How to make good coffee in a Moka pot?

Moka coffee pots work well if you use them every day. This way the oils that the coffee leaves inside them do not have the opportunity to go rancid (all fats go rancid eventually) and impart that horrible taste to your coffee. If you use them every day, it is true that you don't really need to clean them, except to remove calcium scale buildup.

If you use it rarely, like in your case or the frequent Moka pot left at a vacation house, you need to clean it with dish detergent and a scrubby sponge, you don't need anything harsher. Make sure that you get all the coffee brown oils out. Yes, it is an unpleasant job. Make sure you rinse it well before putting it away to dry, you don't want to simply replace the bitterness with soapiness.

...and this is the Italian doctrine! :-)

The hardest thing I found with using moka pots is not burning the coffee. I found I always left it too long and my coffee probably reached boiling point.

Secondly, the Lavazza is probably not doing you any favours. Chances are, it is already stale when you bought it. You should find a good speciality roaster and get some fresh beans. It's best to grind them yourself, but if you can't, try and get home quick and make a coffee so you can get a good comparison to your Lavazza.

Haven't tried this method myself, but RitualCoffee claims that starting by adding boiling (or near boiling) water to the Moka Pot results in a less bitter cup. Their video guide is here.

As it was said in another answer, you should clean your coffee machine with soap to remove the oils, as they get rancid and give an odd taste to the coffee you brew. You should also clean your grinder, if using one.

You could also try some steps that helped me making better coffee in a Bialetti moka pot. Some of them I found in this video. (I don't remember where I found other tricks, but they seemed quite logical by the time).

1. Put water to boil.

   Don't heat it in the moka pot. Preheat it using a kettle, a saucepan, microwave, ...

2. Fill the basked with frehsly grounded coffee, but do not compress it.

   The fineness of the grinding should be the right one. Nor as fine as for espresso, nor as large as for French press cafètiere .

3. Once you have boiling water, pour it in the lower part of the pot, up to the center of the security valve.

   We want the pot to be on a heater the minimun time as possible, because we do not want heat to get to the grounded coffee. That's why we are pouring boiling water.

4. Wait until the brewed coffee is being poured.

5. Before the last drops of coffee will be poured, stop heating the pot and cover it's bottom part (where water is boiling) with a wet towel.

   We do not want steam passing through the coffee. So, before it will pass, we try to cool down the boiling water to lower the pressure.

Moka pot coffee is my favorite and my method is this: Pour boiling water into moka pot. Regain boil, but a slow boil to prevent hot steam from going through the grounds. Insert basket of grounds and, using oven mitt, screw on top half of pot. After about a minute, the liquid should begin to ooze out of the tube. The very best coffee comes out first, while the last will be thin and bitter (over extracted). To avoid mixing the good with the over-extracted coffee, pour off the coffee in stages into different cups. Sample coffee from each cup and discard the over-extracted coffee.

try adding a tiny bit of salt to a portion of your ground coffee to counter the bitterness

Disclaimer: I am part of the business úKu Artisan Coffee.

If you change two things in your described steps you will be able to obtain great results.

1. Use clean pure water for your Moka Pot
2. Use high grade coffee, similar to what the guys at úKu Coffee offer

Coffee is an important ingrediate of a great cup of coffee.