I definitely prefer un-filtered coffee for breakfast
For the past year or so, I've made most of my coffee through a moka pot. It's a moka pot that I found in my fathers basement some time between ending school and starting university.
The first time I had coffee brewed through a pot was when I was touring Norway in 2025. To save money, our huge band of 20 people + a photographer decided to organize all the sleeping arrangements through friends, family, and other known ones - we were for the most part surfing couches and guest bedrooms, but sometimes even just the floor. I spent most of my nights on an air mattress, or at least the first half of the night. I forgot to check that it was actually air-tight before we hit the road.
One of these nights, in Stavanger, I stayed at the student accomodation of a trumpet player from my home town. He and his girlfriend were kind enough to get us both floor space, breakfast, and coffee for the morning. He brewed this through an old pot, I'm not sure where he had picket it up but it was old and small, and make some of the strongest, most delicious coffee I had tasted for that entire tour.
For the most part of the tour, the coffee we got was either the one provided to us by the venue or the one you can get at a gas station. Neither are known for being particularly good - the former being first and foremost a gesture of kindness and welcomeness (we will share what we have), and the latter probably aiming for the sweet spot, or probably more the bitter spot between cheap as hell and just okay-enough. And for a tired one that hadn't seen neither a bed nor eight hours of consecutive sleep in 2 weeks, this was amazing.
Today I decided to try filter again. I bought a cheap Melitta coffee dripper for my girlfriend for whenever she stays at my place. We have different tastes in coffee where I prefer strong and black and she prefers a lighter one with more tastes and impressions than just coffee-taste; I buy café tradicional, she buys café gourmet or café aroma. I brewed up a slightly-stronger-than-recommended cup of my coffee, and while delicious, I can now say I finally know what the difference between filtered and unfiltered is.
The one I make with my moka pot is thicker. It tastes more "raw", as if the coffee has embodies that it was being brewed over burning gas that may or may not be leaking into one of my cupboards (it smells like it but I can't find any leaks). It's as if it carries the legacy of all the other coffees that has been brewed ever since Bialetti invented the pots in 1933, or at least since mine was made in 2002. It probably also does carry the legacy of at least some of those coffees, I've never actually learnt how to clean it properly.
The filter is different. It's slimmer, both in consistency and in taste. It focuses more on what it wants to give you instead of dragging you face first into the grounded coffee. It doesn't need to deal with any potholes on the road it takes to work. Most likely it doesn't even need to take a car or public transport.
Both of them are great. They are different, and if I'm given the choice of which to have for breakfast I'll choose moka 99 times out of a 100 - which just so happens match almost perfectly with the amount of mornings I've brewed my own coffee here in Brazil.
For now though, I'll continue to enjoy my Sunday morning with the remainder of my cup of filter coffee.
