Date: 2010-07-28 21:01:24 Created: 2010-07-28 16:40:02
I did some carefully planned shopping today. Most important was this:
My very first moka coffee pot. If you have never seen one, I recommend the external to wikipedia.
Every time I have knowingly had moka brewed coffee, it has been excellent. Sort of like espresso, but with its own full and round feel. I also suspect that the uniformly excellent coffee I had each morning during a wonderful week in Verona a couple of year back may have been moka brewed, but I have no proof of this.
In any case, from time to time I have missed the ability to produce small amounts of stronger coffee at home. I do like the coffee produced by my humble press very much (I dare say the quality is consistently above that of most other machines I have tried, home as well as office/hi-volume ones), but it requires a certain minimum amount to do a good job, and you simply never get anything truly espresso-like out of it. A real espresso machine still feels like vast overkill to me, but as soon as I started to learn more about moka pots I felt an immediate appeal. The whole concept is no nice and simple, and ones made for just a few cups seemed common.
Thus, I began checking prizes and sizes, and, as is so often the case, real life filtered down the options quite a bit. To start off, brand-name moka pots just felt too expensive to a beginner like me. So, off they went. The limited selection of pots in stores provided another great filter One sunny Saturday in July, I went around to some stores and had a look at their options. It turned out that many had a very sparse selection of moka pots, and when they had one, it was often either expensive, for more cups than I needed, or both. I primarily wanted my pot for personal use, so I figured one sized for two or three cups would be about right. Having checked on Prisjakt (a Swedish price comparison site) I knew what one might be found for. The large stores I checked had a few pots with neither felt too appealing, nor were cheap enough to make up for the lack of appeal.
However, there was no need to despair. From Prisjakt, I knew that there was a store right next to where I live which had moka pots at good prices. That was where I made my way after a fun but fruitless excursion to many other stores. The name of the store is Kaffelunden, and as soon as I stepped inside the cosy store I found some nice looking moka pots at just the right price and size. Prefect. Deciding on one of three colours seemed to be the only problem.
But I had not counted on the great service I would receive. After exchanging a few words with the nice woman manning the store, she pointed out that they had a special offer on pots of two different colours right now. So, if I chose one of those colours, I would get a pot at half the price I had even seen anywhere else. While thinking, I also got a quick but thorough introduction to using a moka pot as well as a demonstration of a coffee grinder. Finally, I settled on the nice red pot pictured above. Yes, it was one of the colours covered by the special offer. That did not matter for the service level though, the packaging was opened, carefully checked for defects and switched for a different one when some colour scratches were noticed. I left Kaffelunden very happy with my purchase and certain I will come back many more times. They also have a shop online, so if you live in Sweden and need some coffee related items I highly recommend you check Kaffelunden out.
See, this is what providing good service gets you.
Once home, it was high time for lunch, and then of course for the maiden brew.
My brother had told me that it took some experience to get the hang of moka brewing. With that in mind, I think the first brew went splendidly. (I did of course follow the Kaffelunden woman's adivice to the letter.) My pot rated for three (espresso sized) cups produced about one standard cup's worth of coffee just as strong, black and well-rounded as I had hoped for.
All is well that ends well. My moka brewing life is just beginning, but it certainly has begun very well indeed.