Disclosure: Primula Products provided me with a stovetop espresso coffee maker for review. All opinions and photos remain my own.
Continuing on with the Coffee Quest, today I’m looking the good ol’ stovetop espresso coffee maker. This is the very same product that Marnely offered as her go-to piece of coffee making equipment.
Never used one before? It is essentially a percolator, something your grandparents likely used: the bottom chamber gets filled with water, a filter sits on top of that, full of coarse ground coffee, screw the top on and heat it on a stove burner. In just a few minutes’ time, enough pressure builds up in the bottom chamber to force the water up through the coffee grounds and into the top chamber. Once it starts steaming and you hear bubbling, turn the heat off–it’s done. Simple technology that packs a punch.
If you have a gas cooktop like I do, it’s important to turn the heat down enough that you don’t have flames flickering up the sides; it should only be touching the bottom of the maker. Even though you don’t have the stove turned up all the way, it doesn’t take long for the coffee to brew, allowing you to make a quick cup even if you’re on your way out the door.
Verdict: Just like with the coffee press, there were fine grounds present in the bottom of the cup. That said, the stovetop espresso coffee maker produced a much deeper, robust, flavorful cup of coffee than the coffee press. Filling it will give you just one cup of coffee (the 3-cups refers to espresso demitasse cups), but that’s perfect for me most days. The downside is that a stovetop is necessary in order to use it, which isn’t always available when I want a cup of coffee. And that you need to wash the coffee maker immediately after or you’ll get water spots inside, since it is aluminum. For hot coffee, this is my preference of the two options looked at thus far.
I’ve always loved how this little coffee makes looks but have never used it, and I need something that makes more than one cup…
If you drink a lot of coffee, then no, a one-cup maker won’t cut it. But there are larger coffee presses and bigger percolators, if you’re so inclined.
This is a neat idea! I like it!
This is my absolute favorite way to prepare coffee. It’s a little bit of a hassle compared to other methods, but I think it’s totally worth it. I’m enjoying your coffee quest Carrie!
It’s my favorite now, too. Such depth! I never imagined coffee could taste so good!
This isn’t my original idea (i got this from various coffee forums).
To minimize coffee grounds from going through the fine mesh of the upper chamber, you could try this simple “modification”. Get a small stack of standard, paper coffee filters for drip coffee brewing machines (any size will do); take maybe 5 filters and place them on top of each other and place them on a wooden cutting board or any surface that can withstand several razor-blade cuts. Take the ‘coffee basket’ from your stovetop espresso pot and invert it onto the paper filters. Then with a clean utility knife, X-acto blade (a brand of hobby knife), carefully run the blade through the stacked paper filters while tracing the circumference of the basket’s rim. You should end up with circular cuts of paper filters. Fill the coffee basket to the rim with ground coffee (with this modification, you can now use fine or even extra-fine grounds) and level it off with a flat, straight edge (a rubber spatula or bench/pastry scraper works fine for me). Then, place one (at most three) of your custom-cut paper filters onto your coffee basket, place it on top of the lower water reservoir, then carefully screw on the top chamber (making sure that the paper filters don’t move too much). Use a low flame to brew. This not only allows you to use a finer grind of coffee, but should effectively increase the amount of pressure required to push the extracted coffee oils through the central stem of the upper chamber.