The first time I encountered a stovetop coffee maker I was, appropriately, in Italy. My family had rented an Airbnb, and sitting on the small stove was that grand old man of stovetop coffee: the Mokapot. I’d heard that it was a good stand-in for espresso, but even though I was still years away from my current elaborate coffee setup, I knew pretty quickly that I didn’t care for what the Mokapot had to offer. Sorry to the Mokaheads out there: I found it almost undrinkable, which is a difficult bar to clear for someone who has consumed plenty of old urn coffee in his life. It tasted both stale and sour, and without any of the body I’ve grown to love about a well-made espresso shot. For some time it was the only stovetop espresso (“espresso”?) I’d tried because I assumed surely most of it is bad; it definitely can’t compete with a fancy electric espresso machine and all its pumps and buttons.

But over the last year some interesting entries into the stovetop espresso came on to my radar, like this from Bellman that looks like a teeny tiny pressure cooker. But the most intriguing to me, for its wonderful aesthetics alone, was the 9Barista. With smooth curves and walnut accents, it looks like it was plucked straight from the pages of a pricey interior designer’s midcentury modern lookbook. But more than that, it brought me back around to giving stovetop espresso another chance.

How does the 9Barista work?

There are basically two things you need to make espresso: water at a temperature that will properly extract flavor from the ground coffee, and water that moves through that coffee with the correct pressure, which impacts both flavor and body. It’s why those machines you see in coffee shops are so expensive; they can regulate both those variables very precisely. The issue with simpler stovetop coffee makers like a Mokapot is that temperature regulation is iffy, and it isn’t possible to generate enough pressure for a highly flavored espresso.

The 9Barista solves for this with a novel system of twin boilers, which basically uses one boiler to create the pressure needed for brewing and another to regulate the temperature. The result comes pretty darn close to what you can get with an electric espresso maker that uses a pump.

The first boiler sits directly on the heat source and hits temperatures of just over 350℉ (179℃ because this thing is British), which creates 9 bars of pressure, more than double the pressure that comes out of your shower, and right in the sweet spot of what professional baristas aim for when they pull an espresso shot. That pressure pops open a valve and forces the water into the second boiler, where it goes through a metal coil called a heat exchanger, which lowers the temperature some.

The pressure from the heat continues forcing the water through a final chamber, where it drops in temperature one more time to around 200℉ (again, what baristas use when pulling shots), then through a basket of ground coffee, and up into the pitcher. It takes six or seven minutes after you put it on. If all that sounds complicated, just know it’s similar to what’s going on with an electric espresso maker, except the plug-in appliance typically does it with a thermostat and a pump instead of the heat from your stove.

Does the 9Barista make good espresso?

I judge espresso based on its complexity of flavor. The best ones have good body and a nice crema on top, while lesser ones lean sour or bitter, like the ones I’ve experienced with a Mokapot. With this metric in mind, 9Barista makes an excellent espresso, especially for a device without the same temperature and pressure controls of a luxe electric espresso machine.