Hi everyone, my name's Brewer and I'm an alcoholic. Or methanolic. Whatever :0) I'm a Trangia tragic. I was recently reunited with my 30-year-old 25-series - well used but well cared for too. I loved that stove! Anyway, now that I have a 'collection' (I bought a Duossal version in the meantime) I've become inspired to use them a bit more and I've got a couple of ideas that I'd like to work on. One is for a dedicated espresso stove (based around a moka pot), ideally with all the parts nesting into the one package. This means a search for just the right design of moka pot, or building my own. Advanced-level stuff. The other idea is to build a miniature Trangia, as small as possible while still being a 'complete' Trangia using a standard burner. I imagine the inner 'pan' to be essentially a mug, just big enough to accommodate the burner and a sawn-off pot lifter, with maybe a second pan and then the regulation two-part stand and windshield and a lid to suit. Anyway, what this is all leading to is that I'm looking for a source of small, nesting ali pots (cups?) that I can use as the basis for my butchery and drillery. Any suggestions?
Welcome Brewer! (Chorus) Good on you! I've been down the path to make "dedicated" stoves myself, and it's been a primary driving force for many of my procurements and researching into stove history. Coffee-maker is a nice concept, and justified in its own right. Go for it! A miniature trangia needs a few words of caution, I think. Trangia themselves have as you may know made their own model (T28 mini trangia) It works ok, but in warmer weather has been known to flare badly because of the cramped surroundings of the burner. I think a scaled down version of the T25-T27 windshield would further increase this problem due to the burner getting even more closed up. Perhaps basing a scale model Trangia on a less powerful burner would be more suitable? A small pop-can stove or maybe even a scaled down brass burner made from scratch. The T28 pan and frying pan looks like a good place to start, and then maybe fabricating the windshield from other sources. If you go that route OR want to find smaller pots for any other reason, I think pudding or tart pans could be the way to go. They come in all shape and sizes, and it should be easy to find good nesting pairs. If you go to a store that carries "gourmet" kitchen supplies you'll likely find what you're looking for.
I am a great fan of the Trangias myself. Check Telg Stand for a nice adaptor to use a 27/25 with a mocha brewer. I have a Esbit Model 66 Model 66 That I am fettling so I can not vouch for the coffee it makes but it fits the bill of self contained! I have a small tea candle spirit burner in mine since i dislike the Esbit solid fuel tabs. If you are a tinkerer check out this nice pocket sized contraption Pocket espresso /Lars
You didn't mention what size Moka pot you wanted to use. This is a a 3-cup Moka pot supported with a 90mm fan grill. The cookset is an Esbit 985 with a clone of the Trangia alcohol burner.
Thanks for the replies! I'm definitely keen to stick with the original Trangia burner, I'm a fan of keeping things simple where possible! I might have to take my old ali 25 shopping with me and try a couple of different small (1-cup) moka pots (and maybe the GSI Espresso maker) to see what will fit. It would be great if I could fit a cup and a container of ground coffee in there too! As for the mini trangia project, the idea behind that was to serve as the stove for a separate (perhaps larger) moka pot, and/or to just be a neat backpacking stove. The pudding mold idea is good, I'll definitely make sure to check out some kitchen supplies places. Spork, that's a really neat setup - how does it go? Do you have any problems with airflow for the burner? It looks to me like it should work well, but pysen78 has me wondering now whether the trangia burner is more fickle than I had imagined.
Brewer - The Esbit stand is well vented so no problem there, in fact it needs to be used with a supplemental windscreen when outdoors. I do have to keep an eye open for high flames so I don't melt the handle of the Moka pot. When I hear the brewing start, I put on the simmer ring (wide open) to finish. Ash Pan - Yes, that is a 90mm computer fan grill. I don't use this, but here's the T28 with the same 90mm grill. I would probably file some small notches in the supports to hold the grill in place. The 1-cup Moka pot is puny...and I would be concerned that the flame pattern of the Trangia is too wide for it. You can pick up just the T28 windscreen and burner without the pot...and there might even be enough room to stow it inside your T25. I know the T28 windscreen will fit inside the 1 liter Trangia kettle.
Very neat! Regarding the size of the Trangia burner relative to the moka pot, I have a cunning plan of just sitting the pot in an inch or two of water in one of the pans. Should diffuse the heat nicely, and provide some top-up water for a long black (my preferred style). To me, the integral windshield and stable base is where the Trangia's beauty lies - I don't need to pare things back too far. Might still pick up a T28 though, just to play with ;0)
I am not an extreme coffee drinker so a bit out of my element. But your plan to place the pot in a pan of water confused me. I may not have the picture right, but it seems to me that would prevent the pot from superheating the water, which I thought was the point of these set ups.
I have a few stove top espresso makers, so this is an interesting topic. Not to take away from the well made Trangia .... Look into a 'chimney' style flame alcohol stove .... Link... such as the commercially made Brasslite (can be home made, he posts instructions on his website) or the home made cat can stove, kitten stove, etc. The flame does not blossom so wide, so a small flame can work better on the small base. Ken in NC
Hi itchy, you're not trying to superheat anything, there's very little pressure involved. You just want to bring it up to boiling point carefully, and start producing a little steam pressure for a gentle flow of hot water from the reservoir through the coffee. If you overdo the heat you'll just blast scalding water through your coffee in a flash, making a mess and a poorly-extracted brew. I haven't tried it yet, but I suspect that sitting the pot in a pan of water should do a nice job of keeping things a bit calm.
I'm guessing that if you run it with the simmer ring from the start it would work with the 1-cup pot.
OK, "superheating" was too graphic. It still seems to me that to create even modest pressure, the water in the pot will have to be hotter than the water in the pan. Perhaps there will be some direct conduction via the pot-pan contact and that will occur. Easy enough to do the experiment, but not having that equipment, I will not have that fun.
snwcmpr has given me an ideal to try.... How about a vented cap for the Trangia that would convert it to a chimney flame? It would be like a simmer ring, but would have holes around the bottom to let in oxygen to support combustion. It might even be possible to integrate a support for the 1-cup Moka pot.
Not what the instructions say and I've never done it that way (or seen anyone else do it like that). I think the answer lies in the way espresso coffee is ground - it's intended to brew with a relatively short but steady flow of boiling water through it. As an experiment, try to get a second brew from the same grounds. I think you'll find there's very little extra coffee to extract after the first infusion...
Well, it will not actually be boiling but just below. Just hot enough to 'push' the water up the funnel and through the grounds, then up the tube to the spout(?). Too fine, and the water won't flow. "Clogged" Too coarse, and the water goes through without any of the coffee qualities desired. "Is this tea?" As Lincoln would say. Just right grind, and the taste, texture, body, and creaminess come through. Elixer of the gods. One would say "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about." The flow is obviously a solution of fine (What's a good word for this?). But not boiling temps. That would result in bitterness. "Spiting sound after tasting." Ken in NC
It's possible I have this wrong, I'm no Grand Poobar of Coffee Wisdom, but to my understanding the water in the moka (and around it, using my proposed method) just has to simmer, to produce bubbles of steam, that create the pressure to drive the hot water up through the coffee. The water is therefore pretty much at boiling point, which is about 10 degrees hotter than ideal (or what a modern espresso machine would use), but a necessary tradeoff of using steam as the pressure source. The 'Atomic' type of coffee maker employs a longer flow path and greater mass in the head to cool the water somewhat before it contacts the coffee, but the moka pot does not have this luxury. I find I get the best moka results by putting boiling water in the reservoir to start with. This way the coffee and the head are still relatively cool when the extraction starts, rather than hot, which they will be if you bring the whole shebang up to the boil from cold. If you brew a moka on too high a heat source you'll get a violent blast of steam and plenty of spluttering etc, and you'll fill the top pot with weak coffee in just a second or two. A good moka brew will take something like 10 or 20 seconds to fill the pot, with a nice rich extraction and a gentle flow.
Its probably been over 35 years since I last tried one of those contraptions. I did not know what I was doing then and nothing is likely to have changed. Back then, I and several co-workers would buy fresh roasted beans from a small roaster in Seattle who only sold in bulk (5 lbs or so, minimum), then we would go back in the lab and split up the order. It was pretty good stuff, but I never did make a good espresso with that maker -- no doubt I was over heating it and worse. By the way, that small roaster got big and opened a few shops. Now I don't touch the stuff.
I start my Bialetti pot on medium heat until the coffee starts flowing up the tube into the top section. I reduce the heat a bit at that point to slow down the flow by a couple seconds and when the coffee level is almost to the spout I turn the heat off. I learned this method from a video I saw online a year or two ago. This is not the same video but illustrates the procedure. This guy is very precise with measurements unlike myself but he uses a Bunson burner so it's like using a camp stove. [media=youtube]fRdCic2f7PI[/media] Of course when I use a Trangia I just let it go and it comes out pretty good too. Cheers Ray
