No need for expensive specialty coffee beans or premium gourmet coffee blends. Use the (Bialetti) Moka pot you have, to make best tasting coffee at home as well as on the road. It’s all about the right bean blend from the right origin, using a fresh roast, and making sure your beans are roasted with Italian roasting expertise to get natural sweetness. Brewing and serving in a small glass will show if your brew is freshly roasted as you produce a thick bloom in the upper part of the Moka Pot. Small portions further help you avoid bitterness and acidity. Indulge in the best Moka Pot Coffee at home.
What is Peak Flavor Coffee?
Coffee in Italy tastes great because Italian coffee is always freshly roasted in small coffee roasting batches. Freshly roasted coffee reaches best or "Peak Flavor” on days 8-14 after roasting. Compare this to coffee from the grocery store, which is often >120 days old. Peak Flavor coffee taste can only be achieved by a local roaster, who focuses on small batch coffee roasting, roasts your order on demand and delivers a fresh coffee roast to you within days. At Peak Flavor Coffee, we are committed to blend, roast fresh in small batches and grind specifically for your home Moka Pot. Only when you order. We make sure your order arrives at your doorstep on or before day 8, so you can enjoy best tasting coffee or Peak Flavor Coffee from your Moka Pot. I invite you to try our coffee and taste the difference for yourself.
Peak Flavor Coffee's 5 tips to brew the best Moka Pot Coffee at home:
- Select a blend of Arabica and Robusta beans from large origin countries. No need for expensive specialty beans to make an indulgent Moka Pot Coffee at home.
- Buy and use freshly roasted whole beans. A fresh roast is never roasted more than 8 days ago.
- Make sure your coffee was roasted the “Italian” way. Only Italian Coffee Roasting has an extended browning phase during which your coffee develops its natural sweetness and mildness.
- Grind only what you need to avoid oxidation. Use a “Moka grind” or medium-fine grind.
- Use a Bialetti Moka Pot with pre-heated water and low heat. Serve in a small glass, so you can see a ring of foam on your coffee. A tell-tale sign of quality that the rich flavors of the naturally occurring coffee bean oils are in your cup.
Introduction
What we call the Moka Pot today, is really an Italian invention from the 1930’s to brew exceptionally good quality brew coffee on your own kitchen stove without the need for expensive machinery. Named after the Yemeni city of Mocha, the Moka Pot was industrialized by Bialetti and has been such a success because it can make exceptionally high-quality coffee very conveniently. Many campers enjoy a morning brew carrying a Moka Pot in their back-packs.
Making best tasting coffee at home in your Moka Pot with coffee from the grocery store can be a challenge though. You often hear people complain that their Moka Pot Coffee tastes bitter because of over-extraction. Even when I buy expensive specialty beans, the taste of my home Moka Pot is often bitter, stale, or burnt. Making an indulgent Moka Pot Coffee at home without the need to buy expensive equipment or expensive specialty beans is therefore what this guide is about.
In fact, following Peak Flavor Coffee's 5 tips in this guide will help you indulge in best tasting coffee from your home Moka Pot Coffee at very good value. According to us, the perfect Moka Pot Coffee should not cost more than $0.59 cents per cup.
Tip 1: Use a blend of Arabica and Robusta coffee beans from large coffee producing countries.
Italy is the birthplace of the Moka Pot as we know it today. If you want to avoid bitterness or burnt notes in your Moka Pot Coffee, start with a fresh roast from the right beans. If you ask an Italian expert roaster or Italian barista for the best bean blend to make the perfect Moka Pot Coffee, they will tell you to use a blend of 70% Arabica and 30% Robusta beans, roasted about 7-8 days ago. Why 7 days? Coffee beans need to rest forabout 7 days and de-gas before acquiring their best or Peak Flavor.
Arabica beans are generally considered to be of superior quality. But a small addition of Robusta beans will produce good crema, which is essential to high-quality Moka Pot Coffee. You can immediately recognize a perfect Moka Pot Coffee if you see a ring of yellow bubbles in your pot. This ring of bubbles (foam) contains rich aromas and floats atop your coffee. If your roast is fresh, your foam will be plentyful.When you taste your Moka Pot, you will immediately notice a gentle smoothness and creaminess without a hint of bitterness.
Bean blends from larger origin countries, such as Brazil, Honduras, and Vietnam, are more likely to produce abundant cream for the perfect Moka Pot Coffee. These blends are much preferred to the more expensive, rare specialty beans from smaller countries such as Rwanda, Burundi, or Togo. Coffee bean harvests from larger coffee countries are fresher and much easier to work with for mere mortals like me. Larger-origin countries also grow more consistent coffee bean harvests of better quality with fewer defects. Columbia and Indonesia also have larger bean harvests with more consistent quality.
Tip 2: Buy and use freshly roasted whole beans. A fresh roast is never roasted more than 8 days ago.
Most importantly, your medium to dark roasted whole coffee beans should be freshly roasted. “Freshly Roasted” means that the roast happened within the last 7 to 8 days. In its handbook for coffee freshness, the Specialty Coffee Association defines fresh roasted coffee as: “roasted within the past 8-14 days”. Once the expert roaster has done his (or her) roasting, roasted coffee beans need to rest for about seven days to develop their full flavor and get rid of excess gasses, a process called de-gassing. On day eight to fourteen after roasting, coffee reaches its best or Peak Flavor. Between day eight and day fourteen after roasting is therefore the best time to use the fresh roast to make your perfect home Moka Pot Coffee.
Expert coffee roasters have no problem indicating the roasting date prominently on the front of their packaging. In fact, if you ask me, you should never buy a coffee brand that does not have a roasting date prominently displayed on the front. How else will you know when the coffee was roasted? And how else can you choose a fresh roast?
Roast freshness is the single most important “ingredient” in making a perfect Moka Pot Coffee. Getting freshly roasted coffee at your home is difficult. On Average, most coffee packs on the grocery shelf, are 120 days past their roasting date. These “old” coffee beans make it difficult to get the perfect Moka Pot Coffee at home. Some small, premium specialty and gourmet coffees in the grocery store could be even older because they sell at slower rates and thus sit on the shelf for longer.
You can imagine that old grocery store coffee has lost most of its flavor by that time and turns stale, bitter and rancid. If your roast is not fresh, it is impossible to make the best tasting Moka Pot Coffee at home.
If you want the perfect Moka Pot Coffee at home, buying and using fresh roasted whole beans to ensure peak flavor coffee is the most important thing to do. This is also why I encourage people to buy smaller packages of coffee. Smaller packages of freshly roasted beans get used faster and ensure that your coffee stock at home does not get much older than 14 days post roasting. Buying & using whole beans instead of ground coffee is important to help you get a fresher roast because whole beans do not oxidize as fast as ground coffee. We’ll discuss oxidation a little later in this guide.
You can easily recognize the freshness of your coffee by the smell your coffee emits as soon as you open the package. Just like you immediately smell freshly baked bread at your local bakery, only a fresh roast, not roasted longer ago than 8 days, will emit the rich aroma that anybody can immediately recognize. Smelling your coffee when you open the package, is the easiest way to recognize a fresh roast in a second. Before you have even seen the roasting date on the pack.
Tip 3: Use an Italian Roast. Only Italian Coffee Roasting has an extended browning phase during which your coffee develops its natural sweetness and mildness.
There is a reason Italian coffee is generally considered the best coffee in the world. Besides always being freshly roasted, Italian coffee roasting entails an expert coffee roasting technique that is designed to bring out natural sweetness and more taste. To do this, you don’t need expensive specialty beans or premium coffee from origin countries you have never heard of. Using expert Italian coffee roasting methods, you can make any coffee bean deliver natural sweetness and mildness, no matter it’s origin. Italian coffee roasting does this in two ways:
First, expert Italian coffee roasters extend the browning phase or “natural sweetness phase” of the roasting process. Generally, there are three phases in any coffee roast.
During the first roasting phase, green coffee beans lose their humidity until there is none left. The end of this phase is called “dry end”.
In the second phase of Italian coffee roasting, coffee beans start to turn color from green to brown. The reason for browning is called the “maillard reaction”, a well-known process whereby sugars (carbohydrates) caramelize and turn brown. Caramelization is the reason why your coffee beans are brown. If this process is rushed, the beans will acquire a burnt taste.
If this second phase of the roasting process is extended at medium temperatures, like during Italian expert coffee roasting, more carbohydrates are caramelized and your beans will acquire their natural sweetness. Italian roasting expertise in this second roasting phase ensures you’ll need less added sugar, less milk-sugar (lactose), or artificial sweetener in your morning brew. It also ensures you can indulge in the perfect natural Moka Pot Coffee.
In the third phase of Italian coffee roasting, the Italian experts roast well beyond “first crack” to release the natural coffee oils which contain most flavor and aroma. In this third and last roasting phase, the beans become gradually darker. This darkening is what most coffee amateurs in the USA speak about, when they talk about light, medium or dark roasts. Italian expert roasters, however, instead focus on making the beans “crack”. Sometimes even a second time when they roast for their Moka Pot Coffee. Italian roasting expertise is straightforward on the subject. After “first crack”, Italian coffee roasting enters its third phase.
This first crack literally opens the beans to release the natural coffee oils, which are full of aroma. You should know that aroma and flavor substances are mostly fat-soluble. This means that only if your small batch coffee roasting manages to release the natural fats (oils) from the beans, you’ll unlock the best taste from coffee beans. Breaking off the small batch coffee roast too early for a light or medium roast prevents the beans from releasing these natural oils and from developing their full flavor.
This is the second thing expert Italian coffee roasters will do to achieve best tasting coffee. Italian coffee roasting will last until close to the second crack to ensure all flavor, oils, and aroma are released whilst preventing acidity and/or burnt notes. Large coffee brands often can’t afford to take the time to wait for the second crack. This is exactly why some well-known, large coffee brands taste a little burnt or sour and need lots of sugar or flavoring.
Tip 4: Grind only what you need to avoid oxidation. Use a “Moka grind”, somewhere between extra fine and fine.
Coffee’s exposure to air causes it to lose taste and aroma. In scientific terms, this natural process is called oxidation or “exposure to air.” We all know how a sliced apple starts to look and taste worse when we leave it on the table. After the apple slices are exposed to air (oxygen), the apple turns brown and tastes stale. The same is true for coffee beans. Once ground, oxidation accelerates as the exposed surface to the air has increased. The coffee taste and aroma will start to deteriorate over time.
Ideally, you grind your fresh roasted coffee beans yourself, just before you brew. Never grind more than the amount of coffee you will be drinking immediately. If you plan to drink two cups, do not grind or brew for more. Doing this will limit oxidation of your coffee and therefore preserves flavor, taste, aroma and freshness when you make your best Moka Pot Coffee at home.
To make the best Moka Pot Coffee at home, you need to grind the whole beans medium fine, somewhere between fine and extra fine. Grinding medium fine ensures you have enough extraction during the relatively short brewing period whilst avoiding over-extraction. When grinding finer, the surface-to-air ratio at which oxidation happens increases and your coffee deteriorates faster.Dont grind too fine.
The time it takes to brewing a Moka Pot Coffee really depends on how hot the heater or flame is, which you are using. More heat means a faster brew and you need an extra-fine grind, similar to Espresso. Slower heating means that your brew will take a little longer and you’ll need a coarser grind to avoid over-extraction. We calibrate our Moka Pot Coffee grind to be somewhere in-between fine and extra-fine. We call it a medium fine grind. We are convinced this grind suits most experienced Moka Pot users.
Getting the amount of coffee right in a Moka Pot is easy. You fill up the filter and all is done. With Peak Flavor Coffee, you’ll need about 8-10 grams of ground coffee for every cup of Moka Pot Coffee. That means that a Moka Pot Coffee, made with a fresh roast from Peak Flavor Coffee only costs about $0.59. Compare that to the $5.00 or more, which you spend at your favorite coffee shop and you see why Peak Flavor is good value for your money.
Tip 5: Use a Bialetti Moka Pot with pre-heated water and low heat. Serve in a small glass, so you can see a ring of foam on your coffee. A tell-tale sign of quality that the rich flavors of the naturally occurring coffee bean oils are in your cup.
For the best at-home Moka Pot Coffee, I recommend using a Bialetti Moka Pot. Their classic and simply the best.
Use pre-heated water to warm up the Moka Pot. Then slowly let it boil and brew until the top-container is filled up. Always serve your Moka Pot Coffee in a small glass (cup) to see if you the natural coffee bean oils have been extracted and are releasing their best aromas into your coffee. You can smell this of course. But you can also clearly see this by the bubble layer in your Moka Pot. In fact, this layer of bubbles is the best sign of good quality and a sure signal that you have used the highest quality fresh roast from Peak Flavor Coffee.
You will notice that it is much easier to produce a good layer of brown bubbles on your home Moka Pot if you use freshly roasted whole beans, which are 8-14 days past their roast. Since fresh roasted Moka Pot Coffee beans roasted in the Italian way, taste naturally sweet, smooth, and creamy, your Moka Pot Coffee does not need a lot of milk or sugar. A fresh roast eliminates the need for baristas to serve coffee in large cups to make room for additional ingredients or flavors. Only coffee made from old roasts that taste more stale or bitter needs milk in large quantities, extra sugar, or artificial sweeteners to mask their defects.
In summary, using fresh roasted and medium fine ground beans from larger coffee origin countries is the key to getting the best Moka Pot Coffee at home. Besides being freshly roasted, for the best Moka Pot Coffee at home, it is important that your coffee is roasted with Italian coffee roasting expertise to have natural sweetness, mildness and creaminess from the naturally occurring coffee oils.
No need to use expensive specialty beans to get the best Moka Pot Coffee at home. Moka Pot Coffee is a very convenient way to make excellent quality coffee at home because brewing at low temperatures allows the naturally occurring coffee oils to release their aroma and flavors to the maximum. You can clearly see if you are successful judging by the amount of rich yellow foam in your Moka Pot. Using a fresh roast, roasted the Italian way will get you to enjoy the best Moka Pot Coffee every time you brew.
Try our Moka Pot Coffee for yourself. I am sure you’ll love it.
Melicent
