I wanted to try a moka pot, so I went back to this thrift store where I had seen some before, and of course they were all gone.

After a lot of browsing, I came across this thing that looked suspiciously coffee gadget-like, looked up the manufacturer Ilsa, and it turns out to be a Neapolitan coffee maker, 1-2 cups.

Ilsa doesn’t make this particular model anymore. Their current lineup of Neapolitan coffee brewers have long handles or plastic handles.

This is for good reason, because the whole brewer is supposed to go on a stovetop to boil, and the bar handles on mine were quite hot when it reached boiling.

I did watch some videos on how to use this thing, and in one of them, a coffee vendor in Naples has a pot that doesn’t have any handles at all, so he just uses a towel to handle it after heating. That is what I wound up doing.

The way the steel bar handles interlock to keep everything together, and the lack of a long spout as seen on their current models, make me suspect that my brewer was designed to be packed for travel.

Twisting the assembled brewer to interlock the handles does feel quite satisfying…

More pictures:

P.s. These Neapolitan brewers are supposed to have a little dent in the filter’s side.

When installing the filter into the water tank, align the filter dent with a tiny hole in the side of the tank.

This allows boiling water and steam to escape and make a sputtering sound .

This sound signals that the water is boiling, and that the brewer is ready to be flipped.

But does it brew coffee? Yes it does, and very strong coffee by my French press and Aeropress standards. I’m still feeling a bit jittery here in the afternoon.

The taste was nice and smooth with a dark roast grounds, but it turned out less hot than I like, so I’ll have to work on my process…

A few fines came through. Nothing that my regular French press doesn’t also let through.

Edit: After researching this type of brewer, I believe that I am missing the lid.

If you look at the post photo, the top of the brewer, i.e. the bottom of the water tank, is slightly indented all the way around. That is where I believe the lid is supposed to be attached when the brewer is stored.

The lid is not super critical to the brewing process. It is used to cover the serving part with the pouring spout, after the tank and filter have been removed, presumably to retain some temperature.

I suspect that the lack of a defined long spout to put a little paper cone over made this model unpopular with the natives in Napoli too.