let's talk coffee- stovetop espresso makers specifically

18 years ago

Who's got what?

I have the traditional Italian demitasse pot (where the boiling water filters through the grounds producing coffee in the pot below) and a beautiful Guzzini espresso pot that makes perfectly adequate espresso in the usual water on the bottom & forced upward through the grounds producing coffee in the top of the pot. I also have some unidentified contraption that has a knob on top & an electrical cord of dubious age & integrity but I have no idea what it's supposed to do & am certainly not plugging it in!

But as I mentioned in an earlier thread I've become infatuated with the Bialetti Mukka stovetop cappucino maker & as a result have started looking at the other pots that Bialetti offers. In a step up from the traditional stovetop espresso pot they make something called the Brikka that actually produces crema on the espresso due to Bialetti's patented valve. The Guzzini is beautiful but it's a little temperamental. The Brikka is calling to me with it's simplicity & it's promise of crema.

I love black coffee & all of it's trappings. Maybe it was a result of growing up in an Italian household with the ever present pot of demitasse (always demitasse) on the table, maybe it's the line up of things that you can add to the coffee so that every cup is different, maybe it's just the tiny cups that it gets served in.

So what do you brew in?

Nina

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Comments (7)

chitownfifi
18 years ago
If you like crema, try Nespresso. I have an espresso/cap maker by Nespresso (not stovetop) and all of their flavors are incredible. Thev have over 10 types of varied strength. Their machines use "pods", so you can only brew one cup at a time...and are also required to use their coffee. Both are fine for me - the crema is thick and excellent.
Lynne_SJO
18 years ago
surf over to coffeegeek.com and take a look. Lots of great products, reviews, and discussion boards for coffee lovers.

-or perhaps you have already been there and are just looking for more opinions...

L
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Knock, knock! Anybody still here? Any Plain Jane coffee maker suggestions for a non-coffee-snob, non-foodie? DH drinks two cups of coffee at breakfast. I have one cup, cafe au lait. (Acid tummy.) Our 15-year-old Krups drip coffee maker with thermal carafe is acting up -- failing to use all the water in the reservoir, despite de-scaling with vinegar. It uses #4 Melitta cones. I use a separate small burr grinder. I warm the thermal carafe before making coffee. My main objectives are a decent brewing temperature, a thermal carafe, and a medium-low price point. Among the medium priced five drip coffee makers that Consumer Reports says reach high enough water temps, only the Capresso MT600 did not have bad user reviews on the carafe. (Complaints about drips; some people resorting to pouring *over the sink*.) Costco has a Capresso CM300 for $60. The MT600's MSP is $140. Would you encourage/discourage me from buying either one? (At least I could return the CM300 with no loss.) Would you encourage any of the 'pod' type coffee makers? (I would not be spending hundreds per year on pre-made pods, but using our own freshly ground beans.)
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Thanks again everyone. I'll let you all know if/when I decide or what I get. You all have certainly given me a lot of food for thought. Cherryfizz, no you didn't get off topic at all, since I'm looking for whatever it takes for a good cup of coffee. I 'had' a coffee press, (got it used in a box from an auction) and gave it away without even trying it. Maybe I need another one, even if it is just for those rare occasions when the power is out, yet I can still heat things because I have a gas range. Maybe before getting a grinder I'll try some various coffees freshly ground in the store and invest in a vacuum sealing coffee canister. hmmmm.............
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Personally, I would go the French Press, drip cone and instant hot route, which would be useful for lots of other things too, or a pod maker. I've had coffee from a Keurig and would have bought one for us if we didn't have an espresso maker already. I used to use a drip cone for coffee at work or single cup at home and still use a large one for a thermal pot when entertaining. I likethe French press coffee, but not the silt, so I'd have to learn not to drain a cup. The stovetop route is good too. You have lots of good options. I did look up the average life expectancy for a coffee maker and one source put it at 2 years. Before we got the espresso maker, it seemed we were replacing every year -- less than every two. We bought our first espresso maker 10 or more years ago and still have it. I know we never got that out of any regular countertop model, but I didn't want to be too harsh with the one year evaluation. ;-)
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Sorry Snidely, gotta disagree with you on this one. You're representing totally subjective terms as being absolute fact, which they're not. I totally disagree that drip is "more flavorful". There certainly is no documentation to that claim, since there's no objective way to quantify the claim. It's all subjective, it's a matter of taste. A good number of people agree with me that a percolator is a far more flavorful coffee than drip. Saying coffee was poorer in the past is again totally subjective. Today's foo-foo coffees that are so fashionable are generally favored by those who need to have it diluted with creamers, flavorings and sugar in order to drink it since they don't want a coffee taste. They need it adulterated to drink it. Hardly makes that a better coffee than the past. Different, yes, but not better. My position is the same holds true for cooking a ham. I prefer it be the meat, and appreciate the quality and taste of it rather than covering it with sugars. I don't think a steak needs to be covered with ketchup or steak sauce but some will tell you unequivocally better so buried. Today's society requires the addition of ridiculous amounts of sugar to make things "better". Sweeter isn't always better to a developed palate. To those raised on fast food, frozen food and prepared by mediocre cooks, sugar saves the day for them. Not for me. The other point few people understand is the quality of water required. IMO, you don't make good coffee with lousy water. And all the Starbucks and foo-foo "coffees" (which calling them coffee is argumentative anyway), together with an uncleaned maker of any type, using tap water as most all of them do, is what people want to call "better" when IMO it's far from it. Many of these places might filter their water which can help but it doesn't help when they don't change the filters which is a common negligence. Many people don't know good coffee from bad because they've never used good water, never clean their maker and never drink it unadulterated. They don't really know how coffee actually tastes.
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kbuzbee
18 years ago
My wife got me a La Pavoni last year. Best coffee maker ever! It's the old lever style, not some auto-everything push the putton and walk away thing. You control the brew time, pressure, temp etc. It's fantastic. Not a store top as you'd indicated but I don't think any of those build up enough pressure to really make espresso, does yours??

Ken
sigh
Original Author
18 years ago
I haven't been able to find a Brikka in the flesh, only the regular Bialetti pots. I have to say that the Mukka (cappuccino pot), for a stovetop machine, pushes the water through the grounds with such force that the un-tamped grounds always end up as a solid little puck. Supposedly the Brikka will do the same as a result of the Bialetti valve.

OMG, how cool is the La Pavoni?! I'm certain that no stovetop machine can come close to that.

Lynne- I found out about the Brikka on coffeegeek. I just enjoy this forum so much & wanted to stir up some coffee talk :). Plus I'd enjoy hearing what you folks have rather than solely from the coffee obsessed.

Nina (coffee obsessed but rarely has more than 1 cup a day).
TACHE
18 years ago
I have an Estro Vapore that I got at Starbuck's about ten years ago. It makes really great espresso and it is very easy to foam the milk for either capichino or latte. Starbuck's sells it under its own label now as Barrista. Our kids had one a few years earlier and my sister has one a few years younger and they have all been super, If you have any problem at all with them you just call the starbuks repair place and they sort it out for you. I'm pretty fussy about my espresso and I love it.
TACHE
18 years ago
Sorry, I didn't finish before I hit the submit button. I have two of those old Italian stovetop makeres where the water is expressed thru the coffee from the sided. They are very picuresque but this coffee is much better. I don't think I will ever go back to those old ones but I don't think I will ever bring myself to part with them either.
kbuzbee
18 years ago
Sigh, you are right, the La Pavoni is, for me, the perfect coffee machine. Mine is brass and copper, the smaller one without the gauge. Just using it feels like a throw back to simpler times. (I also have a Zassenhaus grinder, blue windmill on white ceramic bowl holds the coffee and you set the grind and turn the crank).

Mornings are just wonderful. I grind up enough to fill the portafilter twice while the machine is warming up. Fill and tamp the portafilter and return it to the machine. Raising the lever allows hot water under pressure access to the coffee. lowering the handle adds pressure and forces the water down through the coffee. The more pressure you apply to the lever, the more pressure you put the water under. This is totally hands on coffee making. Not for the set it and forget it crowd.

It took a while (2 weeks) to get the grind right but now every cup is somewhere between wonderful and fantastic. The key is you control the process all the way through.

Ken

let's talk coffee- stovetop espresso makers specifically

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let's talk coffee- stovetop espresso makers specifically

Comments (7)

chitownfifi

Lynne_SJO

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kbuzbee

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TACHE

TACHE

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