned it into an iconic Italian, in fact,
global coffee brand.
In the 1950s, the company hired a cartoonist
to create the logo.
He drew what became known as L'omino coi baffi,
literally the man with the mustache.
Apparently based on Renato, which seems believable to me.
Now, in the 1950s Renato did file some patents
that you can see and you can find,
and in it you see the change to this distinct shape
that you see today.
They'd widened the base here from the prototype
to have better heat capture from the source underneath.
You have the bakelite handle in here, and the sort of shape
of the top lid sort of handle too becomes
kind of iconic as well.
While I'm here, this seems like the perfect moment
to talk about how this thing works
if you are somehow unfamiliar with it.
And I would say most people watching this video are familiar
with it, owing to the massive success of this brewer.
Now, if you take it apart, you've really got three sections.
You've got your base where you put your water
and start with.
Actually one of the innovations that came
very early in 1950s was this,
the addition of a safety valve.
Now, in a modern one, you can test this.
You probably shouldn't test this, though.
They do open at about three bars of pressure.
That would happen if say, your filter had become clogged
and water couldn't get through coffee,
and you don't wanna create a small bomb.
So any pressured vessel should have a safety valve.
But that's it, it's a simple piece.
Aluminum is pretty good at conducting heat through it.
And then above it, you've got this.
A kind of two in one.
It's a funnel that allows water to be pressed up
through this way from the base of the unit,
by the steam around it.
And then you've got your filter that holds coffee.
So a little bit of a mesh to help distribute water
through the coffee, put that on there.
And then the filtration is done in this top section.
You've got a gasket here, that's one of the few parts
that you may occasionally need to change on this.
And then a filter that the coffee sits against
that would filter out any pieces of coffee
that are sizeable.
It's pretty small holes so you should have
a relatively clean cup, not dissimilar from espresso.
In the top is where your coffee ends up when it's brewed,
and you would pour from here, drink and enjoy.
Now, there are three common misconceptions
around this brewer that I do just quickly want to clear up.
Firstly, there's the idea that actually letting a layer
of coffee build up around it is a good thing.
It's not, it's old coffee, it's dirt.
You can call it a patina and feel good about it,
but it's dirt and it's not improving the taste
of your coffee, and I would strongly recommend you clean it
thoroughly every single time you use it.
Secondly, you know, a lot of people say this makes something
like espresso.
It isn't espresso.
It makes quite a different beverage on a kind
of technical level.
You don't brew it at the high pressures of espresso.
You don't grind as fine as espresso.
You use a little bit more water in terms of your coffee
to water ratio.
And though it is a strong cup of coffee at the end of it,
and it can be very textured and kind of intense,
and it is metal filtered, which will give it that kind
of thick mouthfeel that espresso often has,
it doesn't have real true kind of creamer
and a different drink.
And it's nothing to worst for it.
Espresso isn't the pinnacle of coffee brewing,
it's just a brewing method.
This makes, if you use it right, delicious coffee.
Thirdly, there was a scare a little while ago
about aluminum using these kinds of brewers relating
to Alzheimer's.
You'll see links or information on many Alzheimer's websites
saying this isn't a thing, don't worry about it,
but it has kind of persisted as a kind of weird myth
around the brewer.
To say that the moka pot has ingrained itself
into Italian culture, actually kind of feels
like an understatement.
One study showed that nine out
of every 10 Italian households has one of these things.
Bialetti's relentless marketing coupled with the fact
that this actually makes pretty good coffee,
provided a very compelling alternative to going to the bar
for a cup of espresso.
- [Announcer] Prodotto Bialetti!
- Watching these old Bialetti adverts is something
of an experience.
They were created for and broadcast
in a show called Carosello.
It was a kind of 10 minute variety show of advertising shown
after the main evening news in Italy.
And it was hugely popular, reaching an audience of up
to 10 million.
The messaging of the moka express was pretty consistent.
It seems easy.
You need coffee, you need water, you need fire,
but you also need care.
And the moka express, of course.
Regardless of how we feel now, watching them back,
they were unquestionably hugely effective at the time.
Bialetti manufactured and sold millions of these things.
You see estimates online of them selling over the years
between two and 300 million moka express.
That's a lot of coffee brewers.
On top of the two to 300 million units sold by Bialetti,
there are obviously pots sold
by other companies, other brands.
This one is made by Alessi, another iconic company,
actually founded in the same town as Bialetti
around the same time.
And I think one of the Bialettis
at some point married one of the Alessis.
But despite this, no one's really captured the mindshare
or the market share of Bialetti over the years.
That said, Bialetti have had maybe a tough decade gone by,
and I'll tell you a little bit more about that.
I'll tell you how you can win a copy
of the Coffee Makers book, and I'll show you something
super interesting for the next video in this series,
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Back to the story of Bialetti.
Now, in 1986, the company is sold to the Faema group.
They make espresso machines, you might be familiar
with Faema's over the years or their iconic machines too.
But in 1993, they sell the brand on to Rondine Italia.
They make cookware, kitchenware.
Ultimately those two brands merge into Bialetti industries,
which is the company that would ultimately go on
to be traded on Italy stock market.
Sadly in 2016, Renato Bialetti passed away at the age of 93.
In accordance with Renato and his family's wishes,
his ashes were interred, not in a traditional urn,
but in a large moka pot.
By 2018, the company finds itself in serious trouble.
It had accrued over $70 million worth of debt
and it was struggling to continue to trade.
It would declare bankruptcy and manage
to get a near $40 million loan
from an American hedge fund company called Sculptor.
The company continues to trade, though I think it funds
at a difficult market with a lot of competitions coming
from things like pots in, almost especially
within Italy itself.
I can't help but feel though that even if Bialetti
as a company fails, this thing that they've created
will live on.
That if Bialetti goes away, the moka express,
via this shape, this design, this idea,
the coffee that it produces will last decades more.
Now in the past, I have made an ultimate moka pot technique.
There is a video I actually made with ChefSteps.
It's been delightfully successful over on their channel.
But it's time to look at it again.
And for that, I have something pretty cool.
This is very exciting.
Now, I had a lot of help with this.
In fact, this was manufactured, created by Gabor,
who you might be familiar with
from the Smart Espresso Profiler.
And that's kind of a part of what this is.
He has built a Frankenmoka.
It has three temperature probes in and around it,
sort of inside the brewer to track what's happening
at different stages.
We will have both a gauge and a Smart Espresso Profiler
attached to it so that we can go deep
on exploring exactly how this thing works
to create a new ultimate technique.
So a little bit like the AeroPress series,
the second video in this series
will be an understanding the moka pot,
where we do a bunch of different experiments
and see what we learn.
And at the end of it, they'll also be one of these
to give away.
So keep your eye out for that.
It'll be coming out very early in 2022.
Now, I did say you could also win a book.
This thing is beautiful and I just so happen
to have two copies, so I thought I should give one
of them away.
You don't need to do much to enter,
just click the link down the description below.
There's a very simple competition to enter, open to anyone
and everyone.
I'll leave a link to buy the book too.
It is expensive.
It's a small print run of a very niche thing,
but it is so cool, so beautiful, and so interesting
to look through.
The evolution of coffee makers is a fascinating subject.
And now I wanna hear from you down in the comments below.
As I said at the start, if you can think
of a more iconic coffee brewer, I wanna hear from you down
in the comments below.
Let me know what you think is more globally iconic
than the moka express.
But also, tell me a story.
I feel like this more than any other brewer is woven
into people's family lives, into their memories.
Tell me a story about moka pot brewing in your household,
in your life.
We'd all love to hear from you down in the comments below.
But for now, I'll say thank you so much for watching,
and I hope you have a great day.