Cuisinox Liberta 6 cup Espresso Coffeemaker

Great coffee/”espresso” maker

Works as advertised. Makes excellent strong coffee/espresso (no crema). Easy to clean. Built like a tank (25 year warranty!), of solid 18/10 stainless. Looks good on the stove. Will yield 5 oz of excellent thick complex flavored coffee espresso if you run the heat medium-low and use 25gm of freshly ground-to-fine coffee beans. If you want less heaviness and more volume, move the heat to medium+ and the pot will deliver 8oz or so. About 7 minutes from heat to coffee. Be sure to pull off the heat at the first gurgle so you don’t overdo the brew (bitter). As always good freshly roasted beans are a must. Don’t tamp down the grind in the basket. Slightly overfill it and when you screw on the top section, that will do the tamping.

Also includes an insert for the basket that will do a half-batch, which will deliver the equivalent of two or three shots.

A few comments were negative on the quality of the basket/insert perforations. Mine are perfect.

For one or…

beautiful pot, tasty coffee

I bought this to replace a Bialetti stovetop maker I had for years. That one made decent coffee & was cheaper, but after a few years of use it started leaking water out of the bottom. I never dropped or dented it, so it appears to have just been thin and wore down so cracks developed after use. I’d never heard of Cuisinox but decided to give it a try based on reviews of this and other pots. The design is cute CUTE!! More importantly, though I’ve only had it a little while, the pot seems much more solidly constructed (despite being made in China), like a larger Bialetti I own. In fact, I think it’s even heavier. It does have a metal handle & top knob which get hot, but I found the black rubber handles on other machines did too, so hello pot holder! This also makes coffee super fast and so far it’s been a really smooth tasting cup. Love it!

The level reducer (to make 3 instead of 6 cups) also makes this a versatile pot! Extra gasket is a bonus.

Extremely Satisfied

I splurged on this, replacing my aluminum pot. It makes excellent coffee, rather quickly (certainly faster than the aluminum one), in about 5-7 minutes. I notice the type of roast is very important – this pot accentuates acidity of lighter roasts, and so I go with a locally roasted dark Italian coffee, ground to “fine” on a commercial Bunn coffee grinder at the shop, and use a medium-low flame on the stove. The coffee is just out of this world. Perhaps some of the unsatisfied reviewers came up against simply using a roast that doesn’t do well with these pots.

I accidentally left the pot on the stove the other day for 20-25 minutes with flame, and boiled the lower chamber dry. Fearing the worst, I poured out (and enjoyed) the excellent coffee, and slowly filled the top with cool water. The bottom was very, very hot. It cooled, I disassembled and inspected – perfectly fine, not a single bit of observable damage. This is a very fine pot.

And it’s just so pretty.

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