I received a new nespresso virtuoline machine for Christmas, and I must say I’m impressed with the quality of the product it produces. The difference between the original and the virtuoline us that apparently the new machine can accept different size pods, which are similar in shape to the restaurant machine that Kao linked to. You can either use small pods for espresso, or large pods for large cups of coffee. The machine does an impressive job given that it requires no effort at all. Hell, even the used pods just fall away into a little box after being used. It extracts a large amount of crema, and operates super fast, taking maybe 30 seconds to crank out a shot of espresso, including the 15 it takes to initially warm up. I don’t think I’d have bought one myself, but now that I have it I’ll certainly use it daily.
However, perhaps more miraculous than the espresso machine itself, is this thing, which seems to operate outside the realm of normal physics.
You put milk in, and push the button. In literally seconds, it has made hot frothed milk, with a crazy stiff peak. Apparently it can also make cold frothed milk.
Seriously though, I don’t understand how it can do it as fast as it does. I turned it on, and then went over to make a shot of espresso, and turned around and the light was off on the milk thing. I thought it didn’t work, out was defective or something. But nope, it was simply done. Totally crazy.
It has a little nub that sticks out of the bottom of the container where the milk goes, and a little spinny thing goes into it, held on by a magnet. There’s actually two of these things, one which is initially on the lid off the container, which I first almost threw away because it looked like a little protective plastic thing like you’d have on a printer ink cartridge. But no, it’s just the one for cold milk. The hot one has a little heating coil on it, which I’m assuming works via induction to get hot.
Anyway, the thing is impressive in how fast it works, and how cleanup is basically just rinsing it out.
