The point about the newer Bialettis being cheaper is absolutely true. My mother has an old (>10 years) Moka that feels heavy and sturdy. A couple of years ago, after accidentally leaving it on the stove for too long, the bottom chamber and the filter basket got a permanent burnt coffee taste, and we bought a new one to replace it. That one was lighter and came with a significant thinner filter basket, which I also attributed to either being counterfeit or just they shipping cheaper versions of the product to Brazil.
Then, a couple of months ago, I was on vacation in Italy and decided to get a brand new one as a gift, directly from an official Bialetti store. To my surprise, the Mokas in the store felt exactly like the lower-quality one we had bought in Brazil. I didn't even buy the gift.
You see a similar thing with the glass chemex. There is a healthy market on eBay for pre-1980 models that were hand blown from great quality glass. My wife got me one for a gift and the difference in feel is remarkable. New ones feel fragile, this feels solid and strong. I’ve broken two of the newer versions and it’s dangerous. The old one is still standing strong in my house, surviving trips in my RV, and generally doing it’s job. I’m sure I sound like a curmudgeon but they don’t make stuff like they used to
I am aware of those, but from what I understand the pre-80s ones are still better. I’m sure given a little time someone who is chemex expert will chime in and give a definitive comment.
James Hoffman gives a good history of Bialetti here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upgQsA5kLAk including their sale to Faema and later to a cookware manufacturer, their numerous brushes with bankruptcy, and the stiff competition they've gotten from... even in Italy... pod machines.
Bialetti has been on its last leg since 2015. They're drowning in debt and (in the best case scenario) are headed toward restructuring soon; in any case their future's not looking bright.
I'm not sure about the details. IMHO a contributing factor is that they're a company historically centered around manufacturing nearly indestructible appliances (even the newer mokas, however flimsier, don't break easily); once the market was saturated with the flagship product, there's only so much profit they could squeeze out of selling accessories and the like.
I don't know if this is the ideal takeaway. Otherwise, we should all prioritize making our products flimsier and more expensive.
I think it's just a straightforward failure of creativity — or, even more plainly, a failure to understand their customer. They had a great product, which led to a loyal following — why not expand into adjacent markets?
The cruel irony is that their product was related to something that's extremely disposable. Why not get into the business of coffee beans? Why not partner with interesting coffee growers? Subscription businesses have been huge for decades, now — why not offer consumers the ability to buy an espresso bean subscription to go with their Mokapot, thereby generating a reliable recurring revenue stream?
A glimpse at their Wikipedia page [1] suggests they never even tried to branch out from the small, comfortable niche of cookware.
> Otherwise, we should all prioritize making our products flimsier and more expensive.
It's the view of many that this is indeed what most companies prioritize — I'm not saying it's true, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly fringe opinion. It's in the vein of enshittification.
Also, might I ask how you inserted that em-dash? A keyboard shortcut? It's interesting to see fancy typography online.
One can look up the utf8 character for different typographical characters and copy and paste them in. On macOS at least, there is a keyboard shortcut for "emojis" (Cntl+Cmd+Space) and a little window shows up where you can search for emojis by name, and typographical characters by name (such as "em dash"). —pjh
Bring up the keyboard viewer widget on macOS and it will show you a live preview of what each key is... you can hold down the modifiers to see how the keys change.
Brand protection may be one reason. Branding with a supplier who messes up in the coffee bean arena would hurt their reputation. Some business will throw ideas out and see what fits and maybe get a second really good product. Getting another product and being successful is hard enough which is why you see larger companies buying out others. It’s easier to buy and get a successful product from and existing than branching out and hitting another success.
But even if the market is saturated... is it really? I'm just an armchair expert in this case, but as far as I'm aware, there's not a coffee maker yet in every house; they will eventually break if overheated for example (I broke mine's rubber seal by putting it on the stove without water); and there's plenty of untapped markets out there yet.
That said, one person may buy one coffee maker and never need another one for the next decade or two, or pass it on to their children if it's really good. So what another comment said, them expanding into selling coffee as well for example, sounds like an idea.
If the rubber seal is damaged, you can simply replace it, you don't need to buy a new coffee maker. When people mention that newer coffee makers are cheaper and lower-quality, that's probably Bialetti trying to reach a larger market. I guess lots of people bought one and rarely if ever used it (I think even I have one somewhere, but don't ask me where).
As for expanding into selling coffee: that's natural for systems like Senseo or Nespresso, where you have custom pads/pods which you insert into the machine (not sure if third-party pad/pod makers have to pay a license fee to the "system provider"?), but Bialetti coffee makers work with any ground coffee. Might be an idea nevertheless, but not sure about the odds of success - I imagine most Italians already have their favorite brand of coffee and wouldn't suddenly switch to "Bialetti Coffee" just because they say it works best with their machines.
Not really, it remains true even when you take competition into account. Also, the rest of the industry isn't really playing the same game: all other companies producing moka pots are vastly more diversified. You have e.g. Alessi which fills the design-oriented niche (and has tons of other products), or the countless crummy knock-off factories which churn out all sorts of trash and just happen to machine moka pots once in a while. But only Bialetti kept all its eggs in one basket (at least until it was too late).
their quality went way downhill and they shipped production overseas. I would love to have a nice bialetti moka express or a stainless version. i bought one probs 8 or 9 yrs ago, and it wasn't long before the tin lining separated, and the overall quality was crap. nothing like my mothers or any others I had used when i was introduced to them in italy. so i bought an alessi stainless steel made in italy pot at like 5x the price, and never looked back. but do i think a well built bialetti would be as good or better, they just dont make them well anymore…
I see a lot of Bialetti-branded cookware at local supermarkets. Things like nonstick frying pans. I actually bought one on a trip once when I needed a pan, and it's pretty good.
For one thing, things like Aeropress, Nespresso/Keurig, and cheaper/better home espresso and bean-to-cup coffee machines came along. People don't necessarily need to muck around with a Moka pot to make quality coffee at home any more.
And if you really do want a Moka pot, there's a lot of cheaper Chinese competitors now that look the part and actually have reasonable quality.
Such a cool idea, and attractive images. However I’m kind of disappointed they mostly picked things that are fairly simple, transparent or openable, and look exactly the way you’d expect them to inside. I assume some combination of cost & size drove this.
A vintage espresso machine with 1 group head would be more novel, for example.
Lumafield scanned a 1960s flip flop module for me, to help reverse engineer some vintage NASA hardware. The module contained a bunch of resistors, transistors, capacitors, and diodes, encased in a 13-pin plastic package. These modules had various functions and were used like integrated circuits, but made from discrete components in the pre-IC time. With the Lumafield scans, I could reverse-engineer the circuitry.
It really is, he is equally impressed and disgusted with this one, a rare combination. Most impressively built stuff isn't so wasteful. And most useless junk isn't nearly so well made.
I think they were trying to turn food into a subscription service? Having complete control over a person's food supply sounds like an 8 million dollar idea. It still sounds like a really bad idea, but I think that is how Juicero was pitched to investors, rather than a spaceship that squeezes bags marginally worse than a person can.
The auto-generated captions have a scunthorpe problem; censoring a British & Australian term for a cigarette that has a more offensive meaning in the US.
I actually enjoyed this one more, since it was used to point out measured tolerances and problems with manufacturing (voids, bubbles, untrimmed flash, shavings, etc).
And even that you essentially disassemble them and see how they work through using them. I suppose a lot of people only know or use one or two ways and may be completely unfamiliar with others though.
Interesting images and a very well put together page.
But a little off topic, I was struck by this:
> With the powerful 1200 W heating element
A typical European kettle is at least 1800 W, comfortably less than the power deliverable from a 10 A, 230 V circuit. A typical UK kettle would be more like 3000 W, such as this one (it seems that all the kettles on that website are 3 kW):
UK plug sockets are rated at 13 A, giving a maximum power rating of 2,990 W. Kettles are consequently amongst the highest-drawing household appliances in the UK.
Back when there were only three television channels, the National Grid planners used to pore over the Radio Times, looking for popular programmes like the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special (21 to 28 million viewers in 1977), so they could prepare for the demand surge of the entire nation putting the kettle on at the end of the programme.
TV Pickup (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup) also leads to the political issue where one of the drivers of Brexit was that the 'EU' wanted to 'take away' traditional kettles because there was a proposal to embed a warm up cycle of a few seconds into the heating element so it didn't have spiky power consumption which caused very large amounts of simultaneous draw.
>UK plug sockets are rated at 13 A, giving a maximum power rating of 2,990 W.
Nominally, anyway. When the EU standardised mains voltages they mostly did so on paper by fudging the tolerances, UK's 240v +/- 3% became 230v -6/+10%. 28 years later and I still see the mains voltage in the 240-250v range more often than not.
Is there a reason why European kettles are typically 2200W and UK kettles are 3000W?
European plug sockets are typically rated for 16A, secured with a matching breaker and allowing for about 3500W of power. Appliances that use the full 3500W are rare but they exist, so it is not like it is illegal. So why don't Europeans get the 3000W kettles too?
Maybe some people have 10A circuits, maybe this is a margin so that other appliances can be plugged in the same circuit, or maybe it is just more expensive.
I have noticed that most 3000W+ appliances I can buy in France are more "professional", like what you can find in commercial kitchens or in workshops, but again, it does not mean they are not sold to consumers.
> European plug sockets are typically rated for 16A, secured with a matching breaker and allowing for about 3500W of power. Appliances that use the full 3500W are rare but they exist, so it is not like it is illegal. So why don't Europeans get the 3000W kettles too?
The British plug (and ring wiring scheme) was designed for two 13A electric heaters on a single ring, so continuous load.
Meanwhile, German Schuko and the related French E plug are theoretically capable of 16A peak load, modern sockets are capable of 16A continuous load as well, but a lot of old installations and especially old sockets are rated for 10A only - so typical kettles are limited to 2200W/9.6A to leave a bit of headroom for older, more trigger-happy circuit breakers and other devices on the same circuit.
I think - I am an electrical engineer working in the offshore industry, so I have only superficial knowledge of shore-based installations - anyway, I seem to recall that the Norwegian electrical code calls for Schuko not being used to carry more than 10A continously, 16A intermittent.
However, until relatively recently, the average residential circuit was 10A, though you could get 16A if you asked for it - typically for tumble driers, washing machines and the like - so the market for appliances requiring more than 10A was quite slim.
I am sure the appliance stores didn't want to have to explain to each and every customer that the beefy kettle they had just put on the counter might not work at their house - hence, 10A appliances for all.
(Incidentally, I have a 3kW kettle I bought in the UK and a couple of 16A outlets on my kitchen counter.)
In Sweden (Schuko), 1.5 mm² wall installations are rated for up to 13 A now, but used to be 10 A. It's the wires in the walls being the bottleneck, not the connectors. Dunno why they up-rated it. Can't imagine the copper is better now than it used to be.
It is possible that the copper really is better. AFAIK, a lot of wiring that is sold today is made of high grade oxygen free copper, which, thanks to improvement in manufacturing processes, is barely more expensive than the lower grade stuff.
But even more important is the insulation. It has been consistently improved since cloth wires.
I am an electrical engineer who has to learn all those norms.
The normal eueopean "Schuko" plug is rated for 16A short term and 10A long term. Long in that context means everything above 1 hour of continous load, which should cover typical applications of water cookers.
The wall sockets are typically the same, although 16A continous variants exist and old wall sockets with bad contacts can easily heat up enough that I would avoid ever going over 10A with them if it can be avoided.
I remember discussing this during a lecture as part of my electronic engineering degree, speaking about planning for demand during half time of big football matches when everyone went and boiled the kettle at the same time.
I'm not sure what the point is you're trying to make?
I'm sure you're aware that US sockets are 110-120V. The power required by a European kettle would too often trip someone's circuit breaker in the US, especially if any other equipment were also plugged in (you usually want to stick to max 1500 W on a circuit).
Clearly the "powerful 1200 W" is in the context of equipment designed for American residential sockets -- the page is produced by an American company after all.
(Which is why Americans don't use electric kettles nearly as much as Brits/Europeans, of course.)
A heating element is basically just a resistor, right? Which means if you run one on half the design voltage it'll draw half the current it's meant to and produce ¼ the power.
(To answer the question an inquisitive reader may ask: the keep-warm setting of the model I have uses about 25-60 watts average at room temp 73degF/23degC depending on volume and selected water temp) [1, pg5]
I checked, across the pond (here in NL) most kettles are up to 2200, maybe 2400 W; the 3 kW ones are the "dispense instant boiling water" type things. I suspect the UK power standards are a bit more beefy, the plugs sure are.
It's probably a wide safety margin, you should be able to run an electric oven, a hob, and a kettle at the same time on a single fuse group nowadays. Or a kitchen should have separate groups.
CT is the wrong imaging tech for Moka pots at least - they're much cooler looking if you're doing neutron imaging and can see the water:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VESMU7JfVHU
Very cool, if you don't care about seeing the condensed steam this could be done with X-rays by adding Sodium metatungstate or very toxic thallium formate/malonate to the water. You could also probably replace the water with bormoform or if you don't care about destroying everything, elemental bromine.
>The aluminum is easily activated and directly after the experiment it often has something in the order of 300-400uSv/h. This decays to 4-5uSv/h in about 15-20min, some hours are needed to reach inactive status <0.1uSv/h. The coffee does not become active to a degree that is worth mentioning. However, due to the risk of contamination in the controlled zone it is not allowed to eat or drink things that have been in the beam.
> At times, Fourth Wave innovations verge into the realm of obsession, making you wonder how much real difference all of this precision makes to a cup of coffee. At the end (or beginning) of the day, coffee is a ritual. More than mere caffeine delivery, these technologies enable a multi-faceted sensory experience. Exploring the complexity of its flavors and aromas has transformed coffee from an article of consumption into an open-ended object of scientific and aesthetic experimentation.
There are certainly diminishing returns on many of the aspects coffee enthusiasts care about. But when I started experimenting with an Aeropress and some better coffee I found it interesting that there were many fundamental aspects I could easily taste. Temperature and grind settings can get very obvious quickly. And also the difference between roast levels or some kinds of coffee beans/preparation are not difficult to taste. And I don't trust myself to distinguish any of the more subtle tastes coffee enthusiasts talk about.
But once you e.g get into arguments on whether high-end grinders with conical or flat burrs are better you're far into the diminishing returns that might not survive a blind test.
Afaict Lumafield (the company behind this) sells b2b. Seems like a very non-egregious form of advertising. I think most likely the engineers that work on this are hobbiests. Perhaps they managed to convince C-suite to let them use part of the marketing budget but I find it hard to believe a company would pay $4.5k/month for their tech because of hype and a pretty website alone
> Removing used coffee immediately after brewing and storing the AeroPress with the seal pushed all the way through the chamber (as shown) can help minimize wear by reducing compression to extend the gasket’s life.
But, that's not what's shown. Pushing the gasket all the way through isn't possible unless the filter head is removed.
Yeah I personally store mine with the filter head on, and the plunger/gasket inner cylinder separate. Also other protip (which may actually be in the instructions), I pour the hot water onto the gasket before pushing it into the AeroPress, so the material expands and will have a tighter seal.
Proper storage is just pulling the plunger out entirely.
Every few years, soaking the rubber seal in mineral oil overnight then cleaning will restore flexibility (otherwise it shrinks over time, reducing the quality of the seal).
Unrelated: using paper filters is less eco-responsible than the gold foil filter, but makes for better coffee.
A year's supply of paper aeropress filters weighs about 1.4 oz. This is significantly less paper than a single Monday New York Times, so if you've ever read a paper newspaper, you've eco-sinned more than drinking a year of aeropress.
Indeed, the paper is so little that I'd be really surprised if the ecological impact of mining and making that metal filter will ever be recouped.
It's a little how cotton groceries bags are so resource-intensive that you'd need to use them hundreds and hundreds of times before they're better than daily plastic bags. (Litter aside, which isn't an issue with paper filters.)
>It's a little how cotton groceries bags are so resource-intensive that you'd need to use them hundreds and hundreds of times before they're better than daily plastic bags. (Litter aside, which isn't an issue with paper filters.)
It doesn't seem unreasonable to use a cotton grocery bag hundreds of times. That's only a few years of weekly shopping trips.
Regardless, litter from improperly discarded plastic bags was the primary motivator of their regulation. It was not intended to be about resource use or carbon emissions or whatever people are focused on today.
> Unrelated: using paper filters is less eco-responsible than the gold foil filter, but makes for better coffee.
You can use the paper filters more than once too; typically I need about one or two a week (depending on which coffee and how lucky I am), meaning that one €4 350-pack filters will last for years (I just bought my first refill after 4 years, but I didn't re-use the filters for the first few months and I gave a bunch of them to a friend when he ran out).
Re-use isn't necessarily more eco-friendly by the way, because cleaning takes energy too and cost of production can be much much higher. But realistically, the eco-impact and differences are so small it's not really something to worry about.
I've never maintained or replaced the seal on mine in over ten years, and it still seals just fine. It's made from silicone rubber, which is extreme durability even when continuously exposed to temperatures above boiling or strong acids/bases. As used in the AeroPress where it's just sitting at room temperature indoors for 99% of the time, durability is at least 20 years.
I also use a metal filter, but just for the taste and convenience of not having to buy paper filters.
The eco-responsibility argument against filters I don't get. Unless you drink extreme amounts of coffee, you use significantly more paper in a day just going to the bathroom. I hope people aren't using metal foil for that as well. <insert seashell joke here>
My first one had to replaced after about 6 or 7 years. The plunger rubber had gotten worn down, and the internal wall of the brewing compartment had become blistered from hot water (I used 170-185F water). The new one with different materials seems to be holding up better.
Why is pulling the plunger out entirely necessary for proper storage? I always just push mine all the way through so the rubber isn't under any tension.
Disagreed on the paper filters, I personally enjoy using a metal filter to ensure the oils from the coffee beans are not filtered out. I suppose it is all subjective.
That works too. I call it "proper" because it removes one step before I have coffee, which, no matter how trivial, is a big deal for me in the morning.
Interesting about the filter. I prefer super dark roast, Italian espresso-grind coffees. The paper filters give me a much smoother brew. Of course, as you say, taste is entirely subjective! I'm envious, because I'd rather have just one reusable filter rather than go through a stack of paper discs each year.
I switched to paper filters after using a metal one for years. Maybe the metal filter degraded over time, but it produces a thin layer of "mud" at the bottom of the cup. It's unfortunate because it leaves a bad ending to an otherwise good cup of coffee.
> "With the powerful 1200 W heating element (the thin coil wire), the kettle reaches optimal temperature very quickly — in under three minutes."
Europeans (and other countries with ~230V household sockets) would consider this quite poor performance for a kettle. 3000 W kettles are not uncommon here in the UK!
> ... Fellow is at the top of the gooseneck game with their Stagg EKG electric kettle line. Let’s see how they manage to achieve unmatched precision in temperature control ...
FWIW, I owned a Fellow, until it failed. Now happily replaced with an OXO kettle: 1500W; much better ergonomics, at least for those with larger hands; fewer steam burns; more readable temperature display.
I'm on my second oxo kettle. The handle fell off the first one right after the warranty expired. The second one has a different handle design, but neither has a good weld. This handle will eventually fall off as well. It's a shame that Oxo doesn't sell replacement parts like Baratza does.
I have this kettle, and its selling points are: temperature control, ergonomics, and the steady, controllable flow rate. Using it is pure joy!
It reaches the desired temperature before I'm done preparing everything else (throw the beans in the grinder, pre-heat the V60, etc), so it does not matter that it can't draw 3kW.
Related, but not as fancily presented, the startup I’m at just scanned a coffee bean in our micro-CT that we developed. It’s especially good for low-Z (like carbon and silicon) based samples in contrast to normal X-Rays that see right through it (think x-ray images of a broken arm where the tissue is invisible).
Just reading the headline I was like "why X-ray them? Couldn't they just take them apart to see what's inside". But clicking on the article made me go "Oh, I get it now. This is damn interesting and very informative."
Slight sidenote, but today I've reading about Dual-energy CT tech in airports [1], which will finally force airports to unban liquids above 100ml.
Some call the 2006 liquid explosive terror plot a failure, but it's been one of the most effective ever IMO. The economic and environmental effects [2] of the ban have been massive, likely resulting in thousands of lives lost.
[1] ECAC EDS C3
[2] At London's Heathrow Airport alone, approximately 2.2 tons of liquids, aerosols, and gels were confiscated every day in 2017.
A few days ago I accidentally put wife's beloved Bialetti Brikka pot in the dishwasher. The aluminium lost its anodized coating due to chemical reaction with the detergent (alkaline I think), and the pot turned dull/dark gray. Scrubbing the surface left some gray mark on fingers, which got me wonder if aluminium is actually safe for making coffee? Bialetti also sells stainless steel pots, and I wonder if they're safer to use.
Generally, acidic foods shouldn’t be used in conjunction with aluminum. I suspect the patina protects against this, but I wouldn’t drink the coffee until it has been re-established.
Stainless steel is always preferable from a safety POV.
For how much love went into the imaging and description of everything, the actual coffee knowledge is maddening.
You want your water in your Aeropress to be as close to boiling as possible if using lightly roasted beans (which I'd wager is most of Aeropress usage)! None of that 80-85 degree celsius nonsense.
Similarly, their description of ceramic burrs is bizarre. Ceramic burrs are not considered "better" than stainless steel ones! If you look into high-end grinders sold for hundreds and thousands of dollars (both commercial and "enthusiast" ones), they will all have stainless steel burrs!
And don't get me started on their description of conical vs flat burrs...
This has to be a marketing exercise by the CT machine maker, right?
"We spotted casting issues with the new pot"
"We can see the density difference in the plastic"
"We found aluminum shavings"
For the right audience, this would definitely sell one of those big fancy CT machines.
Not that I'm complaining -- visuals, presentation, content is all thoroughly interesting, speaking as someone with an Aeropress, a Moka. Pretty awesome piece.
> The history of coffee is less than 600 years old.
The history of coffee being traded internationally is around 600 years old. Coffee began being "domesticated" (more in the Graeber "play-farming" sense of the word) at least 7k years ago
Likely even longer before that given the dominance of the plant in parts of Ethiopia. Today the few "coffee forests" remaining are protected ecosystems by UNESCO
> There’s also a hidden game in the Stagg EKG and Corvo EKG kettles. If you remove your kettle from the base and toggle the F/C switch back and forth, you’ll unlock a snake-like game called Wormy that you can play using the dial.
Funny, how I’m finding out about that from a CT scan of my kettle :)
They picked boring things to look at unfortunately. Not a lot going on in Moka pot that you can't grok just by looking at and taking it apart. Throwing a whole all-in-one countertop machine might be cooler.
I'd be interested in seeing a show of hands - who else generally dislikes webpages like this that use the scroll wheel to manipulate the zoom, rotation, or displayed content of an object (like a CAT scan or 3D phone model) or otherwise makes scroll behave unusually (e.g. the Opera GX website has a point where scrolling down makes a list of cards move sideways instead of actually scrolling down)?
To be clear, I like the content displayed here; it's just that the way they chose to move between views of the CAT scan are a little annoying to me.
Are there any advantages to the aluminium version of a moka pot aside from tradition/aesthetics?
I switched to one of the (Bialetti-made) stainless steel ones ("Venus" shape) because at one point I lived somewhere with an induction hob. I immaculately saw that the stainless version was considerably easier to clean. Cleaning, afterall, is half the job of using one of these.
Visually, I prefer the aluminium shape of course, but they are a real nightmare to keep clean and presumably you're drinking a lot of that aluminium oxide.
Aeropress announced a glass version earlier this year. Still has a rubber plunger, but no other plastics. No idea when they plan on shipping it though.
Okay pretty cool but I have to give my two cents for the text.
A patina does not enhance flavour, that's basically rancid left-over coffee.
Also the plunger in the aeropress isn't pushed through and STILL compressed in the picture (as shown here). To push it all the way through the cap has to be loosened.
>There’s also a hidden game in the Stagg EKG and Corvo EKG kettles. If you remove your kettle from the base and toggle the F/C switch back and forth, you’ll unlock a snake-like game called Wormy that you can play using the dial.
It was fun to walk over to the kitchen and discover something new from a two-year-old appliance!
Is anyone here worried about pouring hot water into Aeropress plastic? I know it's polypropylene, which is BPA-Free but could there be things that we haven't properly researched yet?
If you want to avoid plastic, Hario Switch is a great alternative. It allows you to steep and release, kinda similar to AeroPress (pressure only comes from gravity though).
Cone is made of glass, stopper is from stainless steel, but the base is made of silicone. I imagine the hot water contact with the silicone will be a lot less compared to AeroPress.
If you get the size 03, you can more easily brew enough coffee for 2 people.
Heating plastics can release not just BPA but also phthalates, dioxins, and other harmful compounds which are linked to lots of nasty heath issues like hormone disruption, cancer and reproductive problems.
Polypropylene is generally considered one of the safer plastics with it's high heat tolerance meaning doesn't leach harmful chemicals. While pure polypropylene may be considered safe, additives used in the manufacturing such as colourants or fillers could have their own health risks.
Personally avoid mixing food or drinks with any heated plastics, including my coffee. I use French press for my coffee but if Aeropress is your thing and want to avoid plastic I've heard good things about the Cafelat Robot which is made almost entirely out of aluminium and stainless steel.
It drives me crazy how V60 and Chemex are regarded as “modern” when the Chemex is from the 40s and the V60 is a knock-off of the Melitta 102 conical filter system, which was invented in 1936!
The V60 isn't a knock-off of the Melitta, it's much more of rethinking and redesign of the basic concept Melitta introduced. They might look superficially similar, but if you actually use both products side by side they work quite differently.
Shouldn't be the only solution one, sure. But it's still a great thing to have built in to the browser itself... and it should be built in; extensions are inherently dangerous as bad actors are known to offer to buy popular extensions in order to insert malware, sell adspace, or collect browsing data.
I thought X-rays do not pass through metal? Like it shows up opaque in clinical images. Suprised that they got a scan of the moka pot. Truly amazing stuff.
You can use a much higher dose on inanimate objects than you could on a human patient. (See, for example, airport security's ability to see inside your Macbook...)
Entire aircraft engines and rocket engines can in fact be x-rayed (google image search awaits you). Granted if you stuck your hand in there it would definitely get cooked. The power levels are much higher.
If you really want to dive down a rabbit hole, look up how they image welds on pipelines... literally inject radioactive gas between two cardboard/clay plugs and tape an xray film on the outside of the weld for an hour or two.
Metal blocks some x-rays but not all. The more x-rays you have, the more pass through. When doctors are xraying people, they use as little xrays as they need to get a good image of the fleshy bits, so metal objects appear opaque relative to that.
Nice images. It's probably too much effort, but for the grinder it would have been interesting to compare the now rather old Porlex grinder with the much heavier steel burr grinders you'd get recommended today. Those are very noticeably heavier and more massive compared to the Porlex, could be interesting to compare.
Seems to me that a bunch of websites block IP addresses with tor relays (not exits), and they all send a `x-cluster-name: eu-west-1-prod-hosting-red` header.
Then, a couple of months ago, I was on vacation in Italy and decided to get a brand new one as a gift, directly from an official Bialetti store. To my surprise, the Mokas in the store felt exactly like the lower-quality one we had bought in Brazil. I didn't even buy the gift.