I never got really good results with mine.
Sorry’bout that - of course it depends what you’re aiming for. I think they’re very easy to use, but if we’re making coffee for several people at once, we use OH’s cheap espresso machine and her already ground coffee (she buys decent coffee and has it ground in the shop, but then spoils it by adding milk!)
My tastes have changed over the decades. As an undergrad fifty years ago I had an aluminium stove top percolator, Fortunately I cannot imagine how awful its coffee would taste today. One morning as we got the train into Manchester’s Oxford Rd station, My girlfriend asked, “Are you sure you switched the gas off?” ''Course I did!" was the scornful reply. Fortunately when we got back that evening, the house was still there, but the percolator had become a silver puddle, while the smell of its transformation lingered for weeks.
Over the following years I gradually acquired a full set of Bialettis and still have ,them quietly oxidising in a box. Meanwhile Lavazza, then Lavazza Gold became the coffee of choice. Mid-nineties bought a half price ex-demo Gaggia, then (like many other SF posters?) explored the Algerian Coffee Store. Later found a very good coffee roaster in PE on the Eastern Cape and discovered Ethiopian and Rwandan coffees. When the Gaggi got broken by a visiting Italian artist (to his great embarassment) I went lo-tech with a piston and became aware that subtle African coffees weren’t intended to be blasted in an espresso machine.
Sometime in the noughties hipster little brother in Brighton gave me an Aeropress for Christmas. Was sceptical, not least because I scalded my hand the first time I used it. Nevertheless persevered, discovered the inverted brewing technique and bought better and fresher coffees online from Union Coffee | Speciality Coffee, Fresh from the Roastery (unionroasted.com)
'When we moved to France I discovered a coffee roaster in nearby Figeac who has a wonderful 1950s copper roaster at the front of the shop, so you can observe the actual process. So now I was getting back to basics with a better, fresher coffee a shorter supply chain and a simple coffee machine. Then I read in the C19th book, Our Home in Aveyron: With Studies of Peasant Life and Customs, in Aveyron and the Lot that each household in the next village to us (where the author was visiting) used to roast their coffee beans every evening so they’d be ready for breakfast.
So, not quite back to basics yet!
I use a stove top, like a Baletti but superior. It’s a Milu. German precision engineering. Stainless steel far better than the aluminium Baletti and it comes with a scoop.
