Bialetti Moka Express 6-Cup Stovetop Percolator

I purchased the 3 cup Bialetti about 8 months ago and it keeps getting better and better. Up until recently I used pre-ground beans from Starbucks and Lavazza which was excellent and produced excellent espresso. Now I buy whole beans and grind them before brewing and it tastes even better than when I used pre-ground. I like it strait into an espresso cup or with some heated milk. I also use an Aerolatte To Go, Black to make a cappuccino on the weekends. You really can't beat having great espresso for well under $50 worth of equipment! An excellent product that will serve you well.

The first one of these I had, I used for 25 years. I finally ended up letting it overheat on the stove, which doesn't seem to help the rubber gasket any. If you want really good espresso, this is the way to go. As long as I don't forget, and leave this one on the stove, it's probably the last one I'll need to buy in my lifetime. I'm using it every morning and thoroughly enjoying it. Carpe diem, et carpe Deo.

I first used this product on a trip to Spain. It makes great coffee, is easy to use and clean, and has a simple design. I would not purchase anything smaller than the 6 cup. It can make 2 regular cups of coffee or 4 cups of espresso size.

Bialetti Moka's are found in just about every Italian household. They are also an affordable way to get strong, espresso-like coffee. To get real espresso, you need a lot more pressure pushing the water through the finely ground coffee. In coffee speak, you need roughly 9 "bars" for proper espresso. Moka's have only 1.5 to 3 "bars" of pressure.

Still, with warmed milk, it makes a decent morning drink. And the style is distinctive and attractive.

One word of caution on the 3-cup: it really only makes enough for one person, and barely that if you like to fill a regular size travel mug.

Otherwise, I highly recommend the Moka in general and the 3-cup in particular.

I purchased this and after only about 1 month of use, the inside of both the bottom water chamber and where the coffee flows into started turning a strange shade of purple-black and the coffee started tasting like metal. It had a weird smell, and the grooves on the metal seemed to hold in the weird balck tarnish. I tried cleaning it with everything, and nothing worked. I only used water and a dye- and scent-free dishwashing liquid before it turned black, so if I caused this, then why would anyone want to buy a coffee maker that tarnishes when you wash it??

I don't know what caused this, but I am very dissatisfied and threw the whole thing away. ALSO, the handle gets SO HOT I had to use a dish cloth to remove it from the stove. Bad design flaw. You'd be much better off using a coffee press.