How to Choose Your Coffee Maker

Brewing freshly ground coffee from the comfort of your home can be a joyful ritual. But where to start? Picking your brew method can seem intimidating, especially if you've only ever resorted to electric coffee machines or disposal pods (yikes!) in the past. However, brewing your own coffee in one of these 3 traditional methods is really much more simple than you think AND the taste and aroma of your coffee is far superior.

Here at Afuga, we are passionate about helping you build a coffee ritual that brightens your morning - or any time of the day! Continue reading to find the method that works best for your coffee ritual and helps get the most flavor out of our beans.

1.       Makineta (or Moka pot):

The moka pot is a stove-top coffee maker that brews coffee by passing boiling water pressurized by steam through ground coffee. It was invented by Italian engineer Alfonso Bialetti in 1933 and quickly became one of the staples of Italian culture. Moka pots come in different sizes, making from one to eighteen 50 ml (2 imp fl oz; 2 US fl oz) servings. After the Second World War, the Italian moka expanded all over the South Europe and it became the standard way of domestically making coffee. Another part of the world the Italian moka reached after the Second World War was Australia. Most post-war Italian migrants used the moka pot in their homes.

 

The flavor of moka pot coffee depends greatly on bean variety, roast level, fineness of grind, water profile, and the level of heat used. Moka pots are sometimes referred to as stove-top espresso makers and produce coffee with an extraction ratio slightly higher than that of a conventional espresso machine. You can expect a heavy bodied and concentrated coffee. A typical moka coffee is extracted at relatively low pressures of 1 to 2 bar, while standards for espresso coffee specify a pressure of 9 bar. Therefore, moka coffee is not considered to be an espresso and has different flavor characteristics.

2.       Drip Coffee (brewed coffee):

Water seeps through the ground coffee, absorbing its constituent chemical compounds, and then passes through a filter. The used coffee grounds are retained in the filter, while the brewed coffee is collected in a vessel such as a carafe or pot. Paper coffee filters were invented in Germany by Melitta Bentz in 1908 and are commonly used for drip brew all over the world. Drip brew coffee makers replaced the coffee percolator in the 1970s due to the percolators' tendency to over-extract coffee, thereby making it bitter.

 

One benefit of paper filters is that the used grounds and the filter may be disposed of together, without a need to clean the filter. Brewing with a paper filter produces clear, light-bodied coffee. While free of sediments, such coffee is lacking in some of coffee's oils and essences; they have been trapped in the paper filter. There are several manual drip-brewing devices on the market, offering a little more control over brewing parameters than automatic machines, and which incorporate stopper valves and other innovations that offer greater control over steeping time and the proportion of coffee to water. There also exist small, portable, single-serving drip brew makers that only hold the filter and rest on top of a mug or cup, making them a popular option for backcountry campers and hikers. Hot water is poured in and drips directly into the cup.

3.       French Press (Coffee plunger):

A French press, also known as a cafetière, press pot, coffee press, or coffee plunger, is a coffee brewing device, although it can also be used for other tasks. Coffee is brewed by placing coarsely ground coffee in the empty beaker and adding hot—between 93–96 °C (199–205 °F)—water, in proportions of about 30 g (1.1 oz) of coffee grounds to 500 ml (17 US fl oz) of water, more or less to taste. French presses are more portable and self-contained than other coffee makers. Travel mug versions exist, which are made of tough plastic instead of the more common glass, and have a sealed lid with a closable drinking hole.

A French press works best with coffee of a coarser grind than does a drip brew coffee filter, about the consistency of cooking salt. Finer coffee grounds, when immersed in water, have lower permeability, requiring an excessive amount of force to be applied by hand to lower the plunger and are more likely to seep through or around the perimeter of the press filter and into the coffee drink. Some writers give the optimum time for brewing as around four minutes. Other approaches, such as cold brewing, require several hours of contact between the water and the grounds to achieve the desired extraction.

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