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I've been watching videos of people preparing coffee in Moka pots on Youtube and one thing I noticed is that most people seem to initially leave the lid open. However, when I tried this the initial volume of water from the spout erupts out in both directions with such ferocity that it actually leaves the pot entirely and drenches the stove on either direction.

In every video I have seen they seem to have a nice gentle flow that merely dribbles out of the spout and falls down the spout into the chamber. My one is more like a volcano!

I have tried using a lower setting on the hob - there are 6 settings. At the very lowest (#1) it doesn't boil at all. At settings 3-6 I get a huge jet of water as described above. At setting #2 I get a smaller jet of water (that still shoots out of the pot) however on this setting the water seems to stop boiling up from the lower chamber leaving me with half a cup of coffee.

I realise that I can just do this with the lid down but I'm curious as to why this seems to happen. It's a single cup aluminium Moka pot which hadn't been used regularly for maybe a year until the last few weeks when I have been using it regularly. I took it apart earlier today and gave everything a good scrub. Still no difference.

I have tried with the coffee chamber, full, half-full and empty (so just boiling water). It doesn't matter - same result with all. I always fill the water up to just below the valve. I have tried with cold water and warm water. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this behaviour?

Sperick
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1 Answers1

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How's the grind on your coffee? It should be pretty fine, if not the water will move through the puck very quickly. Have you tried using a little finer coffee?

Also recommended method is to use already boiling water, add it to the bottom of the moka pot and use a towel to tighten. This way you don't heat the actual ground coffee and burn it before water even gets up there.

Blaze
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    I bought a new manual burr grinder (Hario mini-slim). I have tried adjusting it from Fine to more Coarse using the nut at the end of it. Regardless of what I set it to I am getting A LOT of silt in the final coffee. It's very frustrating. I don't know if the problem is the grinder or the pot. I have tried the hot-water towel method but it didn't help. – Sperick Oct 03 '19 at 15:48
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    I presume that if I grind the coffee finer that that is only going to make the silt problem worse? – Sperick Oct 03 '19 at 15:49
  • Ok based on your suggestion I made the grind finer and that solved the issue. I have a crazy amount of silt in the coffee but that's a separate issue so I might start a separate question for that. Thank you – Sperick Oct 03 '19 at 16:51