Motorcycles and a Moka

Have a Nice Day Moto Coffee delivers a tasty espresso served from a sidecar

I love espresso. There’s nothing better than that warm small shot, the most medicinal of coffee forms, hitting the taste buds with a rich burnt punch. It’s almost masochistic, but in the best possible way. 

Recently, a friend from New York sent me a bag of espresso ground coffee from his upstart brand, Nice Day Moto Coffee. Specifically, it's the La Nazionale variety which comes from Brazil, and like all other Nice Day Moto Coffees, is artistinaly roasted in Red Hook Brooklyn. 

The coffee is great, but the Nice Day Moto Coffee is most famous for how it’s served. Customers get their caffeine fix from the sidecar of a Ural motorcycle zooming around NYC, essentially a stylishly mobile urban cafe.

Over the last decade, since the Deus Ex Machina Coffee shop-cum-brand broke out of Australia, there’s been a raft of motorcycle espresso entrepreneurs. I frequent Jane in NYC and Imperial Moto here in Miami.

This trend makes a lot of sense, it’s an elegant replacement for the paleolithic biker bar. Modern Motorcyclists are more likely to be graphic designers than gang bangers. I need to try the coffee from the side car, but I’m happy to settle for having it in my Miami mailbox for now.

Fedexed to arrive fresh, I was excited to have a cup. My problem, though, was simple: I didn’t have an espresso machine.

I asked my neighbors, I asked friends, but still I couldn’t locate this magical device that injects steam into finely ground coffee. My French press was close but not what I needed, then I remembered the Moka.

The moka pot is a stove-top coffee maker that brews espresso by passing boiling water pressurised by steam through the grounds. Named after the Yemeni city of Mocha, it was invented by Italian engineer Alfonso Bialetti in 1933. He is responsible for the classic Art Deco design. In 1958 the company introduced their iconic mustachioed mascot in a television ad. Now the device is a staple of Italian culture and can be found in ninety percent of Italian homes.

To be fair, It’s not exactly an espresso machine. A moka works with around 1 bar of pressure while a professional espresso machine uses around 9 bar of steam power. For me it’s the best way to make steam based coffee at home. I much prefer the crisp flavor of espresso to the slow oily rot of drip coffee. That being said, an at home espresso machine is a bit of a bridge too far.

The Moka is easy to use but there are a few things you need to get right. Obviously the coffee you choose is the most important factor and Nice Day Moto already set me up with a great starting point.

Mostly I make two mistakes. One is trying to overpack coffee into the filter, making the end product bitter. Second, I get impatient and turn the stove temp up high leading to burnt coffee.

With this in mind I focused on giving the beans the performance it deserves. I filled the water tank to the right level.  Using a sense of touch honed but many failures I packed the coffee in, holding my breath  I felt the resistance of the grounds. Screwing it together I put it on the stove at a moderate temperature.

Then, the black coffee began to ooze out. At first, I thought it was too dark. As I watched it come out I realized I had done everything right.

But how does this new brand taste?

The flavor was rich, maybe even slightly nutty. Like a good cover band, it hit all the notes I expected with a slight unexpected flourish. Next time I want to pack the filter a little less tight, because I feel like lowering the intensity would really unlock the blend. I’m a coffee neophyte but I have the feeling that this free sample, the classic drug dealer marketing technique, will have me hooked for a long time.