LUXHAUS Moka Pot – 6 Cup Stovetop Espresso Maker – 100% Stainless Steel Italian and Cuban Mocha Coffee Maker

There are so many subtleties using a moka pot reviews can vary due to people not having the skills required to make a great cup of coffee, these little coffee makers are not necessarily user-friendly. By making sure you follow the directions and use boiling water in the base, not packing down the coffee in the basket, using a courser rather than a finer grind, and taking your time, you will produce a fantastic cup of coffee. This particular design and brand is the epitome of this type of coffee maker and it’s beautifully executed and a lifelong piece of equipment that will last for years and years. Great. value fore a truly excellent product.

Summary: A pretty good quality product, but subtle design aspects make this item less safe than it could be. I’d recommend shelling out the extra $15 for the Bialetti Venus 10-cup—especially for a household with small kids or pets underfoot. (If you just want the safety concerns, scroll down…I’ve marked them!)

I have a Bialletti 6-cup that I believe is an earlier version of or the immediate precursor to Bialetti’s current Venus line. Since we use it for a strong morning mug of coffee rather than an espresso (I have NOT tried a finer espresso ground in this product), those six espresso-sized portions just weren’t cutting it for our three-person household. I went looking for a larger alternative and—after reading MANY reviews—decided to take a chance on this LuxHaus 9-cup moka pot, which was almost 30% less expensive than the 10-cup Bialetti Venus. The LuxHaus is good enough that I’m not going to send it back for the Amazon returns department to dump in a landfill somewhere, but I still wish I had bought the Bialetti.

Let me start with the positives: this seems like a well-constructed item made from quality materials that will withstand years of brewing. I love the addition of the spring on the bottom of the “funnel”/coffee basket. Having the top of the basket floating a couple of millimeters above the rim of the water container is super convenient. No more gently easing it out with my fingernails while trying not to spill wet or dry grounds. Every brand should adopt this! The manufacturer also did a good job with the angle and shape of the handle. I haven’t run into the issue I have with the smaller, older Bialletti model I own, where the handle drops straight down along the coffee reservoir and gets uncomfortably hot from proximity to the stove burner. (It does look like Bialetti fixed that on the current Venus, btw.)

****BEGIN SAFETY SECTION****

Now for the issues, which are primarily related to lid/spout design: The Bialetti, as you can see from my comparison photos, has a recessed lid that sits about a centimeter below the top of the coffee reservoir. There’s no pour spout at all, and the finished coffee goes through a small cutout in the lid and over the angled rim. The LuxHaus, in contrast, has a completely circular lid that sits just on top of the coffee reservoir, and the coffee comes out through a built-in pour spout that begins pretty much right at the final height to which the finished coffee reaches if you brew at maximum volume capacity. Somewhat counterintuitively, the very first cup of coffee from a full reservoir flows with perfect control over the Bialetti’s rim, even into a short mug sitting on the counter; the coffee in the LuxHaus, on the other hand, tends to splash out eagerly unless you pour very carefully and deliberately. It’s enough of an issue that, when the reservoir is totally full, I generally take the moka pot and cup over to the sink AND get the cup as close to the spout as possible before pouring. Perhaps more importantly, since the LuxHaus lid merely rests across the very top of the reservoir, it doesn’t really help contain any spillover if you accidentally slosh the coffee while you’re taking it off of the stove and moving it to the sink, counter, or table to pour. I’m not saying this thing is significantly more dangerous than its Bialetti counterpart, but the potential for hot coffee to splash over your hand (or onto a toddler’s head!) definitely seems higher.

****END SAFETY SECTION****

Aside from safety, the LuxHaus lid design creates a couple of additional drawbacks: First of all, even though the lid and it’s attachment point both seem solid, they’re undoubtedly the weakest point in the product from a structural standpoint. On the Bialetti, I can freely grasp the top of the reservoir to untwist it from the base—thus keeping my hand as far as it can get from the hottest part of the system, if I want to empty and reuse it without waiting for it to cool completely, and also avoiding any stress on the handle (which is the second weakest structural point on either product). I’m very hesitant to do the same thing on the LuxHaus, because I would also be grabbing and twisting the lid in a way that puts a stress on the attachment point which I suspect it wasn’t designed for and won’t withstand over the long term. And I’m not going to use the handle for leverage, due to the same concerns. So that leaves me awkwardly grasping, releasing, and re-grasping the main body of the reservoir UNDER the handle to unscrew it from the base…Annoying. Secondly, the larger radius of the LuxHaus lid—because it’s covering a larger cross section of reservoir than the Bialetti—leaves it heavier and therefore floppier (and louder!) during cleaning…That’s a fairly minor annoyance, though, that I probably wouldn’t have noticed at all except in comparison to my Bialetti.

For those who aren’t worried about the safety aspect and just care about whether it makes a decent cup of coffee, our household has noticed that the metal basket seems to filter out fewer of the grounds compared to the Bialetti. There’s noticeably more “sludge” in the bottom of the reservoir/cups after the coffee’s been poured/drunk. How that affects your enjoyment of the resulting brew will be a matter of personal preference. We quickly got used to the difference in taste; it might be a bigger issue for someone who actually uses a fine espresso ground.

In conclusion, still a four-star product that I’d probably be perfectly happy with if I didn’t have the Bialetti to compare it to. If you have the extra $15, go with the Bialetti; if that’s a stretch for your budget, you can probably buy the LuxHaus with confidence.

Almost a month I was looking for a good quality coffee maker. Now I am very disappointed how the stainless coffee maker could be rusty and black inside and outside in a month of use. Just wasted money.

The LuxHaus has proven to be an ideal means of making our daily expresso coffee and I am pleased that it is stainless steel and not aluminium. However it should advertised as only a two cup not three unless of course someone is thinking of smaller coffee cups used years ago.