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Get this in the hands of James Hoffman, I’d love to hear his take on it
by ivanvanderbyl 2y ago
Get this in the hands of James Hoffman, I’d love to hear his take on it
- simonjgreen 2y agoIt’s fascinating how he has become to coffee as MKBHD has to technology. The kingmaker of coffee gear.
- petepete 2y agoThankfully it's quite difficult to grind and brew coffee dangerously.
- tpm 2y agoNot really, moka pots are known to explode.
- GTP 2y agoSource? I'm from Italy, where everybody's using them, but never heard of a single one exploding. Maybe you can find an isolated case, but I'm confident it's extremely rare. There's a safety valve to release pressure after all, and if you use the Moka correctly the valve never has to engage.
- K0balt 2y agoI’m in the Dominican Republic, and moka pots are 99 percent of the market here as well. Everyone warns me about moka pots exploding, but I’ve never met anyone (15 years here now) that knows of one first hand that actually exploded. But everyone is terrified of mokasplosion. I’ll admit, the prospect of a pressurized vessel of boiling water is a potent reminder for precautionary thinking.
- GTP 2y agoMinor nitpick here, but it's a fact I found interesting when I heard about it. The water inside a Moka doesn't boil, you can indeed observe that the water coming out from the top isn't boiling. What happens is that the air that is left inside the bottom chamber expands due to the heat, pushing the water upwards.
- K0balt 2y agoI think YMMV with this. The custom where I am at is to load the moka pot with a grind and quantity that produces a significant barrier to the flow of water. The alert that the brew is finished is the sound of the boiling hot water and steam spraying the coffee through the standpipe into the upper chamber, and it is absolutely under steam pressure, I’d say around 5 to 10 psi. When the liquid water is low enough that it doesn’t get picked up by the lower tube, you get a significant outflow of pure steam hissing through the standpipe nozzle, and then it’s quiet, as the bottom chamber is now completely dry, as are the grounds when you dump them out. It could be that if you use a coarser grind or less coffee than is customary here, flow restriction does not occur, and the pressure of the heated air and water vapor is enough to push out all of the water through the coffee without reaching 100c (should only take about 1/6 psi for a flow overcoming gravity to that height) but if you used that method here your coffee would fall under heavy criticism. The violence with which the flow jets into the upper chamber and the volume and aroma of the steam serves somewhat as a social signal as to the “quality” of the coffee, so there is a strong incentive to heavily load the pots here. Legends of exploding pots are common, as is precautionary disposal of pots whose threads have become excessively worn. But I still have no first hand knowledge of anyone witnessing an explosion or even an over pressure venting event (there is a small pressure relief valve on the side of the vessel)…. So I suspect that the risk is not that high.
- GTP 2y agoInteresting, the different way we use mochas can explain why you have stories about explosions: our way is definitely putting less stress on mochas, which end up lasting for decades without the need to be replaced. We use coffee that is specifically ground for mochas, and we fill the chamber with water up until just below the valve (or, at the very limit, the water reaches half the valve). You still hear a sound when the coffee is ready, but it is caused by little sprays of coffee mixed with hot air, not steam.
- tpm 2y agoWell my wife had one and it exploded (and it was Italian, Bialetti I think), we have several friends with explosions etc. It's of course possible that Italians use it properly and we don't, but I'm not an expert in this topic, so I just stay away from them.
- GTP 2y agoThis is unexpected to me: I would have assumed that, even if you did something wrong, the valve would have prevented an explosion. I can understand a single valve going bad, but if this happened to many of your friends there might be something going on there.
- scarfaceneo 2y agoMKBHD is the last person I’d go to for anything tech related. He, like many others, do little more than just read spec sheets. I like his car related content though, reckless driving notwithstanding
- presentation 2y agoI find his channel useful just for getting an opinion from a end-user perspective of what a product is like; that's a legitimate opinion, not every data point needs to be a deep dive into the manufacturing process of a particular gadget.
- f1shy 2y agoIs there a BOLTR for general tech? For Instruments there is evvlog… but general tech?
- bubblethink 2y agoI have found Mr. Mobile (Michael Fisher) to be quite good. He does some sort of a road trip or excursion as a real world tech review and also covers a lot of old and quirky hardware.
- TheSpiceIsLife 2y agoAlec Watson of Technology Connections is my favourite for technology in general.
- kisonecat 2y agoHe has made me extremely enthusiastic for heat pumps.
- VTimofeenko 2y agoMe too, though it turns out certain types of houses don't support just replacing furnace with a central heat pump. No free lunch in thermodynamics :(
- tschwimmer 2y agoUnlike MKBHD, James Hoffman has some slightly more objective credibility. He won some barista competitions about 15 years ago. He's been involved in the coffee industry (outside of being a content creator) for most of his life. As far as I know about Marques, his main qualification is that he was just relatively early to the tech review game. That is not to say that I personally take all or most of Hoffman's suggestions at face value. It's abundantly clear that the level of nuance he considers in coffee is not relevant to me. But I do tend to see him applying a much more objective level of rigor to his reviews than many other content creators.
- VeejayRampay 2y agohe's also fair, often trashes big brands when their products are mediocre I have great respect for his integrity and body of work
- krowek 2y agoHe's also deleted some of his videos because they had mentions to brands or companies with wrong practices (yes, plain wrong). Also has very good books. So, totally not the average youtuber/content creator out there.
- dogboat 2y agoWhen he trashed the aldi espresso machine I think he was unfair. The main issues with it are probably the same issues you get on a Breville until you tune the OPV and get a seperate grinder. That said I dont think he is the screwdriver to espresso machine type.
- marcellus23 2y ago> That said I dont think he is the screwdriver to espresso machine type. He's mentioned modding espresso machines many times in his videos, and brings it up often during reviews.
- hunter2_ 2y agoI've got a Bambino Plus and so far the only customizations are a bottomless portafilter, a huge single wall basket (IMS), programming the flow presets for a good ratio by weight in/out, and optimizing the grind specifically for 30s duration. I'll have to look into your OPV suggestion; anything else?
- deanc 2y agoRegarding grinders there's actually someone else who is considered the kingmaker: Lance Hedrick [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/@LanceHedrick/videos https://www.youtube.com/@LanceHedrick/videos
- basedrum 2y agoWho is mkbhd?
- criddell 2y agoProduct reviewer with a very popular YouTube channel.
- peterlada 2y agoSt James, the protector saint of all things covfefe.
- xyst 2y agomkbhd over the years has had some really bad takes on tech. I haven’t used his channel for quite awhile. I would say his success is largely due to being among the first to the market in tech reviews and having (at the time) better production quality.
- rocqua 2y agoHe wouldn't take it. He'll review it after it's been on the market for about half a year, without any money. Lance hedrick is also a decently respected voice who does usually take sponsored reviews, whilst being honest.
- jedimastert 2y agoI think Lance Hedrick would like this a lot. I bet he would experiment with changing the pressure during the brewing process
- xyst 2y agoI agree here. Given the bespoke design, I would love to see a comparison with other machines.