Ohh, I am thinking a lot about getting myself a nice Bialetti, but I have never managed to make a good coffee with them.
How did you get such a nice crema from it?
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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To get acceptable moka:
- use ~~pre-boiled~~ boiling water
- pre-heat your stove
- when brewing take the pot off heat before it gurgles and pour cold water on the bottom part of it
The last part takes some experience to get right but it’s absolutely necessary.
You know, I've heard of using pre-boiled water and it makes intuitive sense. but!
Then I've heard that the cold water start is needed, since it's the pressure that drives the water through the coffee and into the top. Therefore the cold water allows greater expansion and pressure-differential, so it pushes the coffee sooner, before it's overcooked.
Idk, I've made not-bad and terrible Moka and I've done it both ways. It usually sits on my shelf.
Lance Hedrick did a lot of testing and found, to his tastes, starting with cold water gets a better result as it starts brewing at a cooler temp. In his testing he found the water that brews in a moka pot, when using freshly boiled water, starts extracting at a really high temp and more often than not will over extract. There’s a full video on it, it’s really interesting. I’ve played with both and didn’t find a noticeable enough difference to have a strong preference but I also just really like the style of coffee a moka pot makes in general so I’m not as picky.
Well this is news to me (can’t stand Lance’s videos) but I don’t really use the moka anymore.
use pre-boiled water
Like, bring the water to boiling point then let it cool down a bit?
Boil your water over the weekend then freeze it for the week to save time.
Like you said in your other reply, I had heard that it was better to start with cool water, hence my poorly phrased question. Really sorry for bothering you, won't happen again.
No, bring the water to boiling, pour it into the moka pots water reservoire and brew instantly.
It's specifically the Brikka model that does this. I think I remember it using higher pressure than the regular ones.
Basically this. I have older model with external valve like this https://www.frieda-kaffee.de/shop/bialetti-brika-elite.html but it looks like that current version has the valve integrated inside.
I use filtered water, room temperature, and also put a small spoon on the valve to make bigger pressure.