Over the years I have tried out many different ways of making a decent cup of coffee, from my inglorious youth spent quaffing instant *coffee* through to full on grind your own beans espresso.

It sounds obvious but is worth saying that each method tastes slightly different. I have never managed to make coffee in those metal stove top pots, so popular in Italy, without it tasting burned. Espresso always tastes a fraction forced or rushed.

A trip to Namibia reintroduced me to the speed and convenience of basic cafetiere coffee which is where I go for my first morning wake-up cup but there’s no doubt that speed comes with consequences. Cafetiere coffee is just too variable, sometimes weak, sometimes strong and often grainy.

Over Christmas I gained a new toy, a bodum vacuum coffee maker based on the old cona style stove top and it makes a wonderful smooth, controlled cup of coffee (or three). The drawback with this method is the volume – you can’t make a single cup easily.

But given how smooth it turns out, it seems worth setting up and running for morning coffee because waking up is always more than a one cup, one person affair.

And it is marvellously entertaining to sit and watch vacuum do its thing.

Water is put into the bottom pot and ground coffee on the top. It all sits on the hob and heats, relatively gently until the water starts to evaporate and rise up the funnel to the coffee grinds where it mixes. Once the water is almost gone, the heat is removed and the water is sucked back down through the funnel with the filter holding back the grinds.