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Early last year, I switched from drinking leaf water (tea) to drinking bean juice (coffee) every morning. Something about living amidst a global pandemic, civil unrest, and an unmitigated climate crisis made me want to switch things up.
I already have a moka pot (a Bialetti Moka Express) at home, so that’s what I’ve been using. The process is not as easy as pouring hot water onto tea leaves, but it’s pretty close. And after testing my Moka Express against three other moka pots, I understand why this particular model has developed a cult following—it produces a strong, rich, espresso-like batch of coffee in less than 10 minutes. I then mix that brew with simple syrup and milk (shaken and microwaved in a jar) to make a quasi caffe latte (video).
This moka pot—which, of the four models we tested, comes closest to Alfonso Bialetti’s original design—has a classic look, is dead simple to use, and brews coffee as rich and flavorful as that of any model we tested.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $36.
Not only is the Moka Express easy to use and more affordable than other moka pots I tested for this guide—and much more so than a traditional espresso machine—but its retro look is also evocative of a (at least in some ways) simpler time.
The moka pot was invented in the early 1930s by Alfonso Bialetti, an Italian engineer and aluminum metalworker, as an easy and affordable way to make coffee at home. At the time, coffee was almost exclusively made and consumed at coffeehouses.
Bialetti’s creation, the Moka Express, is by far the most common moka pot sold today and the most recognizable. It has three main components made of cast aluminum: an octagonal base, a funnel-shaped strainer, and an angular pitcher with a hinged lid on top. The design was inspired by art deco architecture and women’s skirts in the 1930s, says Bialetti Industries export manager Cristina Leporati, and “over the years, it has undergone only minor changes in shape, remaining virtually unchanged over time.”
Aluminum shortages during World War II almost doomed the Moka Express, but sales took off again when Alfonso’s son, Renato, took over the business and introduced l’Omino con i baffi (“the little man with the mustache”) as its mascot in the late 1950s. The character—whose image, based on Renato himself, is printed on the side of every Moka Express—has become just as iconic as Alfonso’s invention. (When Renato died in 2016, his cremated remains were buried in a specially made Moka Express.) Over the years, the Moka Express has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and at Cooper Hewitt in New York, at the London Science Museum, and at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, among others.
Although I treat the coffee I make in a moka pot much as I would espresso—adding a little milk for a faux cortado or lots of milk (and in my case, sugar) for a latte—it isn’t actually the same. Espresso can easily stand on its own, whereas moka coffee tastes better with a bit of dressing up.
“Espresso is a more intense and full-bodied drink than moka coffee,” says Leporati, adding that there’s a “syrupiness” to espresso that the moka pot’s extraction process can’t achieve.
Moka pots are different from other stovetop coffee makers, too. A moka pot employs a pressurized style of extraction, so “water boils in the lowest chamber and pushes upward through the filter in the form of steam,” says Jessie Washburn, a writer for Blue Bottle Coffee, and the coffee it brews is “viscous and strong.”
On the other hand, she says, Neapolitan coffee makers use a gravity-fed style of extraction, much like pour-over coffee: “After the water begins to boil in the lower chamber, you flip the coffee maker over, forcing the hot water to drip through a filter that holds the ground coffee.”
Stovetop percolators, like the kind you might buy at a camping-supply store, are “kind of like a washing machine,” she says. “Pressure from the boiling water keeps the water recirculating over the coffee grounds until the coffee reaches the desired strength. The problem with this technique is that the water indiscriminately pulls out the desired and bitter qualities from the coffee. I can’t help but think of the Styrofoam cups of my youth that contained weak but bitter coffee.”
This moka pot—which, of the four models we tested, comes closest to Alfonso Bialetti’s original design—has a classic look, is dead simple to use, and brews coffee as rich and flavorful as that of any model we tested.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $36.
Like most of the moka pots we tested, the Moka Express is simple yet effective, lightweight yet sturdy, affordable yet stylish. It’s uncomplicated to use, unlike traditional espresso machines (which require some practice and know-how and cost hundreds of dollars or more). It’s also forgiving; other than leaving it on the stove too long and burning your coffee, there are very few ways to mess up. The flavor of the beverage it produces is richer than the results from most of the other moka pots we tested, and much more so than coffee from a French press or a drip coffee maker. And with the sleepy-lidded eyes of l’Omino con i baffi staring at you from the side of the pot, you’re always keenly aware that you’re using a time-tested piece of Italian gadgetry.
Although some of the people who might have once used a Moka Express to brew their morning coffee are eschewing it for newer innovations—such as the plastic-tube AeroPress, which can make a similarly concentrated cup of coffee with more clarity—Blue Bottle’s Jessie Washburn says it offers a ritualistic simplicity and nostalgia that are unmatched by other coffee makers.
“Early on in my coffee life, it was my first regular brewing device. I felt downright cosmopolitan leaving the plug-in coffee maker of my youth behind,” Washburn says, recalling how her grandparents would use a Moka Express to make post-lunch pots of coffee in their tiny New York City kitchen. “The coffee would gurgle and hiss as my grandmother warmed a little milk for herself. My grandfather would take his black, with a splash of boiling water to open up the flavors and stretch the coffee.”
Outside of Europe, moka pots are especially popular in Cuban communities for making café cubano—a hot, sweet drink made by whisking sugar into the first few drops of coffee before adding the rest of the pot. Lourdes Castro, a Cuban-American nutritionist and director of New York University’s Food Lab, says everyone in Cuba has a moka pot at home—though they call it a cafetera—and it’s most commonly the classic Moka Express.
“If you go into someone’s kitchen to make coffee and they don’t have the silver-and-black one, you might think they don’t know what they’re doing,” she says. And it’s not just for a morning cup of joe—café cubano is an all-day affair.
“In the morning, you can mix it with some milk, and that will make it café con leche. And then in the afternoon, you can have it after lunch, and definitely again around three or four—coffee hour,” says Castro, adding that it’s also typical for some Cubans to drink a thimble-sized cup on the hour every hour.
In my own kitchen in St. Louis, I conducted a taste test with four 6-cup moka pots: my Bialetti Moka Express, the Alessi Moka, the Grosche Milano Red, and the stainless steel Ilsa Turbo Express. Dozens of variations are available—from IKEA’s Scandinavian spin on the classic moka pot to the MoMA Design Store’s cute and colorful Cocca Moka to innumerable knockoffs on Amazon—but we concluded that the four models we chose represented the range of options well.
Over about a week, I made 16 pots of coffee for my taste test. I made café con leche with each moka pot using Café Bustelo, piloncillo (a compact cone of brown sugar), and whole milk. I also made black coffee with Intelligentsia Black Cat Classic Espresso beans, Intelligentsia House Blend coffee beans, and Starbucks House Blend coffee beans in each one—using the Baratza Encore to grind the beans, the Escali Primo digital scale to weigh them, and the Bonavita BV382510V 1-liter gooseneck electric kettle to heat up the water (you don’t have to pre-boil the water, but I think doing so produces better results, as I explain below). I also timed how long each pot took to brew 20 grams of grounds from start to finish. For each round of testing, I had my boyfriend pour about an ounce of coffee from each moka pot into teacups so that I could compare them blind.
I am by no means a coffee expert (as I said, I just started drinking it regularly in the past year), but I did find some obvious differences between the pots’ brews. The Bialetti Moka Express performed the best overall, producing a smooth, full-bodied flavor profile—chocolatey, smoky, and just a bit acidic—compared with the rest of the bunch. The Alessi Moka’s brews were a little more acidic and slightly less rich, but they were otherwise almost indistinguishable from the Bialetti’s. Results from the stainless steel Ilsa Turbo Express were drinkable, if somewhat hollow and flat, and brews from the Grosche Milano Red were the worst—watery and flavorless.
The Bialetti pot that I’ve had for years—which my boyfriend and now I have put through some serious wear and tear—seems mostly infallible. Other than a hairline crack on the hinge (which is a stress point if you try to screw the top on one-handed, as I have), it hasn’t sustained any major damage. The cast-aluminum pieces fit together smoothly and are fairly easy to clean. When the pot is not in use, it fits into my mid-century modern decor as a piece of functional art.
The best way to make coffee in a moka pot is to start by pouring boiling water into the base up to the steam valve. If that seems too fussy, or if you don’t have a kettle handy, you can start with cold water, which is what the Bialetti manual suggests—with that method, though, you run more risk of scorching the coffee since it remains exposed to heat longer as the water comes up to temperature. Add finely ground coffee to the strainer until it’s about three-quarters full (20 grams for a 6-cup moka pot), and drop it into the base. Then screw on the top piece; if you started with pre-boiled water, use oven mitts or a dish towel for this last step, as the base will be very hot.
Then, set the whole thing on a hot burner (I use my smallest burner set to high, but you may have to employ some trial and error here since too much heat can make the coffee taste bitter) and wait for the coffee to start bubbling up into the top chamber. Once the top chamber is about halfway filled with coffee, you should hear a gurgling sound. This unmistakable sound—called the strombolian phase (PDF), named after a type of volcanic eruption—means that steam has forced all of the water through the coffee grounds and into the top chamber, and the coffee is ready to drink. Pour the coffee out of the moka pot as quickly as possible—or run the bottom chamber under cold water to cool it down—so the coffee doesn’t burn and acquire an acrid taste.
As with any coffee-brewing method, which beans you use and how fine you grind them is up to you. Both can significantly impact the taste of your coffee.
“Medium or darker roasted coffees with plenty of chocolate and toasted nutty notes—often those from Central or South America—translate well in a moka pot and are the closest to the profiles traditionally favored in Italy,” says Jessie Washburn. But she prefers a light-roasted, expressive bean for a moka pot. If you like to experiment, she says, a moka pot offers “a fun way to get to know a coffee you love from a different perspective.”
If you grind your own beans at home, or if you’re able to request a particular grind size at your local coffee purveyor, Washburn recommends aiming for a texture that’s a little coarser than granulated sugar. You can also adjust it to your preferred taste: If your coffee comes out too bitter or takes a long time to brew, try grinding the beans a little coarser. If it tastes weak or bland, grind them finer.
Lourdes Castro says she uses only Café Bustelo, a finely ground coffee that comes in a yellow can or brick, which is a typical choice for café cubano. Rather than weighing it out first, she usually relies on instinct.
“There’s a little bit of an art to it,” she says. “You need to pack it down a bit, but not too much.”
I’ve most frequently encountered 6-cup moka pots, which make 8 to 10 ounces of brewed liquid depending how much water the grounds absorb. The original Moka Express was a 3-cup pot designed for a single person or small family, Bialetti’s Cristina Leporati says, but the range has expanded. The company now sells a wide assortment—from the half-cup Mokina, which holds a single 1.5-ounce shot of coffee, to a whopping 18-cup Moka Express. (There’s also a 50-cup version, but alas, it’s strictly decorative.)
When deciding which size is right for your household, Washburn says, consider the number of coffee drinkers, their daily coffee intake, and—perhaps most important—their caffeine tolerance.
“Back in my early twenties, my then-boyfriend and I [drank] two 6-cup moka pots between us, all before noon. Now I know why I felt anxious all the time,” she recalls. “Volume-wise, a serving from the moka pot is much smaller than from a pour-over, but it’s quite strong. I didn’t put that together then, but two lattes from a 6-cup moka pot sounds about right for people who prefer stronger lattes and can handle the caffeine. These days, I love a single-cup moka pot for a quick afternoon pick-me-up. It’s small, kind of like a shot of espresso, with less total caffeine than a pour-over and really nice viscosity to satisfy.”
When it comes to cleaning an aluminum moka pot, there are two schools of thought: soap or no soap. Personally, I like to rinse the pieces of my Moka Express with warm water after every use, which prevents coffee residue from building up in the nooks and crannies—and takes only about 30 seconds.
“Only with water, no detergents,” says Leporati. “Over time, aluminum being porous, it absorbs the aroma of coffee and improves its taste.” The user manual also recommends making two or three consecutive pots when you first buy a Moka Express to “season” it.
Castro is in the same camp: “If you go to someone’s house and their cafetera has a patina, you know it’s going to make good coffee.”
If you choose to use soap, though, you would not be alone, says Washburn, who recommends using a mild dish soap.
“I tend to think that having a clean surface is preferable. Old coffee doesn’t taste great to me,” Washburn says. “If you’re feeling concerned about any residual soapy taste it might leave, go ahead and use a cleaner designed to remove coffee buildup, like Puro Caff or Cafiza.”
You should avoid using a scouring pad on aluminum since it scratches easily (use a soft sponge, a dish brush, or a Dobie pad to remove tough stains). Stainless steel can hold up to a bit more abuse but may still show light scratches from a scouring pad or other harsh scrubbers like steel wool. The dishwasher, Leporati says, “is absolutely prohibited.” Extreme heat and harsh detergents discolor, warp, and corrode aluminum components.
Whether or not you use soap, you should pop out the round, metal filter and rubber gasket on the underside of the top chamber every few weeks to clean them, and you should replace them once a year. While you’re doing that, be sure to use a straw cleaner or toothbrush to give the tube-like center of the upper chamber a good scrubbing.
After cleaning, dry the pieces immediately with a clean, absorbent cloth so the metal doesn’t oxidize. And, though it’s better to store the pieces separately in between uses to avoid putting unnecessary strain on the rubber gasket, I like to (loosely) screw them together instead. The moka pot is just too beautiful not to have on display.
The coffee we brewed with the Alessi Moka was similar to that of the Bialetti Moka Express, though not quite as rich and just a tad more acidic. But some people might prefer the Alessi model’s more contemporary aesthetics over the classic Bialetti design. The Alessi Moka was designed in 2019 by architect David Chipperfield, and it’s one of several moka pots Alessi has released over the years (the company’s chairman, Alberto Alessi, is the maternal grandson of Alfonso Bialetti). My only complaint about the design is that instead of a plastic knob on the lid, it has a lever near the handle that allows you to flip the lid open. I found this a bit unwieldy in practice, as it lets the lid fall back down (inconveniently, and with a loud snap) if you’re not diligent.
If you’re fussy about cleaning or have an induction cooktop, get a stainless steel moka pot like the Ilsa Turbo Express (Bialetti and Alessi also make stainless steel moka pots, but we haven’t tested them, and the Ilsa is the one we saw most frequently sold by specialty coffee purveyors such as Espresso Zone and Seattle Coffee Gear). Like the Moka Express, the Ilsa Turbo Express is made in Italy (the Alessi Moka is made in Vietnam; the Grosche Milano, in China). It has a flip-up lid like the Alessi, and it’s more curvaceous in shape than the other three pots. It’s also the only model we tested that comes with a fine, circular sieve to allow you to make a half pot of coffee. Stainless steel is stronger and more durable than aluminum, it’s an excellent conductor of heat, and (because it’s magnetic) it can work on an induction cooktop. However, stainless steel is heavier and more costly to produce. And, says Leporati, “It will take longer for the water to boil and for the coffee to rise,” a result that we confirmed in our testing. In my kitchen, the Ilsa took almost 10 minutes to make a pot of coffee, compared with just 8.5 minutes with the Alessi, 9 minutes with the Bialetti, and 9.5 minutes with the Grosche.
Whereas most moka pots have an air of frugality, the Grosche Milano Red oozes cheapness. From a design standpoint, it fails to measure up to the Moka Express—which it’s obviously based on—in pretty much every way. The knob on top and the handle look like wood but are actually just plastic covered by a sticker. The hinge attaching the lid to the upper chamber is loose and flimsy, and the red exterior is sloppily painted on and chips easily. Plus, the coffee we brewed with the Grosche was watery and one-note. If you’re on a tight budget, we think you’re better off getting the single-cup Moka Express (which is cheaper than its 6-cup kin) and making multiple smaller batches.
Sarah Witman has researched, tested, and reviewed all manner of products—from massage chairs and mousetraps to pencils and power banks—since joining Wirecutter in 2017. Before that, she worked as a science writer and fact checker for numerous publications, and she studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin. In her spare time, she eats as much cheese as her body will tolerate.
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