(dramatic orchestral music)
(grooving jazz music)
- Today, we're gonna round out the series on the Moka pot
with a look at the Moka pot variations.
How have they improved on it, adapted it, improvised on it?
Have they made a better Moka pot?
As we've gone through this series,
lots of you have left comments saying,
"Oh, you have to look at this pot or that pot."
And so I grabbed a few of them
and we're gonna take a look.
Gonna be a little bit of fun
and I hope kind of interesting too.
Let me talk you through, briefly,
what we have on the menu for today.
First up, probably the most highly requested
is the Bialetti Brikka.
A little pressure valve inside that one,
which is interesting.
Next up, will be the Mukka, it makes milk drinks.
We're gonna make a cappuccino all in one pot.
I don't know what I expect.
I've got the Cuor di Moka,
super interesting little pot.
They don't make this anymore,
and so you can only really get them second-hand,
difficult to track down, but lots of you asked about this.
So, we're gonna brew some coffee with that.
And then at the end,
you're not gonna want to miss this one,
is the Kamira, an interesting little adaptation
of the Moka pot idea.
Let's brew some coffee.
So first up is the Brikka,
probably the most requested thing to sort of talk about.
And what makes it different from a normal Moka pot
is actually in the top part here.
If you get the gasket out,
and then your filter, it just drops out.
You can sort of see in here something's going on.
So actually it turns out if you take the top apart,
the interesting part is inside.
There's a little rubber valve and this is it.
This little mouth is the only thing
in the way of the coffee.
So, it'll prevent the liquid flowing through
until it reaches a certain pressure,
and then it will be forced open.
You should get a foamier cup
by creating some additional pressure with this thing.
Let's see if that's true, let's get it onto the heat.
This does have a little cutout,
so you can sort of see what's going on with your brew.
Now, the interesting thing to me,
actually, let me get the cut away Moka pot to explain this.
So the interesting thing about this is
if you restrict the coffee flow here,
water's gonna boil down here,
it's gonna push the water up through the coffee,
it'll go through the filter up to here and then get stuck.
And so some water will have passed through the coffee.
Some water will be sort of in the coffee
and you'll reach a point of, sort of static flow.
It won't move anymore.
It'll just sort of stall there while it builds pressure
as the water gets hotter and hotter and hotter in the base.
Now, you might get some boiling liquid,
which will create foam,
a less stable foam than CO2 coming out of solution
as is traditional with crema.
But I don't really know
if this is gonna make a better tasting brew
or just a foamier brew.
We'll find out.
(pot hisses) All right, buddy.
Definitely getting foam.
Just got a really, really hot pot there.
You're just coming off the heat.
You are coming off the heat.
We are angry.
I'm taking you to the sink to run under a cold tap.
This has just come straight back.
This is 100% Arabica, specialty coffee.
Not super dark roasted,
so it's not gonna be that thick and foamy.
I do wonder if it would be happier with something designed
to have a thicker layer of crema, a darker roast,
or maybe something with robusta in there.
I don't know, but we have retained no foam.
But how is the drink?
Ooh, that's a lot.
That's like a lot, a lot of attack.
I feel like this roast is probably too light
for this kind of a pot.
It's quite a lot of acidity, a lot of concentration.
(pot squeals softly) Are you still-
Do you wanna be quiet?
I'll see if a cold tap helps shut you up.
Anyway, I would say this brew is super intense.
It's too acidic, it's not actually super bitter,
tastes pretty extracted, but just like a lot.
The question I have is, what's actually happening in here?
Now, I think, hopefully,
that the base from the Franken Moka,
that has all the pressure information on it,
I think it will fit the threading of the top part of this
with the valve in it.
So, if we run the Franken Moka base,
we should be able to see at what pressure
the valve opens in the Brikka.
Now we're not gonna measure temperature,
just pressure today, hopefully.
So this is tracking the pressure
inside the unit,
and this transducer connected to this thing here.
So we can see right now we're at .03 bars of pressure.
0.2 now.
In a lot of testing we did,
coffee began to flow through a normal Moka
at about 0.3 bars.
Changed the coffee out for something more traditional.
I'm not gonna say what.
Oh, that was it, a bar, a bar!
But interestingly, we're still climbing
in terms of pressure, rapidly.
Cut the heat, we're at 1.5 bars.
Oh, that's foaming up. (pot rumbles)
All right, all right, sh sh sh.
(pot rumbling)
Come with me, come with me, sh sh sh sh.
(James shouting) It's very angry!
(pot hissing)
It's coming out the top!
Aah!
It would have been smart to remember
that I used a larger base than the top section.
And so, unsurprisingly, I ran out of room in the top part
and that was terrifying, to be honest.
So, that happened.
Where did we peak?
1.79 bars.
Oh yes, that is more traditional.
Oh, that is a strong cup of coffee.
That feels intense.
Not my favorite. Darker roasted, for sure.
Much more intensity.
The top chamber gets very foamy in this situation,
but you don't get any foam in the cup,
it just sort of sits back from the edge when you pour,
so no foam for you.
So the Brikka was surprising to me.
I thought you'd see a more obvious release of pressure
when the valve opened at about a bar,
but you didn't really see that.
And it seemed to be just above one bar of pressure,
which seems notable, but not shocking.
Like I said, in most brews it would be about 0.3,
to start getting liquid was all you needed.
So holding it back to one,
it just seemed really angry, hotter,
certainly that a normal pot.
Yeah, you get a lot of foam.
I'm not sure that's to the massive benefit of the cup.
I think with more traditional roasts, it might be okay,
but I would definitely want to stop this
as soon as it got to sputtering,
because it was getting really angry,
and cooling it down there
will definitely reduce the bitterness but,
interesting as an innovation,
but I don't think transformative in the cup.
So next step is the Bialetti Mukka.
The one that's supposed to do a cappuccino or caffè latte,
all in one, all in one.
Now, if you look at the front of the box,
this promise looks quite appetizing.
Nice layer of foam, bit of a kind of latte macchiato vibes.
But if you open the box up,
the instructions offer something else.
I don't know, it's kind of weird.
This has the click clack, as they call it,
which is like a bayonet style, portafilter style
locking thing, so no threading.
Now, look at this, look at this,
why is this not normal?
'Cause if there's one thing about the Moka pot,
that's just awful, it's getting this out,
especially after you use it.
So like the little thing, oh, it's all wonky.
Ooh, it's squishy.
Why is it squishy?
You're supposed to fill it to that level.
And then when you put it in, it'd be compressed.
So it comes with a nice guide
that tells you how much water to put in,
depending if you're using gas or an electric plate,
which I think is super interesting.
So I'm gonna use the gas water fill level.
I'm gonna go cold water.
That is not much.
I guess we're trying to make a lot of steam.
So, coffee, let's go traditional again.
So there it is.
I guess we put it in, we lock it together.
Click clack.
And it says, press for cappuccino.
'Cause it's got like two positions up and a down.
Gonna go down and then we'll put it on the flame directly.
It does say you want the flame to be no wider than the base,
but it's a pretty wide base.
So, let's see what happens.
Oh, milk, milk.
So, we're gonna put milk or a milk alternative in
until the fill level inside here.
And it's gonna do the steamy foamy thing, I think.
Now, I can't see what's happening.
I've never used this before.
I've got my heat source, right?
It says, seven, step seven, your drink is ready.
When you hear the characteristic puff of the Mukka express,
(pot rumbling softly)
wait for the coffee to come up,
wait a few seconds and then switch the heat off
and remove the product.
Enjoy your cappuccino.
I mean, that's gonna be making a lot of air pressure.
Like there's a lot of air in that chamber to expand,
that would push liquid up at a relatively low temperature.
But I guess you've got such a wide base
and a thin layer of water.
That's gonna get hot quickly too.
Really interesting.
(pot rumbling)
That was the characteristic puff, I suppose.
Ooh, I guess we'll have a little swirl.
I'm presuming there's coffee in here too.
Oh, yeah.
Do I need to lift the lid to get foam?
Give me that foam.
I think I removed the product too soon
because that's like 30 degrees Celsius.
I think it needs more time to be angry.
This is probably really stupid,
but they sounded like there was a bit of an explosion
inside the Mukka, but the lid is not dirty,
which says to me that we could totally film it lid open.
So let's film it lid open.
Please don't complain that I haven't ironed my lab coat.
Okay.
Safety first, kids.
So looks like a little coffee flavour is coming up.
I'm just getting nervous now.
Oh.
(pot rumbling)
Oh, yeah!
Look at that!
I should stop there.
No, it shouldn't because it was cold last time.
Give me more.
That is unexpected
and frankly, fantastic.
All right, let's get a - let's have a taste!
A classic, 1990s steam milk technique.
Still not that hot.
I would probably recommend
another way of heating
and steaming or foaming milk, to be honest.
I think a microwave and like a French press,
like up-down technique is probably superior to this,
if I'm honest.
If you've got one of the little aerolatte type whisks,
something like those would be better than this.
It's fun, it's just not very good at steaming milk
in an interesting way that makes it hot enough.
And that's all I have to say about that.
So next up, this one, I'm kind of excited about this one.
They don't make them new anymore it seems,
but you can still pick them up on eBay and places like that.
It's called the Cuor di Moka,
the heart of the Moka, I guess.
There's a little heart symbol here.
And then inside this, and it is used, so don't judge me,
I didn't do this to it.
Inside, you can see there's a little heart here
attached to a float.
So this, depending on the liquid level in the top chamber
would move up.
And that's the innovation here.
Essentially, rather than you having to go
and run it under the tap or do other stuff like that,
this will just cut off the whole brewer at a certain level.
You would never over extract it, I guess.
And so you just get the heart, I guess.
Was that what they mean?
Like almost like the heart of an artichoke,
like the heart of the Moka.
Anyway, what we'll do is we'll brew with this.
Now this was a collaboration, I understand,
between a Bialetti and Illy Caffè.
And so, oops.
And so it only seems right to brew an appropriate coffee.
Whole bean, whole bean,
'cause you know, we're gonna do this right.
Oh yes, that gas flush goodness.
(can fizzing)
Let's grind some Illy.
This is a one cup,
I'm gonna get about six grams of coffee in here, I reckon.
We're gonna get about 60 grams of liquid in this
in the base, but how much will we get out
before the Cuor di Moka says no?
So they said a medium flame.
A medium flame it will be.
So we'll see what happens.
It does also say that if you leave it to heat,
then the valve is probably gonna open,
and be careful and don't burn yourself.
Because once you trap it,
once you close the top section,
if you keep increasing the pressure through temperature,
the only way to get steam or pressure out
is through the emergency relief valve,
through the pressure relief valve.
Oh, we have coffee.
Curious how much liquid we'll get before the float lifts.
(pot softly rumbling)
Is that it?
It's very subtle.
I thought there'd be more of an obvious kind of lift,
but no, it's pretty minimal.
All right, I'm curious how much liquid
we actually got out of this thing.
So let's weigh and find out.
28 grams.
All right, cheers.
It's a pretty good brew.
That coffee is roasted in such a way
that it's pretty soluble, cutting it off at that point
hasn't led to massive under extraction,
it's quite a nicely textured cup.
This definitely would not work well for lighter roasts.
There's just no way I think you'd get enough water through
to properly extract the coffee
unless we're using a super fine grind,
and I think you'd have some trouble there.
But overall, I'm kind of pleasantly surprised by it.
I think for that style of coffee, it works really well.
I like the automation of it.
I like not having to pay attention or worry too much.
But, I don't think it's a better brewer,
because I think losing that flexibility isn't a good thing.
I can brew exactly this with a regular Moka
if I stop it at the right time.
So I can brew that kind of shorter
ristretto style Moka, I guess if I want to,
or I can brew something a little bit longer
and more extracted if I want to.
So for me, it's an interesting little idea.
It's an interesting little innovation,
but I don't think it's made a better brewer.
If you just like this style of coffee,
more developed roasts, shorter cups,
maybe track one down.
But I would say it's probably not worth swapping out
a Moka you already own for one of these.
Now, before we get into this thing,
which might be my favorite, in a way, of today's brewers.
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So this is the Kamira.
I've had this in the studio a couple of years
and I just haven't had a chance to get it out
and get it on video.
So I'm excited that it has made it into today's lineup.
This came to my attention
via one of it's promotional videos,
which is interesting.
And honestly, I didn't know coffee could,
or was supposed to look like that.
But they established an early coffee and hair connection,
which I fully endorse.
Nothing about this makes a ton of sense,
but I love it, nonetheless.
Let's walk through how you brew with this thing
'cause it's kind of fun.
You've got your reservoir fill here.
So this is a little tank,
you fill this up
and then in order to get the water into the brewer,
you have to open this valve.
This then allows water down into the bottom section,
which is the boiler, basically.
You then close your valve,
so that when you start to heat it,
obviously no pressure can escape here,
which is gonna drive hot water up this tube,
round and down,
and then into the little kind of portafilter thing here.
This, well, this is just kind of weird.
You fill this with coffee,
even though the bottom of it
has this little tiny filtration section in it
that I don't necessarily understand
or think is that good of a thing
that leads to a little tiny spout
out of which you are very strange frothy coffee comes.
Let me just make some coffee, it'll make more sense.
I will say that I've had some issues with it
because when I put water in here and open the valve,
it's like an airlock has happened,
and until I kind of wobble and shake the brewer,
I can't get the water to go down into the boiler.
Someone in the comments will tell me why that is
and why I can't get it right.
But I honestly don't know right now.
It just won't drain.
All right, I think we've got the water in.
In what is, I think easily,
the most gloriously insane decision in this brewer,
this goes on the heat.
And actually you're gonna put your cup on top of the boiler.
The thing that's gonna get to like 120 degrees Celsius,
you're gonna put your cup there.
So, I guess preheated cups is a win.
So for coffee, we're gonna go something very traditional,
something with some robusta in it, honestly,
because I want to see what happens
to the kind of crema, the foam.
This thing promises a very specific texture,
so I have some Lavazza Crema e Gusto, um 'cream and taste'.
I'm not trying to be disparaging about Lavazza,
I'm not saying this is right or wrong,
I just wanted something more traditional
to go with this, honestly.
So we fill a portafilter, but we don't tamp.
Are we in?
(pot softly whistling)
Look at this.
Look at that.
I should probably stop it brewing, but I just...
I'm looking at it... (laughing)
Look at that!
Look at it go, oh, it's the best.
Discharge pressure.
I love it, I love it, I love it.
Look at that.
That is the weirdest foam.
That's so good.
Honestly, it's not a bad brewer.
This is a darker roasted coffee relatively high in robusta
It doesn't taste over extracted necessarily.
It's it's pretty harsh still.
I think it has a very traditional, classic
kind of darker roasted, high robusta bitterness
that's there.
It's not super hot, actually.
This seems to brew that a little bit cooler,
which is interesting.
But the foam, how good is that?
I honestly think it's kind of fun.
I don't think it's a very practical brewer at all.
And I think having the cup on the hot thing is not good,
but I think it brews in this really bizarre
but interesting way.
And the whole foam thing? Delightful.
Bizarre, delightful.
Would probably stick with a Moka pot, but
I've never had a brewer that made me coffee
that looked like that.
So make of that what you will.
I think it's fun.
I think it's fun, it's okay to have fun.
And this is fun, cheers.
This, I don't keep.
None of the brewers today I'm gonna keep.
In fact, none of the Mokas
that we've used in this whole series,
am I gonna keep.
Just one exception,
I keep a Franken Moka for myself.
One is being raffled.
This may still be time to enter that
and pick up a ticket
for that raffle and win one of those things.
But the rest will be going to my Patreon supporters.
They give me the budget to go out and buy these things,
test them, learn this stuff and share it with you.
So thank you to them.
But now I'd like to hear from you,
down in the comments below.
What brewers should we have included?
Now I didn't include the kind of competition filter
that I think you can get for Moka pots.
I thought that's kind of different to
kind of Moka derived brewers.
That's like an add on for Moka brewing.
But if there's other things like that I should look at,
definitely let me know.
If anyone is doing any precision baskets,
let me know about that.
If anyone's doing any really interesting brewers,
leave me a comment down below, I'll have a look,
I'll check it out.
Maybe it'll turn up on the channel soon.
But for now, I'll say thank you so much for watching
and hope you have great day.