About
About Tazzina
I am Elena. I grew up near Trieste and now live in England, where I have spent years explaining the moka pot to friends. This site is the long version of those explanations.
My grandmother made coffee in a small aluminium pot several times a day for as long as I can remember. She never measured anything; she knew the pot. When I moved abroad I took a pot with me and discovered that nobody around me knew how to use one, and that the instructions on the box, when there were any, left out everything that matters.
I am not a barista and I have no training in coffee. What is here comes from years of daily brewing, a lot of bad cups along the way, and long conversations with family and friends who do it differently. When the honest answer is “it depends”, I give a range.
The name
A tazza is a cup; a tazzina is a little one, the small thick cup coffee is drunk from in Italy. It is also the unit a moka pot is measured in, which seemed reason enough.
The small print
No ads, no accounts, no tracking, nothing to sign up for. The drawings are mine, made because I never managed to photograph a pot well. There are no comments; corrections from people whose grandmothers did it differently are always welcome, and usually end up in the notebook.
On my shelf
- A three-cup aluminium pot, my grandmother’s
- A six-cup pot for guests
- A one-cup pot from my aunt
- A hand grinder with a crank
- A small kitchen scale
- A ring for small pots on a wide burner
- Spare gaskets in a drawer
- Six tazzine that do not match