It’s fascinating how he has become to coffee as MKBHD has to technology. The kingmaker of coffee gear.

Thankfully it's quite difficult to grind and brew coffee dangerously.

Not really, moka pots are known to explode.

Source? I'm from Italy, where everybody's using them, but never heard of a single one exploding. Maybe you can find an isolated case, but I'm confident it's extremely rare. There's a safety valve to release pressure after all, and if you use the Moka correctly the valve never has to engage.

I’m in the Dominican Republic, and moka pots are 99 percent of the market here as well. Everyone warns me about moka pots exploding, but I’ve never met anyone (15 years here now) that knows of one first hand that actually exploded.

But everyone is terrified of mokasplosion.

I’ll admit, the prospect of a pressurized vessel of boiling water is a potent reminder for precautionary thinking.

Minor nitpick here, but it's a fact I found interesting when I heard about it. The water inside a Moka doesn't boil, you can indeed observe that the water coming out from the top isn't boiling. What happens is that the air that is left inside the bottom chamber expands due to the heat, pushing the water upwards.

I think YMMV with this.

The custom where I am at is to load the moka pot with a grind and quantity that produces a significant barrier to the flow of water.

The alert that the brew is finished is the sound of the boiling hot water and steam spraying the coffee through the standpipe into the upper chamber, and it is absolutely under steam pressure, I’d say around 5 to 10 psi.

When the liquid water is low enough that it doesn’t get picked up by the lower tube, you get a significant outflow of pure steam hissing through the standpipe nozzle, and then it’s quiet, as the bottom chamber is now completely dry, as are the grounds when you dump them out.

It could be that if you use a coarser grind or less coffee than is customary here, flow restriction does not occur, and the pressure of the heated air and water vapor is enough to push out all of the water through the coffee without reaching 100c (should only take about 1/6 psi for a flow overcoming gravity to that height) but if you used that method here your coffee would fall under heavy criticism.

The violence with which the flow jets into the upper chamber and the volume and aroma of the steam serves somewhat as a social signal as to the “quality” of the coffee, so there is a strong incentive to heavily load the pots here.

Legends of exploding pots are common, as is precautionary disposal of pots whose threads have become excessively worn.

But I still have no first hand knowledge of anyone witnessing an explosion or even an over pressure venting event (there is a small pressure relief valve on the side of the vessel)…. So I suspect that the risk is not that high.

This is fascinating to read, thank you.

Interesting, the different way we use mochas can explain why you have stories about explosions: our way is definitely putting less stress on mochas, which end up lasting for decades without the need to be replaced. We use coffee that is specifically ground for mochas, and we fill the chamber with water up until just below the valve (or, at the very limit, the water reaches half the valve). You still hear a sound when the coffee is ready, but it is caused by little sprays of coffee mixed with hot air, not steam.

Well my wife had one and it exploded (and it was Italian, Bialetti I think), we have several friends with explosions etc. It's of course possible that Italians use it properly and we don't, but I'm not an expert in this topic, so I just stay away from them.

This is unexpected to me: I would have assumed that, even if you did something wrong, the valve would have prevented an explosion. I can understand a single valve going bad, but if this happened to many of your friends there might be something going on there.

MKBHD is the last person I’d go to for anything tech related.

He, like many others, do little more than just read spec sheets.

I like his car related content though, reckless driving notwithstanding

Is there a BOLTR for general tech? For Instruments there is evvlog… but general tech?

I have found Mr. Mobile (Michael Fisher) to be quite good. He does some sort of a road trip or excursion as a real world tech review and also covers a lot of old and quirky hardware.

Alec Watson of Technology Connections is my favourite for technology in general.

He has made me extremely enthusiastic for heat pumps.

Me too, though it turns out certain types of houses don't support just replacing furnace with a central heat pump. No free lunch in thermodynamics :(

Have you heard about brown?

You know, I've watched basically every video of his for several years now (as well as going back in the archives for some of his older stuff), and I think this is the first time I've ever encountered his name.

Is there a way to get hours watched for a particular channel out of YouTube?

Another high-hour channel for me is Petter of Mentour Pilot.

As an Australian, those two guys accents their way of framing things are like mum’s lullabies.

+1 for MrMobile (Michael Fisher), he comes across as more impartial than a lot of the other folks.

I find his channel useful just for getting an opinion from a end-user perspective of what a product is like; that's a legitimate opinion, not every data point needs to be a deep dive into the manufacturing process of a particular gadget.

Unlike MKBHD, James Hoffman has some slightly more objective credibility. He won some barista competitions about 15 years ago. He's been involved in the coffee industry (outside of being a content creator) for most of his life. As far as I know about Marques, his main qualification is that he was just relatively early to the tech review game.

That is not to say that I personally take all or most of Hoffman's suggestions at face value. It's abundantly clear that the level of nuance he considers in coffee is not relevant to me. But I do tend to see him applying a much more objective level of rigor to his reviews than many other content creators.

The draw of MKBHD has nothing to do with "objective credibility". Consumer tech reviews are more about whether the reviewer will discuss daily usability objectively, and entertainment.

Coffee is more niche. It makes more sense for "objective credibility" to play a role there.

he's also fair, often trashes big brands when their products are mediocre

I have great respect for his integrity and body of work

He's also deleted some of his videos because they had mentions to brands or companies with wrong practices (yes, plain wrong).

Also has very good books. So, totally not the average youtuber/content creator out there.

When he trashed the aldi espresso machine I think he was unfair. The main issues with it are probably the same issues you get on a Breville until you tune the OPV and get a seperate grinder. That said I dont think he is the screwdriver to espresso machine type.

> That said I dont think he is the screwdriver to espresso machine type.

He's mentioned modding espresso machines many times in his videos, and brings it up often during reviews.

I've got a Bambino Plus and so far the only customizations are a bottomless portafilter, a huge single wall basket (IMS), programming the flow presets for a good ratio by weight in/out, and optimizing the grind specifically for 30s duration. I'll have to look into your OPV suggestion; anything else?

Bambino might be OK stock?? Not sure. Only change the OPV if you have a problem to solve. For me it was slightly too fine gets zero extraction and the pressure compacts the puck. Then go a bit coarser and it spews out.

Very few tech reviewers have anything other than experience. Nilay Patel trained as a lawyer. He can’t code, can’t engineer, isn’t an industrial designer etc. it’s one reason why tech reviews are so obsessed with keyboards. For most reviewers keyboard feel is one of the few areas they have real expertise in.

MKBHD is absolutely as qualified as 99% of his peers.

Nilay Patel is an odd example to use. He has absolutely no credibility and he just attacks critics when his errors are pointed out.

Yeah, I wouldn't compare them at all. Hoffman is also by all appearances and mannerisms a standup individual, more of a Mr. Rogers of coffee than anything else, in my opinion.

Mr. Rogers is a great comparison. Something about the sweaters and always wishing viewers a good day!

Regarding grinders there's actually someone else who is considered the kingmaker: Lance Hedrick [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@LanceHedrick/videos

Who is mkbhd?

Product reviewer with a very popular YouTube channel.

St James, the protector saint of all things covfefe.

mkbhd over the years has had some really bad takes on tech. I haven’t used his channel for quite awhile.

I would say his success is largely due to being among the first to the market in tech reviews and having (at the time) better production quality.

He wouldn't take it. He'll review it after it's been on the market for about half a year, without any money. Lance hedrick is also a decently respected voice who does usually take sponsored reviews, whilst being honest.

I think Lance Hedrick would like this a lot. I bet he would experiment with changing the pressure during the brewing process

I agree here. Given the bespoke design, I would love to see a comparison with other machines.