DELONGHI EMK6 for Authentic Italian Espresso, 6 Cups, One Size, Stainless Steel,

It’s perfect

This Delonghi electric moka pot rocks the house period. This is coming from someone who is big into espresso, starting out on moka pots in college, moving to vibe pumps and levers later on. I still use my moka pots at home occasionally to crank out the huge batch of espresso needed for tiramisu rather than make like twelve espressos on a real espresso machine. Anyway about this guy. I just started working in an office where there is no coffee machine!?!?!? Whaaaat? Yeah, I’ve never seen one w/o coffee either until now. The other guys run out to one of the three or four cafes located within a block our two of our office to snag some joe. Now they ain’t big coffee drinkers, usually one cup in the morning and maybe one in the afternoon. I am more used to drinking maybe four or five cups throughout the day plus the two doubles at home in the morning. After hitting up the cafes a few times and spending $3 on double espressos, I figured that I was going to be in the poor house before bowl season if I kept that up so I decided to become self sufficient at the office in matter of the roasted bean.

I was initially looking at espresso machines. My criteria were: small (couldn’t take up too much space on my desk), easy to clean (no kitchen in office, have to rinse out in bathroom sink), not to messy loading in coffee since it is on my desk, and inexpensive. Well most of the espresso machines were big and expensive. I didn’t want to pay $400 on a Gaggia or $600 for a La Pavoni for the office, plus they are big and messy but I was going to use the espresso pods to make things cleaner and easier. Still the expense and size of even the cheapest machines (about $250 refurbed) were looking bad. Then a light went off and I thought about moka and wondered if they made an electric moka pot.

Well looky what we got here… …practically made to order. This thing is dang near perfect ladies and gents. Diminutive, low key, cheap, easy to clean in bathroom sink, and caffe eccellente. The only slight negative is that since it doesn’t use pods you have to use your own coffee which is good economically but a little messy when loading. I just load it on top of a sheet a paper and toss the paper when done. That is it other than that this machine rocks the heezy.

As to the operation of the machine, so simple and easy with a few nice touches. The coffee chamber holds enough coffee for six demitasses of espresso. I used it this way the first few times but never drank all of the coffee soon enough. Delonghi also gives you a little metal disc which effectively cuts the coffee chamber in half so you can make three demitasses at a time (there are markings in the water chamber to let you know how much to fill for a 3 shot brew). At first I thought that the disc was a gimmick and the coffee would turn out crappy but I gave it a try and badabing it tasted just like full 6 brew. Now I am in business.

Now on to to cup size. The 3 shot brew yielded basically two double espressos. I’ve had the Nuova Point espresso and cappucino cups for decades and that is what I brought to the office. For a while there I just used the espresso cup and would have two full cups per three shot brew. That was too much trouble so now I just pour the whole 3-shot brew into a cappucino cup and it fills it nicely.

Some operational details, the machine after it brews, will stay on for half an hour to keep things warm. There is a mechanical switch on the base that turns off the heat once you lift up the pot to pour your coffee. You could just hit the switch again for another 30min of heat if you want. Brewing time, here is where it gets phenomenal, it only takes about two minutes to crank out a pot. This is super fast and when I make moka on the stove it usually takes about twice as long. It totally surprises you how fast it is. Having the see through top is a nice touch so that you can see when it is done, might not be as solid as the regular full aluminum top but it takes the guesswork out of whether it is done or not, just be a little more careful. As far as clean up, after it cools down, unscrew it holding on to the bottom of the pot and the metal at the base of the top section. Rinse out the bottom, the coffee holder, the top of the upper section and the bottom side of the top section making sure to clean the gasket of stray grinds. That is it.

Final thoughts, to those jerks who dis moka coffee, go screw. Those anal retentives deserve to wallow in their misery and I hope they end up married to hoarders. Sure the coffee isn’t the exact same as full fledged 9-bar, big ol’, $600, espresso machine. This thing is only like $60 or so and makes legit moka. For me, moka is real good. Way better than the regular office coffee that I had been drinking for years simply because it was available. On the coffee scale of things, regular coffee is like Pop Warner, Moka is like NCAA Football in the SEC, and a Cimbali, Gaggia or Pavoni are like NFL Football with the Cimbali being the Champion New Orleans Saints. Basically if the high dollar machines are like 100% espresso, the moka pots like this one are maybe 80-85% espresso which is still leagues better than drip and swill and pretty darned close to the real thing. If you drink lattes or add cream to moka, I’d say that it is practically indistinguishable from a latte made with real 100% espresso and forget about tiramisu. In the cake no one can tell the difference.

One more thing. Bialetti makes an electric mukka I see that costs around a Benjamin or so. For those cappucino lovers the Mukka may be the one to get. I bought a stovetop for a girlfriend once who loved cappucino but didn’t need a full sized expensive machine. The cappa’s were really good with it. There was a switch to make regular moka or a latte if you weren’t doing the cappucino thang. I opted for the Delonghi since I only really drink espresso and save the milk for chicks at parties and Sunday mornings.

Enjoy your moka pot and don’t be ashamed. This Delonghi electric one is really nice and works great anywhere, no stove required!!!

The best in its category of coffee makers. It makes moka coffee not espresso! Easy to use and safe. I used to have one before I heated on the stove but it worth for me the extra money I spent on this one and I don’t have to monitor. Peace of mind and good coffee.

Very simple to use, easy to clean and provides a quick cup of coffee

It’s definitely not easy to clean. You can barely fit your hand in the base to clean with a sponge. I’ve given up on that and just give it a rinse. But left over coffee does end up in the base so it smells like coffee.

The coffee tastes fine but there’s room for improvement. Instructions aren’t clear on how much water and coffee to put in. I get that this isn’t a serious thing but coffee makers like to weigh their input and output, I don’t see why that wouldn’t apply here.

I might recommend this to others. It’s probably easier to use than a regular Moka pot. But I’ve gone back to pour over coffee and if I could return this I would.

It leaked the first time I used it but not after that. Probably just have to make sure it’s screwed together really tight.

Edit: it’s been many months and I want to add to this review. I’m actually a bit more pleased with this product than I was when I left the initial review. As someone who went down the espresso rabbit hole and then moved on from espresso, it’s nice to have a moka pot like this to make some stronger coffee compared to pour over and drip. It definitely adds some variety. Combining the coffee from this moka pot with some heated and frothed milk makes a nice drink reminiscent of one an espresso machine can produce. With that said, it is a pain to clean and I’ve given up on really cleaning the base. I give it a prince and scrub it with my finger because frankly that’s all I can do.

The Alicia is a pretty net design for a coffee maker. I’m happy to see such electric moka pots on the market. I’ve always wanted a moka pot to use at the office, where there is no stove, so I decided to give the Alicia a try. Unfortunately, overall, I’m disappointed.

The Alicia does make good coffee. I want to make that clear first. It’s simple to operate as well. Fill the basket with about 22g of coffee (depending on roast), fill the bottom reservoir with water, then turn it on and wait for it to slow down the hissing/bubbling. The coffee comes out consistently with a mellow (but slightly burnt) flavor, which isn’t bad for a gadget like this.

But the product is suffering from some design problems that inhibit its potential.

1) There’s no thermostat. The electric heater boils the water, which isn’t good for a moka pot. Brews are too fast by comparison. You cannot do “low and slow” with this device like you would on a stove unless you babysit the unit and constantly flip the switch on and off to control the release of heat. If you don’t do this, the coffee comes out tasting a little burnt. Bummer. For comparison, this device, once heating the water, finishes a brew in about twenty seconds, which is too fast. Ideally with a moka pot you want that steam time to span several minutes. Low and slow.

2) Like a stovetop moka pot, there is no insulation around the bottom metal part of the pot. This is just crazy to me given this is an electric device. The lack of insulation around the bottom of the pot means you can’t easily unscrew the pot when it’s done brewing to dump out the coffee. So if you want to brew more than pot, you either need to wait for it to cool down to handle it safely or else come up with clever and potentially dangerous ways of unscrewing the two pieces (like running it under cold water to cool it down quickly, though I don’t know if doing this can damage the electrical contacts on the kettle).

3) It’s just not very big. Like with a normal moka pot, you can somewhat control the amount of coffee this produces by starting with more or less water. However, this one can’t hold very much water. This renders it incapable of brewing more than about eight ounces per brew. Comparatively, when I brew with an Aeropress, I use almost double the amount of coffee and produce a coffee concentrate more than twice as strong for large, sixteen to eighteen ounce cups. This was a bummer. It just can’t match the capacity of the Aeropress. You can view this either as, “It makes small cups,” or as, “It makes weak coffee.” Expect ~8 ounce cups if you prefer relatively strong coffee.

4) Fines are very small coffee grinds (like dust) that are produced when grinding coffee beans. They are caused by manufacturing inconsistencies in grinding mechanisms and the naturally chaotic process of grinding–that is, crunching beans down to small pieces. Any grinder will produce fines, and this pot, like a stovepot moka pot, lacks a filter fine enough to catch fines. When you combine this with the lack of temperature regulation on the unit, the excessively hot water ends up generating too much steam. This causes too much pressure inside the unit and pushes the fines in the coffee grounds up through the fountain. You’ll get various amounts of gunk in every cup. With a stovetop moka pot, you would avoid fines by using low heat and going slow so as not to produce too much pressure, but accomplishing that with this brewer requires a very manual process.

5) Parts of it are pretty inaccessible for cleaning. Particularly the top, plastic park. The metal base of the fountain creates a small space between the perimeter of the base and the perimeter of the outer wall of the pitcher. Coffee gets in that space when you brew, but there’s not a good way to get into that space for cleaning. Also the fountain. You’d need a special cleaning brush, like a pipe brush or a small bottle brush, to get in there. Since the filter in this unit is metal and not super fine, oils in the ground up coffee beans will be extracted during brewing and deposited on the walls of the brewer where coffee touches. Over time, those oils go rancid. Rancid oil is the main reason why brewed coffee at many restaurants tastes absolutely terrible. They don’t clean their machines well. This machine is virtually impossible to clean well, and over time, that will negatively affect the taste of the coffee it makes.

Overall, this device is significantly more complicated to operate than the Aeropress and fails to produce even equal quality results. Bummer. It was a fun experiment, but I won’t be using this and can’t recommend it for really any use case except novelty.