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Jan. 18th, 2019 07:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynTwo Christmases ago my parents gave me a Nespresso put-the-pod-in-and-woosh coffee machine for Christmas. It worked, and it made good espresso-type coffee from the pods. I was able to get a refill kit and reuse the crap out of my pods once the starter set was done. It was good. Still is.
At least, I assume it still is. This Christmas I got a Moka pot. Around the same amount of work as refilling a pod, but it produces a much smaller amount of espresso-type coffee using only the amount of pressure you can generate on a stove top via the wonder of Italian engineering. It takes somewhat longer to brew up, since you have to bring it to a boil, and you have to clean up and disassemble the whole thing afterwards.
But it doesn't make that horrible AARGHGHAHAHHGGGHH noise of summoning heat and pressure demons to push the water through the system in a matter of seconds, and it doesn't require me to use parts with a Nestle-specific barcode to work (the Vertuo line, which is what my parents bought, is Nestle's way of forcing people to use their pods rather than generic refills). In the event of a blackout, as long as it's still safe to use the stove, the Moka pot works.
Fancypants espresso snobs may snark about how REAL espresso requires 12 bars of pressure and the Moka pot only generates one or two bars and no REAL aficionado will be fooled by this pathetic imitation, but fuck 'em, it tastes right and it feels right and it is the way my too-poor-for-fancy-machines-in-the-kitchen Abruzzese and Barese ancestors made their damn espresso. Grandma and Grandpa made their espresso with one of these. This is literally the coffee of my people.
Gonna be a while before I turn the machine on again, I think.
At least, I assume it still is. This Christmas I got a Moka pot. Around the same amount of work as refilling a pod, but it produces a much smaller amount of espresso-type coffee using only the amount of pressure you can generate on a stove top via the wonder of Italian engineering. It takes somewhat longer to brew up, since you have to bring it to a boil, and you have to clean up and disassemble the whole thing afterwards.
But it doesn't make that horrible AARGHGHAHAHHGGGHH noise of summoning heat and pressure demons to push the water through the system in a matter of seconds, and it doesn't require me to use parts with a Nestle-specific barcode to work (the Vertuo line, which is what my parents bought, is Nestle's way of forcing people to use their pods rather than generic refills). In the event of a blackout, as long as it's still safe to use the stove, the Moka pot works.
Fancypants espresso snobs may snark about how REAL espresso requires 12 bars of pressure and the Moka pot only generates one or two bars and no REAL aficionado will be fooled by this pathetic imitation, but fuck 'em, it tastes right and it feels right and it is the way my too-poor-for-fancy-machines-in-the-kitchen Abruzzese and Barese ancestors made their damn espresso. Grandma and Grandpa made their espresso with one of these. This is literally the coffee of my people.
Gonna be a while before I turn the machine on again, I think.
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Date: 2019-01-18 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 02:13 pm (UTC)I had an Aeropress for a while because I thought it was a neat Thinkgeek toy and didn't realize it was actually meant to produce reasonably good hot coffee- I think I stopped using it because I was, at the time, mostly using it to produce tea. Either that or because I got tired of buying tiny custom filters and the amount of resistance it put up when I had to use the plunger. No idea what I did with it.