You've probably either seen this mysterious little octagonal device somewhere along the way and wondered how the heck does that work, or you've used one and if that's the case you're probably still using one today.

I was in the former camp for far too long and wish now I'd discovered the Bialetti Moka Express way earlier.  It would have saved me a lot of money wasted on instant coffee (on tap), when one or two cups a day from this brilliant invention gets all four cylinders firing better than anything I know!

This ingenious hunk of metal was designed in 1933 by Luigi di Ponti.  It has two chambers and a filter in the middle: fill the bottom one with water, the middle one with ground coffee, stick it on a stove and after couple of minutes, delicious rich coffee will fill the upper one.  That's it!  

Of course, there are endless youtube videos on how to make the best Moka Express, and, sure, you can tweak a few things to suit your taste buds, but the simplicity of the three levels remain constant: Water / Ground Coffee / Rich Espresso.  

It is also incredibly easy to clean.  Just tap the used coffee into the compost bin, and rinse the two chambers of the pot and the filter with water.  Again, that's it!   I reckon it uses far less water (in use or to clean) than any other brewing method, and the best of it...there are no plastic pods to be seen..anywhere!

For me, it is the best coffee maker in the world.  Buy one of these and you're set - you really don't need anything else.   And Bialetti spare parts are readily available so you can take real pleasure in keeping that old coffee pot (you grow quite attached to them in my experience) gurgling away for years to come.  

Good news for coffee lovers, and the environment. 

Shop Bialetti

Laurence. TG x

PS. One very interesting footnote which I didn't know until recently....

Renato Bialetti, the Italian businessman who turned the Moka Express Coffee Pot into a classic global design, died in 2016 at the age of 93. In accordance with his and his family’s wishes, his ashes were interred in an urn shaped like a large version of a Moka pot, the stovetop coffee maker he introduced to the world.

Bialetti didn’t invent the Moka. He just made it famous. A man named Luigi di Ponti designed the appliance in 1933 and sold the patent to Renato’s father Alfonso Bialetti, an aluminum vendor.

Sales lagged under the elder Bialetti, but Renato had bigger, coffee-scented dreams when he took over the business in the 1940s. He spearheaded a massive marketing campaign across Italy for the pots, which were branded with a charmingly mustachioed caricature—based either on himself or his father, depending on the legend you read. L’omino con i baffi, the little man with a mustache, remains a widely-recognized symbol in Italy today.

An estimated 350 million Moka pots have since been sold around the world.

Bialetti’s Moka-shaped urn now lies in the family plot in Omegna, Italy.

Source: Quartz |  qz.com