I tend to use Nespresso, especially now that the cups are simply available in the shop (and cheap aftermarket options), it's pretty perfect.
I know the manual process is more environmentally friendly but when I wake up in the morning I have no headspace for fussing with coffee grinds. I just need good coffee right away. And I don't even own a car or anything nor have kids so my footprint is pretty low.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/k-cup-creator-john-sylvan-r...
Or is this different?
Also nestle is a terrible company for the environment and human rights.
The company itself has a recycling program; you can mail them and some stores accept them.
> Also nestle is a terrible company for the environment and human rights.
Agreed, but so's pretty much everything else we buy.
Not sure what the deal is in other parts of the world, if Nespresso is sold there.
Side Note: Personally, making my coffee is a nice process in the morning to kick my brain out of that early fog, it's something I have to engage with, but also something you can learn and get _very_ quick at to the point where you don't need much headspace to do it, not every espresso shot needs to be 1000% perfect.
The ritual of making it in the morning almost wakes me up as much as the coffee does :)
I'm in Switzerland where recycling Nespresso pods couldn't be easier, and we barely reach a 2/3 recycling rate. US and global rates are much lower.
If Nestlé hadn't crippled their machines on purpose, I'd think third party plastic capsules might be a better option in Europe at least, since they end up in waste co-processing.
Nestle invented an entirely new way to brew coffee AGAIN just to extra lock down their pod system from independent competition.
The built all this wankery about spinning the pods at like 30k rpm to "force the water through the coffee like an espresso machine" but it _doesn't_. As Mr Hoffman discussed, the foam it creates is just aerated coffee, which is substantially different than the foam you get from actually putting water through coffee at high pressure. All this to get a patent on a physical process so that competitors cannot drive the price of their pods down.
And the coffee still tastes like shit. And the machine takes a long time. And it makes a stupid and annoying noise. The system is demonstrably worse than any other pod based system because it was more important to Nestle that they get their pod profit margins than you get acceptable coffee.
Like seriously this should be a crime, not a civil infraction, a crime to artificially lock out competition like this.
It separates the aluminium pod and the coffee grounds so you can recycle the former and compost the latter.
I buy aftermarket cups (10 for 2 euro 50, less than half the price of their own cups!) and the machine is made by Krups. I use those same cups at work because they removed all the coffee machines and put nespressos in place of them. The reason was that the machine coffee was so horrible everyone started bringing their own nespresso machine (they had a really good deal at the time). So now they just provide those in the office. The company I work for is too cheap to pay for coffee for us.
But for me it wouldn't work to do it manually. My house is a huge mess most of the time and messing with grinds etc requires more space.
He's now drinking Nespresso like me :)
Breville doesn't seem to be a common brand here in Europe but I see it is a lot cheaper. Nothing like the 80 euro of a Nespresso machine though (which has also lasted me 10 years despite never descaling it).
After reading this, the invention made a lot more sense. K-cups seem to be a better choice for outside of the home where someone might want a single cup on demand with no prep or cleanup. Like waiting rooms, offices, hotels, etc.
If there's anything that "everyone uses" it's the venerable Mr. Coffee 10/12 Cup drip brewers that have dominated the US market for 40+ years. They're popular for many reasons, but today, superior taste isn't one of them.
On the other hand there are plenty of cheap original Nespresso machines pretty much everywhere in Switzerland. In some countries Nestlé was virtually giving them away around 2010~2015. Shortly after, some patents expired and third party brands started selling plastic capsules, and Nestlé had to fight back and make their machines work poorly with these!
As far as I know all patents have expired now, and a few third party brands sell 100% compatible aluminium capsules.
Most people like the taste of Nespresso pods, k-cups, drip coffee and Starbucks. The sales of all 4 reflect that.
A far cry from a proper 1:2 espresso, let alone ristretto.
For more info see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HouzvJGazs4
Even the integrated gasket patent?
There's still the proprietary secret of how they grind the coffee. Which nobody has successfully replicated meaning that all else being equal you still don't get exactly the same result.
That being said, from my experience with genuine nespresso pods in genuine nespresso machines, they taste nothing like espresso and nothing like a good coffee.
Machines which grind internally and produce a coffee fully automatically can be configured to produce decent coffee, but it's not exactly easy.
It's really simple, people are happy with it because actually good coffee is so rare that they have nothing to compare against. I also doubt most of these people have ever drank a well brewed light roast espresso anyway so I think your blanket statement about "many people don't particularly like what you are calling good coffee" is bullshit.
I'm not sure that is safer than the microplastics or aluminium from coffee capsules.
Fully stainless steel machines are probably the best option, but there are very few of those around (and they would probably still leak nickel).
I don't have any issues with it though. But if my machine breaks I'll buy an aftermarket machine. Good point!
I wonder if the older machines also have this issue by the way.
I can't bring myself to drink instant coffee any more and will choose any kind of tea in preference to having to suffer the insult of instant "coffee". Drip-machine coffee at least uses real coffee, but in most people's hands leads to a horribly over-extracted brew and typically it's using supermarket-bought stale pre-ground coffee.
If you want to taste nice/good coffee, it can be made relatively cheaply. Buy some whole roasted beans (pre-ground coffee goes stale before it even hits the supermarket shelves), a decent hand burr grinder and an Aeropress device.
If you want to go for an electric bean grinder, ensure that it's a burr grinder as blade grinders are not suitable - they produce a wide variety of particle sizes which means that the small/dust bits get over-extracted and the larger particles are under-extracted. You could try sieving out the unwanted larger and smaller bits, but it's easier to just get a good grinder. For using an Aeropress, you can get away with a "cheaper" burr grinder, but if you want to make home espressos, then you probably want to be spending a LOT on a decent grinder as that will make the most difference to the quality of the espresso.
Over extracted, pressurized espresso with capsules or even most semi-autos is disappointing.
That's the problem though. We're all test subjects for a worldwide experiment to put microplastices everywhere and see what happens. It seems incredibly unlikely that they don't disrupt various mechanisms in the environment and our bodies.
I do know how good coffee tastes like and would say: It's not worth it.
(In theory, you could experiment with grinding and filling a user-fillable nespresso type capsule, but you'd get so much more flexibility and quality by not being tied to that specific design)
I myself make my morning coffee in a moka pot and prefer it over for example a pour over coffee. I recently got a Ninja Luxe Cafe machine which I use for espresso and fast cold brew coffee drinks. It makes decent espresso and the money, time and mental energy for getting a slightly better espresso through a more expensive machine is just not worth it to me. At my gitlfriend's I drink Nespresso because that is what she has. It tastes fine. It is definitely not horrible as many above have claimed.
I don't like it, I think Original Nespresso tastes way better. Of course nothing compared to a good espresso extraction, but for a quick sip it is good enough.
The vast majority of people have not tried well brewed coffee. Of those who have tried well brewed coffee, the vast majority have not tried well brewed light roast. The main reason is similar to how most people have not tried well prepared food. The reason is not, as you seem to insinuate, because I am a coffee snob who is incapable of conceding that different people have different tastes. Another reason is because in most of the world people drink coffee with various inclusions like heaps of sugar (Italy) and heaps of milk (the rest of the world) and because, as a result, almost no cafe out there optimises for black coffee outside of countries like Italy.
Most people who drink coffee black (even in Italy) seem to do it either because they got used to how bad it tastes, or because of dietary reasons, or because they feel it makes them look more manly.
> Maybe it is your taste that is screwed up and that is why you like light roast espresso.
Again, you are assuming completely incorrectly and baselessly that I am claiming that light roast espresso is better than nespresso pods. I am not claiming this in the slightest. I am claiming that any good dark roast espresso is miles ahead of anything you can get out of a nespresso pod. Both in terms of not tasting like wood and in terms of not tasting like light roast.
Even petrol station cafes in Italy can produce much better results than a Nespresso machine and Italy continues to love drinking dark roasted Robusta/Arabica blends with heaps of sugar.
Likewise, any petrol station cafe in Italy can produce espresso which is so much better than what you can get in a Starbucks that it's difficult to conceive of why Starbucks even offers espresso any more. (And again, this is me talking about coffee in a country where people are used to drinking dark roast and would also likely be at least weirded out by the taste of light roast coffee.)
> But either way even if Nespresso isn't the best coffee it isn't horrible.
It's horrible in comparison to a high quality brew in the same way that McDonalds is horrible compared to anything you would get at a well respected high end restaurant.
You only think it's not horrible because you have limited experience. Yes, even in the realm of dark roast espresso.
Edit: I would also like you to consider the possibility that you personally (and maybe most people) simply do not have a sense of taste which is discerning enough to taste the difference between what someone with a more discerning taste would consider "good" coffee versus "horrible" coffee. This doesn't mean that we can't make quality judgements about coffees once they're above a certain level of awfully bitter/sour/astringent and unpleasant, but it does mean that maybe for you and for the vast majority of people, you shouldn't worry about "excellent" coffee and should instead just get on with your life.
I would like to just state that I am overjoyed to hear that you have found coffee you like to drink every day. There are lots of people out there whose experience of coffee has always been terrible (and it is my belief that most of them, with some help to explore, could probably find something they find inoffensive or even tasty). But rather than telling people who seem care more about coffee than you that they are snobs and their opinions of coffee are wrong, maybe you should also accept that not everyone has the same sense of taste as you.
I know the above sounds contradictory when I called Starbucks and Nespresso "horrible" but I would like to clarify things by saying that while I find Nespresso horrible in the grand scheme of things, if it makes you happy, you shouldn't listen to my opinion of it and instead enjoy it.
On the other hand, if you do find coffee to be generally unpleasant, horrible, or even sub-par, then I encourage you to explore and consider opening your mind to the possibility that there is a coffee out there that you would enjoy.
Every morning I make a coffee for someone I love, which I would personally not enjoy drinking very much, but which she enjoys immensely. I offer her to try the coffee I like, and on most occasions she is either indifferent about it or hates it and this is fine, I do not try to explain to her that she is wrong, I just try to cater to her particular tastes with a high quality coffee and preparation method that she likes.
e.g. "It makes decent espresso and the money, time and mental energy for getting a slightly better espresso through a more expensive machine is just not worth it to me."
If you think that time, money and experience can only produce a "slightly better espresso" then I will just say you are not experienced enough to make such a claim. Rather than accepting that maybe to some there is a big difference, you call them snobs.
For you.
Please add that last bit, as it makes the difference between a statement and an opinion.
I am happy for you that you tried things and decided they were not worth it for you. At least you took it a step further than a lot of people who hold such opinions about speciality coffee. But I think you should open your mind to the idea that the people who think it IS worth it are not just pretending.
Honestly, I think if you think about it and look around, we are test subjects for a whole swathe of worldwide experiments of various kinds. At some point you have to just realise that it's the cost of progress.
I am not saying that microplastics are harmless, but statements like: "It seems incredibly unlikely that they don't disrupt various mechanisms in the environment and our bodies." are baseless. It's unlikely that it does nothing, but it's more than likely (all things considered) that it's potentially worth the cost.
I wish I had a better reply than "deal with it" but you live on a planet with lots of other people and that includes dealing with pollutants you have no control over. All we can do is demand research be done on these things so we can progress while mitigating the risks as they come up. It would truly be wrong to just ignore microplastics and assume they're safe. But it is also alarmist to assume they must have a significant negative impact without any evidence for such a negative impact.
Think of it this way, while we don't fully understand how microplastics affect us, if they were shortening our lifespan by a significant amount we would probably already know about it.
Whether that's because there is no coffee or brewing method out there that, when served black, would satisfy them, or because they've just not had the chance to taste what they would consider good coffee, of that I am not sure.
Is that normal in 'good' espresso? I've had some coffee from shops with a particularly sour taste and I don't like it. It's not really because it's 'unusual' to me, I just really don't like it.
PS: I don't drink it with milk nor sugar. Just plain espresso with nothing (just in the morning I do like it americano with water). I like the strong taste and I hate milk :)
I don't see how you can evaluate the cost of using plastics everywhere when the biggest benefit is simply to increase profits for huge corporations that don't have to worry about cleaning up after themselves.
> But it is also alarmist to assume they must have a significant negative impact without any evidence for such a negative impact.
I don't think it is alarmist to decry putting microplastics with unknown effects, into literally everywhere, including people's brains and mothers' breast milk. It's an obviously stupid thing to do - "we don't know what this does, let's pollute the entire planet with it and see what happens".
> if they were shortening our lifespan by a significant amount we would probably already know about it.
That seems overly optimistic to me. There's plenty of nasty chemicals/products that were sold for long periods of time before we eventually realised the damage that we were doing. e.g. lead in fuel, asbestos in buildings, tobacco usage etc. We have already noticed the direct harm that PFAs cause to human development and yet you seem happy to carry on spreading microplastics everywhere without requiring any evidence that they are safe.
That's a pretty big generalisation IMO.
I just like coffee black because I tried it one time (there was no sugar) and I was surprised how nice it tasted. The only time I drink it with sugar now is with the typical Spanish "cafe con hielo" in summer because the cold brings out the bitterness more. I've never taken milk because I hate it in general.
But I truly like it. I've always hated the starbucks "milkshake" idea of coffee and I like it strongly tasting.
But coffee culture in Italy vs Spain is distinctly different despite both enjoying espressos. Italy takes their coffee much more seriously (and really, all foods and drinks in general). Whereas in Spain they don't really care so much. Like pizza with pineapple, or cutting spaghetti with a knife, if you do similar things with Spanish food (e.g. like paella with vegetables) people don't care - except the Valencians :)
But the main point of it is that they were able to create new patents and milk them for their duration.
I'd agree that getting better quality espressos can get expensive very quickly, and moka pots make very nice coffee for the price (definitely diminishing returns for high end equipment).
To me, the best bang for your buck comes with grinding beans to order, as that means that your coffee isn't oxidising so much before you even brew it. Personally, I'm a fan of immersion brewing techniques, so an Aeropress is my weapon of choice - it's relatively cheap and can make outstanding coffee (also highly portable - I take it along with a hand grinder when camping).
And sorry, but I do find Nespresso to taste very flat and stale the few times that I've tried it. I'd rather just have a good cup of tea than a stale cup of coffee.
What I tend to do is drink "half-caf", I take 1 pod decaf and 1 pod normal in the same cup. It looks like for this one I'd have to change out the bean reservoir every time (or mix normal beans with decaf beans somehow).
It would probably be cheaper though yeah. Even the aftermarket cups still cost me 25c. I'll have more of a look at it once my current machine fails (it's going on 10 years now).
The only office I know in our work where the coffee is decent is the one in Paris where they have a real coffee bar inside the office with a real barista (and cost-price pricing).
But in all the other offices we just have vending machines that spit out horrible swill.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-024-01727-1