The cuccumella gets turned over, and from then on only gravity works. Seven grams per person, ten minutes of patience.
Grind: Medium-coarse, **coarser than for a moka**: there is no pressure here, only the weight of the water. With a moka grind the extraction turns bitter.
Served in: Espresso cup
The coffee scales with the number of people, the time does not: percolation takes 5–10 minutes because it depends on gravity, not on how much coffee is in the filter.
Pour the water into the lower chamber, up to about half a centimetre below the small side hole.
Put the coffee in the filter without tamping it, then screw it in and fit the container and the collector.
Put it on a low flame and wait for a thread of steam to come out of the side hole.
Take it off the heat and turn the pot over with one firm, confident movement. From here on gravity does the work.
Put the cuppetiello over the spout and let it percolate for 5–10 minutes.
The cuccumella dates from 1819 and resembles nothing else. It is not a moka: there is no steam pressure and no valve. It is gravity percolation — the water falls through the coffee under its own weight, as in a filter, but inside a metal pot.
The gesture that defines it is the flip: you heat the water in the lower chamber, and when a thread of steam comes out of the small hole you turn the whole pot over. From that moment the coffee makes itself, and all there is to do is wait.
The cuppetiello, the paper cone placed over the spout, is not folklore: it holds the aromas in while the coffee percolates.
Models that declare they cover this grind: the manufacturer states it, we do not measure it.
7 g of ground coffee for one serving.