Review on Premium Stainless Steel 9-Cup Stovetop Espresso Coffee Maker with Replacement Gasket, Filter, and Instructions by Vincent Blitz

As the name suggests, you can't get the pressure or temperature needed to make espresso, and that's okay. Moka coffee makers are difficult to understand, but your rewards come when you understand how to make great coffee. That being said, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with moka pots, with many variables making the coffee bitter and taste awful. The three biggest variables are pressure, freeness, and water. The moka pot needs pressure to work, so you need to make sure the two chambers are properly sealed. Through trial and error I've found that you shouldn't tighten the gasket with the wooden handle that comes with it, but instead grip the top and bottom as two ends of the cylinder, sealing the gasket properly and evenly and not leaving it crooked. If the pan gives off steam, it must be removed from the heat source immediately. The next step is the quality of the water, the taste of the resulting coffee is highly dependent on the hardness of the water used. I suggest using bottled water if you have hard water where you live. I haven't personally investigated if filtered water would work, although I can't imagine it wouldn't. Finally, the grind size of the coffee is important, if you use espresso sized coffee grounds you will smother the mocha and the coffee will be over extracted and bitter and vice versa if you use drip sized coffee like you get with foils then you are under pressure in the system and under the hood. In my experience, I suggest placing the grinder you use about halfway between the drip and espresso, sloping towards the drip if needed. These tips will help you to prepare good coffee with any coffee maker. As for the coffee maker itself, I did note a few caveats: while the stainless steel construction is sleek, it doesn't conduct heat well away from the heat source. to the water. While aluminum moka pots end up with an aluminum oxide patina, the underlying aluminum has better heating properties. Other than that, it's good enough to reliably brew a decent cup of coffee. So it's only a problem if you're pretentious enough to take your coffee making to the next level. I have personally found the safety valve to be leaking on the threads, to make it clear that the valve itself has failed due to overheating or over pressure, to fix this I simply put teflon tape on the threads and made sure that that Safety valve hole is not blocked. .It took about 5 months from purchasing this coffee maker to the point where I was able to reliably brew a cup of coffee good enough to drink with pleasure. I find this journey rewarding and finding your own method is worth the cost. However, this is no substitute in my life for a filter coffee maker to use before work, although I plan on taking this campground I assume all goes well.