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Love of The Moka Express
For the past six months, I’ve been getting up early to write a novel. I don’t know why, because the story isn’t going anywhere. But I do it all the same. It feels important. Necessary. Like breathing.
To help me along I drink coffee made with a Bialetti Moka Express. If you’ve never seen these, they look like giant octagonal chess pieces — bishops or knights in shining armour. I cleaned the ones for the photo above. Normally they’re coated in burnt-on coffee like seepage from an industrial process. If you buy them from a shop, they’re perfectly shiny. Like components for a missile.
I’m not much of a coffee connoisseur if I’m honest. I drink the stuff because it keeps me awake, plus I quite like the taste. I could probably buy a machine, stick a pod or a capsule in it and press GO. But where’s the fun in that?
With the Moka Express (and I’m not selling these things by the way) there’s a process. A process as soothing and as comforting as the coffee it makes. Even the most fractured of souls can be calmed in the morning by its gentle purring as it heats up on the stove. The quiet gurgle as the coffee splurges out of the nozzle. And then finally, that satisfying sigh as the remaining coffee is expelled. A three-act play performed in only fifteen minutes — a horror story in today’s high-pressured latte world. But worth waiting for all the same.
