I also admit after years of half snobbery that I’m now very pleased with the Nespresso I bought.
It consistently makes better espresso than any shop in town (including the one that roasts their own beans weekly, which are very good). I’m sure with a good home machine, perfected technique with lots of ocd you can pull a better shot, but the Nespresso is the ultimate in lazy and great every time with zero effort.
I’m afraid pushing a few buttons for a perfect latte has hooked me permanently to the dark side here.
The ones that I saw had either very inconveniently located water tanks, or removable tanks that were awkward to put in or take out. But those were probably gen-1 machines, and I would believe it if you said they were better one.
My understanding is that most consumer home espresso machines (as opposed to commercial-grade ones) simply can’t consistently maintain the required pressure for espresso, so the result varies wildly. If the nespresso machines solve that, they’ll be better than most home-made espresso.
It was gross. Not only did it make terrible espresso because it couldn’t possibly pressurize the water enough, but it actually molded/rusted on the inside. You have to turn over the entire machine to dump out unused water, but even that left a little water inside which just destroyed the thing. So awful.
I’ve had Keurig machines for years now and I love them. Now to note, I’m not a coffee snob, I learned to drink coffee in the back of a hardware store I worked at in high school using questionable water and grounds of unknown origin. Starbucks is a waste to me as I’m just as happy drinking gas station coffee. But that said the Keurig has become a necessity in my house. I’m the only one who drinks coffee, and I only make one cup a day most days, so a regular coffee pot is overkill. I also like a variety of roasts and flavors so having those at my finger tips whenever I want is a blessing. The kids love using it for hot water for cup-o-soups or hot chocolate too. The model I have is easy to clean and use. Now the K-cups can be pricey, but if you have a Bed, Bath & Beyond nearby you can get them much cheaper. BB&B sends out $5 off or 20% off coupons all the time, especially if you sign up for their emails. I can’t remember the last time I paid full price for K-cups.
So for me at least, it comes down to the ease of use combined with the variety of available coffees that makes it a winner. I’ll never be without a machine in my house again.
Various companies make little refillable k-cups that you can put your own grounds in:
I should probably get one of these for work to assuage my guilt over the environmental impacts of disposable k-cups (both disposal and transport) but I haven’t gotten around to it yet due to the cost (free at work) and convenience of the standard k-cups. If I had a Keurig at home, I would absolutely be using one of these refillable cups though.
Another K-cup user and love it. It’s convenient and much better than instant. If you only make 1-2 cups a day it’s perfect. No pot to clean or burnt coffee. We have them at the office too which is great.
Then again I gave up caffeine a few years back so I only drink decaf (dodges all the coffee cups getting thrown at me right now) so what do I know.
I have the same model and its mostly hands off for 6 months at a time, at which point you need to run a tankful of vinegar through it and then 2-3 of water for descaling.
It tends to scatter tiny amounts of ground coffee around over time inside the compartment you put the kcups in. You would never notice over one use, or even 10, but it adds up and is not easy to clean out even with the removable components.
That’s pretty much it for my complaints with it and its still so, so much easier to maintain than anything else - traditional, french press, aeropress, whatever. I own them all and the kcup is for those of us who hate instant but can’t be bothered to grind our own beans.
Nespresso looks interesting. I may look into it more when my current Keurig kicks the bucket. DRM on my coffee cups is a pretty strong deterrent for me.
I bought the Lattissima Plus model by Delonghi, and the thing is compact, relatively quiet, easy to maintain and the built in milk frother is terrific. It’s turned me from skeptic to junkie in about two months.
I’ve not tried Starbucks VIA yet, which some people swear is actually good; but the instant coffees I have drunk are significantly worse than any Keurig or Tassimo coffee I’ve had.
FWIW, among the single-cup brewers, Consumer Reports has rated the Nespresso coffee machines / pods higher than Keurig or Tassimo. The problem is they’re even less popular in the U.S. than Tassimo is, which is already a distant second to Keurig; AFAIK, you can only order the coffee online.
In the last year or two, I went from coffee snob to coffee slob. I have a hand-me-down Tassimo in my office (literally right behind my head): it’s better than instant or the office coffee (they always buy the cheapest kind, the stingy bastards); cheaper & quicker than running to the nearest Starbucks; more convenient & less messy than trying to brew by hand. Yes, I’m paying a premium (45 to 60 cents per pod from Amazon depending on brand, quantity, etc.), but it was the best compromise I could work out.
The big problem the DRM scheme is going to have is getting everyone to migrate. They seem to think that the new platform will be better, but if the kcups are all twice as expensive, people will probably notice. Absolutely nothing preventing people from buying the old ones forever. I’ve got a Cuisinart brewer and non Green Mountain kcups off Amazon that work great, and that’s probably just what I’ll keep doing.
Something about this phrase strikes me funny. As if the idea of a lock is now derivative of its digital equivalent.
That said, K-cups are a nice way to have my one cup of coffee in the morning and not have to negotiate between myself and the wife about who has to get up and start the coffee pot going. No messing with filters and grounds, no tossing cold pots of wasted coffee, no cleaning out residue from the coffee pots. Neat, fast, and on-demand. But then, I’m no purist or aficionado.
For convenience it is well worth it. Instant coffee is the only thing more convenient but the best instant coffee is still worse than an average Kcup imo. In fact, instant coffee is the only coffee I can’t stand to drink now, I’d rather have a soda. I go the French press route for the most part but sometimes I want a cup of coffee NOW. That whole ‘weigh the beans, grind the beans, brew the coffee’ ritual is not fast enough in those cases. Being able to have a wide choice in Kcups is a big part of the appeal though, a limited Keurig is not worth it to me.
I got my dad a bunch of these (caught a sale on three-packs) and seems to like them. Took him a little bit of trial and error to get the proportion of the coffee right (for taste), but no complaints that I’ve heard.
Oddly enough, despite being very picky about the taste of my coffee, I’ve found that it tastes just fine when re-heated in the microwave. So a cold pot of coffee isn’t wasted. Not that I brew pots, I use an aeropress, so I’m brewing 200ml at a time.
Grounds are messy, but not that messy. Popping the used puck out and washing off the remaining residue takes just a moment. What irritates me is how labor-intensive the entire process seems. Start the kettle, weigh beans, grind them, tap the grinds into the press, add water, stir, wait, press, clean the press. It’s not really that much work in the grand scheme of things since I seem to take roughly a minute of my labor, not counting waiting time, but a minute is a lot of time compared to just pouring a glass of juice.
I’d love something that was less work if it produced comparable results. I’ve tried my wife’s drip coffee maker and it doesn’t extract as much flavor, even if I’m using a lot of grounds. The aeropress doesn’t produce a lot of pressure compared and an espresso machine, but it’s lot more than just dripping water over the grounds. I’ve thought about getting an espresso machine, but I’ve heard those are more work than the aeropress.
I was in the same boat until the Nespresso. I still break out the aeropress occasionally for iced mocha, since it’s a bit harsher and cuts through the milk a bit better than the super balanced creamy shots the Nespresso produces. Sometimes that’s what I crave.
The Nespresso is still a pre-ground capsule system like the Keurig K-Cup, right? I’m doubting you were in my boat since I don’t see any system that uses pre-ground coffee of an unknown age as being acceptable.
Using an aeropress for two years doesn’t mean we have the same priorities. If I didn’t care about coffee flavor, there are plenty of other approaches I could take to brewing coffee that are easier. I’m not sure why you stuck out using the aeropress for that long if you’re happy with using stale grounds.
EDIT: I should mention that lots of people don’t care about the difference in flavor between fresh roasted coffee beans and stale coffee beans. My wife doesn’t, for example. And just as many have never tasted coffee made from fresh beans, since you won’t get that at the grocery store and probably won’t at Starbucks.
