In search of The Neapolitan “Machine”

On a recent trip to Naples, I was curious to see if I might encounter the famed Neapolitan brewer. This Parisian developed contraption was adopted via trade routes to become a culinary cultural staple of the region of Campania. The slow drip-based “cuccumella” aka. cuccuma, caffettiera napoletana, cafetière Morize, flip pot, or simply “the machine”. This polyonymous brewer had previously been billed to me as a simple and reliable brewer that sat on the spectrum between drip coffee and espresso. I had experimented with cuccuma before and frankly found it challenging to dial in a good cup. I envisioned this as more of a home brewer and didn’t expect to find it being used in any cafes, but I hoped to have a chance to taste cuccuma coffee brewed in the city that made this brewer famous. I longed for a reference point from which to tweak my own recipes as I had never encountered anyone brewing with this device. Early on my first note on the coffee scene aligned with my typical European experience – it’s hard to find anything I would refer to as bad coffee and the consistency between espresso shots from café to café was quite incredible. I enjoyed stopping at gas stations in small towns along the Amalfi coast and even in 2025, a decent shot of espresso was always available and often cost just a single euro coin. However, truly excellent coffee was not something I was stumbling into (and not surprisingly, neither was the cuccuma). One morning I put in a bit more effort and discovered Café Sansone , where not only did I enjoy great conversation with the Barista, but also a wonderfully fragrant and complex Ethiopian pour-over. I don’t believe they brewed anything with the cuccuma there, but after I sat down, I noted some on the wall for sale! It was a start! I figured this was about as close as I was going to get, but on my last night in Naples I received an incredible surprise. I treated myself to an upscale dinner this final evening and while it wasn’t on the menu, after dessert the waiter brought a piping hot cuccuma complete with the traditional paper cuppetiello spout cover tableside! I was more excited about this than he expected, and he enlightened me with the most popular local pronunciation of the gadget as a start “Koo Koo Ma”. Here’s the incredible thing, even at this fancy restaurant the cuccuma coffee frankly wasn’t that good. It was too dilute and a little astringent. I found this very vindicating. All my reading about it being a forgiving, consistent brewer had never been my personal experience, so when I received a second-rate coffee in the heart of Naples at an upscale Italian restaurant, I knew this thing wasn’t as foolproof as had been touted. When I returned home, I had newfound energy towards perfecting my cuccuma recipes and I’m pretty satisfied with where I landed. If you’re interested, take a peek at them here. Ultimately I think the cuccuma works best at brewing a cup that lies on the drip side of a Mokka Pot brew. It’s typically recommended for dark roasts, but as someone that avoids a true dark roast even for espresso, I find that medium or medium-dark roasts really shine and the cups need to be brewed with coffee forward ratios. Just like the flavor lies between drip coffee and espresso, I think the optimum cup volume does as well. A large espresso cup or tiny coffee cup works well, and I recommend a single cup dose somewhere between 150 and 200mL. I find the flavor profile a little more nuanced than what a Mokka Pot typically makes and prefer the cuccuma to a Mokka brew personally. Have you experimented with a Cuccuma? Have you had any good or bad experiences with one?