FromJason on the Moka Pot

Enjoying FromJason's little ode to his moka pot, a device that has featured pretty centrally to my own life. Everywhere when I was growing up were the cheap drip coffee makers: at the mechanic's, at friends' houses, in our own kitchen. My parents had drip coffee in the morning, weekends featuring my dad carefully making the coffee in his ratty dressing gown, and then bringing a cup upstairs to my mother in bed. But after supper, a different ritual: coffee in the moka pot, a little cup each, a spoonful of sugar, often a cookie on the side.

I took a long time to like coffee - it wasn't until I started working after university that I drank it regularly - and our first coffee maker was a drip machine as well. I remember buying the flavoured beans from the bulk dispenser. Irish Cream (at the time, my partner's favourite). But at some point, I saw a cheap moka pot on sale at Safeway. On for like, $15. I remembered my parents' nightly ritual. I decided to buy it.

Unlike Jason, I don't drink moka coffee every day. In the winter, I make hot coffee for us in the French press, the pot making enough for a hefty cup each. In the summer, my partner and I drink iced cold brew in the mornings, the preparing of the concentrate the day before a ritual of my own. But like my parents, I'll often in the evenings make coffee in the moka pot. I have a smaller one than them, because my partner doesn't take caffeine after the morning. It makes enough just for me. And while I love moka coffee the way FromJason makes it (Cuban style, frothing sugar with a drop of coffee, how my friend Jenny from Florida taught me), I admit to preferring it black. Done the same way, though: fill the basket (don't tamp down!), stove on low-medium heat, the pot a little offset from the centre of the burner to protect the plastic handle. After a few minutes, that bubble and gurgle, and enough coffee for two tiny little cups, the evening hours spread out in front of me.