Last week I had a joyful reunion with my Bialetti moka pot.
We go way back, the moka pot and me. I’ve had it since 2010, my final year at university. I was studying French, and had just returned from a year in Paris. I was living with my friend Florence, who was studying Italian and had just returned from a year in Florence (truly). She’d adopted some absolutely non-negotiable ideas about coffee from her Florentine housemates and drank Lavazza Oro every morning, which she made in her single-shot Bialetti moka pot and topped with frothed milk. She comes from a family of ethically-minded vegetarians and said she regretted the fact that Lavazza Oro wasn’t fair-trade, but unfortunately it was physically impossible for her to drink any other kind.
When I tried this hallowed elixir I was converted immediately. It was delicious. I developed a caffeine addiction within a matter of days and soon bought a moka pot of my own. Many, many cappuccinos were consumed during that formative year, during which Flo met her future husband and I developed an infatuation with French literature that set me on a path towards a PhD. Flo actually is French, but being bilingual had no need of practising her English; I am not bilingual, and did need to practise my French. And so that became the language of our friendship. There I was, speaking French all the time, burning the midnight oil in the library, drinking my little cappuccinos every morning. Wow, I was happy.
Hilariously, Flo later gave up drinking coffee and switched to herbal tea, but my caffeine habit has never abated. Everywhere I’ve lived, the moka pot has come with me. Last year I decided the time had come to retire it. The rubber seal was perished, and I’d heard Aeropress coffee was the nicest, and also that coffee filtered through paper is better for you than coffee filtered through metal (don’t ask me why, I can’t remember). For months it languished in a cupboard, unused.
Then I just so happened to fall into a conversation about coffee with an Italian colleague, who spoke lovingly of her own Bialetti moka pot. And I remembered: the slight squeak as you screw the top bit to the bottom bit. The smell that fills the kitchen as it sits on the stove. Opening the lid to wait for the pleasing but faintly obscene moment when the coffee bubbles up through the stem, first in a trickle, then a cascade. Closing the lid when it starts to roil and spit. The lovely bubbling sound that announces it’s ready — the coffee coughing, as my father used to call it.
I sighed wistfully and told my colleague my own seal-less moka pot had been usurped by an Aeropress. ‘I’ve got spare seals at home,’ she said. ‘What size do you need?’
And thus the moka pot came out of retirement. Its first outing reminded me of the very great pleasure I take in making coffee this way. There’s a unique romance and a ritualism to it that the Aeropress, for all its benefits, just doesn’t have. The Aeropress is about the end result, but the moka pot is about the whole process. I savoured the sight of my sturdy, beaten up old friend, the sounds it made and the delicious smells that issued from it and the weight of it in my hand as the coffee poured in an arc into the tiny espresso cup that makes me feel fancy. As I did so I realised: this is a mindfulness practice. Or it could be, if I wanted it to.
I’ve written before (here and here) about meditation, how I appreciate it and pine after its effects but have never managed to build it into my life in a sustained, long-term way. Coffee, on the other hand, I drink every single morning. It’s my one true habit, the only thing I opt in to doing with clockwork regularity. I’ve done it for years and I have no doubt that I will do it forever. So… say I started approaching it with a meditative attitude. Say I were to heed that old self-help adage, start where you are. Say I were to start here.
I made an ambitious resolution: every morning for one week I would give my full and undivided attention to the making and drinking of my coffee. I would wait patiently for it to brew on the stove and then I would pour it into my nifty little espresso cup and I would sit and drink it. I would be present for the duration of this process; I would truly experience it all.
Naturally, I only managed to part-observe this resolution. It turns out to be quite difficult for me to drink my morning coffee without doing other things at the same time. Nevertheless, having thought I was sufficiently appreciative of it already, I’ve realised there are always more layers of appreciation to uncover. Below the upper strata of enjoyment — the taste, the caffeine hit, the moment of pause — are the clink of cup in saucer, the barely-there organza of steam dancing over the surface, the fingernail of reflected light around the edge of the cup that makes the dark liquid look like an eclipse of the sun.
I’m not going to become enlightened by staring into a caffeinated beverage. But I think that perhaps, like smelling clean laundry or watering plants or observing a well-arranged bookshelf, drinking coffee is one of those everyday pleasures that unfurls into a greater, more intricate pleasure when afforded a slightly bigger portion of our overstretched attention.
My coffee comes a long way before it reaches my cup. My coffee pot is an enduring and ingenious piece of design and a stalwart in my life for the last fourteen years. My brain works hard for me and deserves a moment of ease before the day gets going. In paying closer attention, I honour all three.
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“I’m not going to become enlightened by staring into a caffeinated beverage.” But what if THAT’s the only way? Maybe it is. Maybe it’s yours. Maybe it’s mine!!! I have a lovely morning coffee ritual as well though not with a moka pot. I very much enjoyed reading this reflection.
This essay had me from start to finish! I do a pour-over coffee every morning, and make a point of being fully present with the glistening stream of water as I pour it from the electric kettle over the grinds. I loved this, and you are an excellent writer, Kate!