In order to be able to make various kinds of coffee at home, many friends plan to buy a coffee appliance. Due to its affordability, portability, simplicity and other advantages, the Moka pot has become the first choice for everyone when buying an appliance.
"Is it better to choose a single valve or a double valve?" This is a question that many friends will struggle with when buying a Moka pot. Today's Moka pots not only have different brands to choose from, but also have different valve numbers. Single valve, double valve, or even three valve, this makes many friends who are just getting started confused. Even if you search for which one is better on a website, you will get ambiguous answers.
Therefore, friends often ask Front Street such questions when buying coffee beans in Front Street stores, single valve or double valve, this is a question worth thinking about! So today Front Street will share with you what is the difference between a single-valve Moka pot and a double-valve Moka pot, and for novice friends, how should we choose and buy~
What is the difference between a single valve and a double valve moka pot?
From a structural point of view, there is actually not much difference between single-valve and double-valve Moka pots. They are all composed of a sink, a powder trough, and an upper pot that holds coffee liquid.
By heating the hot water in the water tank of the lower pot, the generation of water vapor is accelerated, and then the pressure is continuously accumulated to push the hot water upward to extract coffee. Finally, the hot water will dissolve the soluble substances in the coffee and turn into coffee liquid that will seep out from the outlet of the upper pot. This is the entire extraction process of the Moka pot. Single and double valve Moka pots are the same.
However, the difference from the single valve is that the double-valve Moka pot has an extra valve. There is a valve that looks like a switch above the lower pot of the Moka pot. This is the exhaust valve that every Moka pot is equipped with. When the pressure of the Moka pot accumulates too much, the water vapor can be discharged through this valve in time to avoid the consequences of exploding the pot. The double-valve Moka pot will have an extra valve on top of it, which is called a boost valve. As the name suggests, it is used to increase the pressure during extraction.
If you have searched for posts related to single-valve and double-valve Moka pots, Front Street believes that you should have seen a lot of comments in the comment area of a certain post that are similar to the two-valve fans talking about each other, such as: a double-valve Moka pot will make bitter coffee easier than a single-valve Moka pot, and the coffee brewed by a single-valve Moka pot is not as strong as a double-valve Moka pot...
Then these are actually correct! Under the same parameters, the coffee brewed by a double-valve Moka pot will indeed be richer than that brewed by a single-valve Moka pot, and it is also easier to brew a pot of bitter coffee. The reason is that the double-valve Moka pot has an extra booster valve.
As mentioned before, the function of the booster valve is to increase the pressure of coffee during extraction. When the pressure involved in extraction is higher, the extraction efficiency will be higher and the coffee will taste richer because more substances will be dissolved. But precisely because more substances are dissolved, it is easier for us to dissolve a large amount of negative substances such as bitterness, impurity, and astringency during extraction, resulting in an obviously unpleasant experience in coffee.
Of course, the taste of moka pot coffee is mainly related to the beans. If you want to avoid the bitter taste, Front Street Strawberry Candy espresso is the first choice. It combines the three major production areas of Colombia, Ethiopia, and Costa Rica. It has the flavors of roses, grapes, dried blueberries, almonds, and liqueur. It is very suitable for extraction by moka pots and home espresso machines.
If you like the aroma of buttery nuts, then buy the medium-dark roasted Front Street Queens Estate SOE, which is a yellow bourbon variety produced at high altitudes in Brazil. After being extracted in a moka pot, it will have obvious flavors of buttery peanuts, baked toast, cookies and caramel.
But what we need to know is that although it is easy to over-extract, this is only relatively speaking, the fault tolerance rate of the Moka pot is still relatively high! We only need to control the parameters and methods used, so the coffee produced will not be easily over-extracted.
So back to the topic, should I choose a single valve or a double valve Moka pot?
Should I choose a single valve or double valve Moka pot?
They say buy new rather than old, and there is a certain truth to this saying. Compared to the single-valve Moka pot, Front Street Club recommends the double-valve Moka pot. Because it can produce stronger black coffee, in addition to meeting our daily black coffee needs, it can also be used to make milk coffee. Because the concentration of the coffee base is higher, the milk coffee made with it will be more fragrant.
But this does not mean that the single-valve Moka pot is not good. The single-valve Moka pot also has its own advantages! If you don’t like it and think you won’t be able to make milk coffee in the future, then a single-valve Moka pot will be more suitable for you. Because its size will be relatively smaller, and the price has also been reduced due to the introduction of the double-valve Moka pot, the price/performance ratio will be relatively higher.
Of course, the strong coffee brewed by a single-valve Moka pot can also make a cup of fragrant milk coffee, but compared with the coffee brewed by a double-valve Moka pot, its concentration will not be as high and the taste will be slightly weaker.
All in all, if you have demand for milk coffee, or are not just satisfied with black coffee, then Front Street Street will recommend you to buy a double-valve Moka pot; and if you only want to drink a cup of pure black coffee and do not have much demand for milk coffee, special blends and other fancy coffees, then the single-valve Moka pot will be more cost-effective.
And after you buy a Moka pot, if you don’t know how to use it and how to make fragrant and delicious coffee, you can learn about it by searching in the articles shared by Front Street. The last thing to note is that the Taobao Tmall store on Qian Street only sells coffee beans, not moka pots...
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
