More crema! More! Moooorreeee!

[Fallingwater]

After lengthy research I bought myself a Bialetti Mokona; Despite the silly shape, it's widely considered one of the best sub-150-euro machines on sale in Italy. Sure enough the coffee tastes good, but... my mom's supermarket-special €60 De Longhi makes a lot more crema. And I mean a lot - mine makes a thin layer that is dispersed quickly, merely putting in sugar and mixing the coffee causes a good amount of it to go away. My mom's crema is in a much thicker layer and stays for a while.

Is there anything I can do to improve the amount of crema mine produces?

 

[shadow745]

What coffee are you using and how fresh is it? This is often the most overlooked part of the espresso equation.

Never knew this machine existed, but a quick search led to this nice review...

Bialetti Mokona

 

[CoffeeGeek]

@shadow745, thanks, that's looks cool, will check that out!

 

[Fallingwater]

I tried using several different kinds of coffee both on the Mokona and on my mom's cheapie. It didn't make a difference in either case - mine always does very little crema, hers always foams up the whole top of the cup.

Edit: that review is wrong in one aspect - the Mokona has a 20 bar pump, not a 15 bar one. Not sure if it makes any difference to the coffee, but I thought I'd mention it for factual accuracy.

And another edit: the one in the review is the old-style Mokona, the new one (which I have) is called Mokona Trio. Possibly the pump pressure is a difference between the two, along with the capsules - the new one uses more expensive aluminium ones. An adapter to keep using the plastic ones from the old Mokona is available fairly cheaply.

 

[kanyevil]

Let the coffee cool a bit first.

-KanyEvil

 

[jeffgedgaud]

I tried using several different kinds of coffee both on the Mokona and on my mom's cheapie. It didn't make a difference in either case - mine always does very little crema, hers always foams up the whole top of the cup.

Edit: that review is wrong in one aspect - the Mokona has a 20 bar pump, not a 15 bar one. Not sure if it makes any difference to the coffee, but I thought I'd mention it for factual accuracy.



And another edit: the one in the review is the old-style Mokona, the new one (which I have) is called Mokona Trio. Possibly the pump pressure is a difference between the two, along with the capsules - the new one uses more expensive aluminium ones. An adapter to keep using the plastic ones from the old Mokona is available fairly cheaply.

Sorry I got that wrong, not sure how that happened bu information on the Mokona was scarce and still is, the Bialetti website doesn't even list these machines. The link to the review was updated with a redirect to the review at my new site as I had accidentally erased the review content when I updated the site a few months ago.

I am trying to get the new Bialetti Mokona Trio to compare it against the older one and see if it works better.


Jeff Gedgaud