I really like moka pot coffee. But if I'm not perfect in my brew method sometimes it tastes slightly burnt. Even when perfect it's still a bit flat tasting compared to a strong French press.

Does anyone have any brew ratios to make moka pot like espresso in a French press?

Thanks

The three are all different drinks not only in the amount of water per weight of coffee, but also extraction pressure. Espresso around 6-8 bar (~100 psi), moka pot at a few psi, and press without any significant pressure. Each with have different strength and flavor, even from the same coffee.

If your moka pot is bitter, you may want to adjust the grind, change coffee, or just use that coffee as press or drip. "Burnt" tastes in coffee often come from the roast suggesting a lighter roast, a different roaster, or both.

those methods are just different and work in different ways, you wont get the same texture/density no matter the ratios you use.

Even if you use a ratio of 1:10 in a french press (which would be close to the ratios of a mokapot that can be 1:7 to 1:11) you wont get the same kind of coffee.

To be honest in a french press i wont do anything stronger than 1:13.5. And i do not like moka pots to be honest i prefer a simple ibrik in this "kind" of method that uses direct fire

Pressure of mokapot and the filter on the frenchpress are things you can't avoid.

I agree that French press is different then a mocha pot..but it's still an immersion brewer. The Aeropress is an immersion brewer and you can make mocha pot style coffee. Not the same but close

All my coffee is roasted city to full city. Mostly the latter

Moka is NOT an immersion brewing method like French press. It's a percolation brew like espresso is.

As said, all three are different.

Temperature profiles are different: Moka starts really low and goes high, often too high; French press starts high and declines; Espresso is usually either flat or declining.

Typical grind sizes are different. Typical brew times are different. Pressure is different. Amount of sediment that makes it into the cup is typically different. Brew ratio of espresso is higher but the brew ratio of moka isn't that much greater than a typical French press brew.


The way to get French press coffee from a moka pot is to leave the top of the moka pot in the cabinet and put the grounds in the moka pot base along with hot water. Let it steep for five minutes or so and then decant the coffee off the grounds.

BuzzedLightyear wrote:I agree that French press is different then a mocha pot..but it's still an immersion brewer. The Aeropress is an immersion brewer and you can make mocha pot style coffee. Not the same but close

All my coffee is roasted city to full city. Mostly the latter

No it's not, its percolation and with much higher pressure (by water and grind size).

Profiles are just completely different... I highly doubt you can get a moka-like coffee on an aeropress, maybe about the same strength, but not texture or profile at all.

I personally do not like Moka-pots, and i agree Aeropress is an ultra versatile tool, but it can't beat physics

BuzzedLightyear wrote:I agree that French press is different then a mocha pot..but it's still an immersion brewer. The Aeropress is an immersion brewer and you can make mocha pot style coffee. Not the same but close

All my coffee is roasted city to full city. Mostly the latter

if you like moka pots I would work on your Moka pot technique rather than look for a moka pot-like brewer. here's a hoffmann video that's not on his channel so not everyone knows about it but it's super helpful for moka pots

I'm kinda new to actually trying to brew well on a moka. Even if I live in italy, or perhaps because of that. Anyway, there are various techniques out there and it all depends on the pot and coffee beans.

One I use a lot with Bialetti pots (aluminium, heats real quick and too much) is to put ice cubes in the server while brewing. This help keep the brew chamber and server cool (I think, haven't measured) and also dilutes the coffee a bit. Amount of cubes depend on the pot size and type of coffee.

Another cooling technique I use with darker roasts is "letto bagnato" which basically means prewetting the first half of the coffee grounds with cold / room temp water.

Water goes in hot. 70 degrees roughly, to just off the boil.

Do not wait for the pot to gurgle, switch the heat off somewhere in the mid brew. Always keep heat fairly low.

My grind size quite squarely between V60 and espresso. On my dial the average sizes per brew method are: 3.3 for V60, 2.3 for moka, 1.3 for espresso.

Mix and match Again it is harder to brew dark roast as the pots get so hot, light roast actually come out super nice. Except on this one steel pot I just got.. the Giannina (by Giannini) from the golden 80's

another useful tip is at any time to stop the brew take the whole unit and run the bottom portion under cold water this way you can run the brew for exactly the length you want without having the guess when to turn off the heat. if you wanted you could get a container set aside with cold water and ice and place the unit in it to stop the brew. (just don't use a one made of plastic)

BuzzedLightyear wrote:Does anyone have any brew ratios to make moka pot like espresso in a French press?

I could have sworn the original question was the other way around: how to make french press in a moka pot. There's no cache and my memory is certainly fallible.

In any case, if one simply wants to make moka pot strength coffee in a French press, just like you can in an Aeropress (and call it espresso if you feel like it), that's easy. The beverage from a moka pot is typically 2-2.5% strength so your brew ratio of water to coffee is just determined by the usual formula for immersion brewing: w/c = e*(1/s - 1). For strength s=2% and extraction e=20% the ratio is 9.8 and for s=2.5% it's 7.8.

So a water/coffee ratio of 8-10 is the ballpark.