Moka Pot vs Pour-Over: Which Brews Better? [Comparison]

What Is A Moka Pot?

This might not be familiar to you if you live outside of Europe and Latin America, where this device is well-known and still commonly used even to this day.

The Moka Pot is a stovetop coffee maker. It’s essentially a pot that you place on an open fire to brew coffee.

When Was The Moka Pot Invented?

Invented in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, the Moka Pot’s beautiful Art Deco design and ability to brew bold coffee revolutionized the coffee-making routine of many households in Italy and beyond.

The Moka Pot has 3 main compartments:

• The first chamber – the boiler which comes with a safety valve;
• The second chamber – the filter basket with a filter lid to keep the coffee grounds in place and a rubber gasket to keep everything properly sealed;
• The third chamber – the kettle AKA Moka Pot coffee collector after it’s brewed.

To make espresso-like coffee using the Moka Pot, water in the first chamber will be heated.

As you can see from the previous section detailing how exactly the brewing process goes, when making coffee using Moka Pots, pressure is involved, which makes it possible to produce such concentrated coffee that the coffee lovers adore.

In case you forgot, the espresso machine also utilizes high pressure to shoot water through the ground coffee bed, creating the deliciously intense coffee taste and heavy body that’s become one of Italian’s finest.

Generally, you can make good coffee with the Bialetti Moka Pot using any type of coffee beans.

But, this coffee brewing device originally came from Italy where people celebrate it as part of their rich coffee culture and still use it frequently to this day.

To get the final cup to taste closest to espresso, use darker roasts or at least a medium. They tend to be oilier and have a bolder and richer flavor and lower acidity.

But, don’t be afraid to experiment if you love the complexities and brightness in flavors that light roasts offer.

But it can be as challenging as pulling espresso shots using lightly roasted beans. It can work but it takes “work” to get there.

If you didn’t miss my Ultimate Coffee Grind Chart, you’d learn that the Moka Pot calls for a medium-fine grind, which is finer than French Press coffee, the classic black drip, and all of your exes.

The size should be comparable to table salt, but should still be slightly coarser than the ground coffee for espresso brewing methods. Too fine of a grind size can lead to over-extraction more easily and even clogging in the filter.

• Step 1: Add water to the first chamber. Put the filter basket into place before adding coffee grinds without tamping. Screw the third chamber on top.
• Step 2: Place the Moka Pot on a stovetop at medium-low or medium heat to start brewing coffee.
• Step 3: When you hear a sputtering or hissing sound, remove the heat as the device is wrapping up pushing coffee into the third chamber and forming coffee foam. Let it sit for around 3 more minutes before serving.

What Is Pour-Over Coffee?

Pour-Over is another popular manual coffee-making method.

It’s an infusion method that involves a constant flow of hot water through the grounds bed on a paper filter to extract coffee.

You can probably envision the process from the name alone.

Chemex is a beautifully designed Pour-Over brewer that’s also popular among the engineering and artistic crowd.

You must have caught sight of this hourglass-shaped beaker at coffee shops. Around the funnel-like narrow neck, Chemex wears a thick wooden collar that’s tied loosely with a leather tie/thong.

Since the whole device is made of borosilicate glass, the collar design also contributes functional benefits (for ease of handling) rather than just pure aesthetics.

What’s So Special About Chemex?

As I’ve mentioned, the whole piece is made of glass, so you don’t have to worry about unwanted flavor transfer from the coffee maker’s material to the extraction.

What’s more, the Chemex doesn’t utilize your regular paper filter.

It requires a special type called bonded filter that’s a lot thicker to do the job better, including filtering out the bitter taste, unfavorable oils, and stray grounds.

This ultimately results in the cleanest cup of coffee you ever get to taste, if done right.

Hario V60 is a Japanese dripper cone that’s well-known for its V-shaped and precisely 60-degree angled conical structure.

Other than that, the V60 also comes with distinguished spiral ribs along the cone that are not only uniquely eye-catching but also assist the coffee extraction process.

Hario V60 also utilizes paper filters when brewing coffee following the Pour-Over method, so the whole process is pretty similar to Chemex and other Pour-Over devices.

What’s So Special About Hario V60?

Unlike a trapezoid dripper, the elegant 60-degree conical design lengthens the time it takes water to flow for a more thorough extraction of coffee compounds.

What’s more, the spiral ribs help the device and the paper filter “social distance” from each other, giving more room for the wet grounds to expand and release gas, which is what we often refer to as a “coffee bloom“.

Coffee Grounds

Type

Generally, any type of beans can be used to brew Pour-Over coffee.

But keep in mind that the Pour-Over method is especially great at highlighting the nuanced and exotic flavors like high-quality single-origin beans that the coffee snobs love.

While coffee blends may work as well, all the unique flavors of different types when mixed likely mellow out and lose their distinct characteristics.

Water

The coffee-to-water ratio for the Pour-Over method is closer to the Golden Ratio I mentioned earlier – 1:17. You can also adjust the ratio to better fit your personal preference. For a strong taste, go for 1:15 instead.

You need to heat water in advance so that it reaches the optimal water temperature to brew coffee, around 195 – 205 degrees Fahrenheit (91 – 96 degrees Celsius).

Here are general instructions to pull off Pour-Over coffee.

• Step 1: Fold the paper filter and put it in place. Pour some hot water to soak the filter and preheat the coffee maker before discarding it.
• Step 2: Add ground coffee to the filter. Pour enough water over the ground bed to soak it. Wait around 30 seconds to let it bloom.
• Step 3: Slowly pour the rest of the water over the grounds. You can do pulse pouring by pouring only a small amount of water at a time.

Brew Process

One of the key differences also lies in the process of producing the brew.

On a Chemex or Hario V60, water is being poured down over the grounds bed to infuse them before filtering the extraction with a paper filter.

The result is a cup of brew that’s clean, bright, light, and smooth.

The Moka Pot, however, involves enough pressure to push the water through the grounds from the bottom chamber to the top.

The extracted coffee only goes through a metal filter, so all of the rich coffee oils and dark sediments still make their way through.

Portability

The Moka Pot is definitely portable. Its small size and aluminum material should make a good traveling buddy on your camping trips.

You can look for a single-cup size or 3-cup for ease of handling.

It also made it to my list of the best camping coffee makers in the market.