That Coffee Roasters: The Moka Pot: From Mocha to Your Kitchen

jueves, 10 de mayo de 2018

The Moka Pot: From Mocha to Your Kitchen

The Moka is one of the most popular implements for coffee brewing in Latin America.

Many people like to start their day right with tons of energy. Waking up energized keeps you productive for the whole day. This is why we try to eat the right types of food that will keep us healthy, and always on the go, one of the most popular morning beverages is none other than our beloved coffee.

Did you know that there is an iconic coffee maker that people have been using since the start of the modern era? Yes, even up to the present, this coffeemaker is still being used by different families from all over the world, from Northern Europe to South America. This iconic coffee maker is the one and only Moka Pot.

That Coffee Roasters’ History Lesson: The Moka Pot

The elegant, octagonal-shaped Moka Pot, sometimes also called a caffettiera, a macchinetta, or stovetop espresso maker, it comes with a heavy historical significance in the coffee world.

Caffeine and Aluminum are two elements that carry a common symbolism linking them to the modern ages: they are associated with lightness, speed and mobility, strength, energy, and electricity (the “buzz”). These are terms that fit both these materials and are associated with the new lifestyle that modern man was seeking back in the past century.

Connected to the rise of Italian fascism came a revolution in the drinking habits of the Italian public since regionalism and cultural pride were the cognitive rules for the Italians. It might be odd to read, but what has become known as the Italian way to brew and serve coffee at home, The Moka Pot brewing implement and process is linked to the social, technological and economic changes that Italian fascism lived through the 1930’s.

The story of the stove-top espresso maker begins all the way back in 1918 when a man known as Alfonso Bialetti, returned to his natal Italy from France, where he had been working in the aluminum industry for 10 years, and established a workshop that made metal household implements.

Near his factory located in Piedmont, Bialetti watched women washing their clothes in a sealed boiler with a small pipe in the center of it. The pipe drew the soap-water from the bottom of the container and flushed it over the wet laundry. Bialetti decided to try and adapt this idea to make a coffee machine that would allow Italians to make their own espressos without leaving their homes.

Prior to Bialetti’s experiments, coffee was more often than not drunk in public coffee shops, usually visited by men. Indeed when women started to drink coffee outside the house, it was regarded as a sign of their move towards emancipation (associated with the women voting moves and the firsts steps of feminism).

Domestic coffee machines allowed the hot water to drip at its own pace over the coffee grounds to produce a weaker version of the so craved espressos. But during this period, various inventors were already experimenting with steam, looking to emulate or even upgrade the strong and intense flavors of the espresso found in the public coffee houses.

Bialetti used aluminum as his element of choice for his inventions. Mussolini had imposed an embargo on stainless steel at the time. Nonetheless, since the country had a rich supply of the aluminum ore bauxite, it became the national metal, and Bialetti had plenty of it to work with.

Meanwhile, the owner of Galla Coffee, James Grierson, said:

“He finally invented the Moka Express in 1933. Its distinctive shape was based on a silver coffee service that was popular in wealthy Italian homes at the time and hasn't changed since. He said that without requiring any ability whatsoever, one could enjoy an espresso in casa come al bar – in other words, coffee as good as you could buy in the café”.

The octagonal shape was inspired by silver coffee serving pots used by the rich and aristocratic Italian families. In the years after he marketed the product (in a local-only way) and sold about 70,000 pieces until 1940.

At first, the revolutionary Moka Express Pot was sold at local markets, and it wasn’t until after The Great War, when Bialetti's son, Renato, joined his father’s journey, that sales took off after an advertising campaign using l'omino con i baffi (“the little man with the moustache”), a caricature that was said to be based on Alfonso Bialetti due to his appearance.

Renato’s marketing ideas were an improvement to the evolution of the Moka pot from a locally sold product to an internationally renowned one. He modernized the production, opening a new factory in the 1950s. He combined machine-made parts with handcrafted ones, which preserved the quality of the product and a distinctive design.

The Moka pot design has hardly changed ever since, and aluminum is still used, being most popular in Mediterranean Europe and Latin America (often called “greca” in Spanish). This coffee maker’s popularity has survived for almost a century due to its simple construction and ease of use.

It consists of three sections or parts. The lower segment holds the water, while the finished coffee goes to the upper, topmost section. Between these two there is a metal funnel holding a perforated disc where the ground coffee is to be placed. The boiled water goes through the ground coffee forced by the pressure and flows into the pot on top, ready to be served.

We sincerely hope you have enjoyed our content, and if you want to know more about history, brewing methods or anything coffee-related, That Coffee Roasters is the page to go! Follow us on our social networks! Here at That Coffee Roasters, all questions are important, and we are glad to answer all of them, so don’t be shy and leave them in the comment section below.