Posts Tagged ‘Single Cup Coffee’
Posted on November 26, 2008 - by deCadmus
Coffee Notes from All Over
It’s getting stupid busy around here, and so to make sure that I keep up with things I’m challenging myself to do more, not less. (That right there… that’s likely the stupid part of stupid busy.)
As always, there’s more coffee reviews coming… and at least some of them will be covering coffees you wouldn’t want to give to your worst enemy. Yes, once again I will drink bad coffee so you don’t have to. Here’s the new twist: why don’t you tell me what coffees I should taste and review for your warped, twisted and not at all spirit-of-the-season type pleasure? Leave your ideas in the comments, below. And think evil thoughts. I dare you.
Also, while we’re at the height of that gifting season, I have a bunch of new hardware to try… in particular, several single-cup coffee machines. New to the Bloggle coffee labs are the completely revamped Tassimo by Bosch, the extraordinarily odd-looking NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto by Krups, and the new “Mini” B30 brewer by Keurig, dressed in a sassy new holiday red (which may not help it brew a better cup of coffee, but delivers lots of eye-candy appeal.)
Finally, Bloggle is now iPhone friendly! Which is damned ironic, given that’s its still near impossible to own an iPhone in Vermont. Is it frustrating to test your own web site on an emulator for a device that you can’t own? Why, yes. Yes it is.
(Word on the street is that’s soon to change. I’ll believe it when I have one in my own grubby, little fingers…)
Posted on March 5, 2008 - by deCadmus
Could a Coffee Maker Be Worth $11,000?
Clover’s sitting pretty. They’ve picked up positive ink in the New York Times, Economist, The Atlantic (warning: PDF). And just yesterday evening while you were loosing sleep over the presidential primaries (you were, weren’t you… admit it!) Paul Adams posted a refreshingly cogent piece — How the Clover is Changing the Way We Think About Coffee — on Slate.
He covers a bit of ground — gets in a good plug for Cafe Grumpy, takes a swipe at the “soy-foamers at Starbucks” — and eventually buries his lede on page two:
I’m becoming a Clover addict, just as I feared. It’s not the tasty coffee itself that’s drawing me in—although that caffeine euphoria certainly colors my mood. It’s the joy of tinkering, really delving into the possibilities of a coffee bean in a way I’ve never considered before. After several more cups, each with their own quirks, it’s time to go: The baristas have finished sweeping up around our feet and are clearly eager to leave. But there’s one more cup I want to try: I dial in the same settings that produced cup No. 2, the greatest success so far. Forty-four seconds later, there it is, the exact same delicate, floral-scented brew I remember. That’s the consistency you pay for.
Quoth Jerry Espenson: “Bingo!”
Posted on October 31, 2007 - by deCadmus
Keurig vs. Tassimo: A Single-Cup Showdown Update
Autumn has blown into our neck of the woods with a mighty draft of whirling leaves, the aroma of wood smoke wafting from neighbors’ hearths, and — hey, this is new — a raft of folks banging on an increasingly-dated review of single-serve coffee machines here on Bloggle. I guess there’s nothing quite like a cold spell to put folks in touch with their inner caffeine junkie… or maybe folks are already looking ahead to their holiday gift lists.
Whatever the reason, an update to the single-serve marketplace is long overdue. So, let’s get to it…
The Tassimo Lineup
Designed and distributed by Braun1 , manufactured by Saeco, and with its coffee supply produced exclusively by Kraft and its army of licensed brands, when the Tassimo launched two years ago it painted itself as the smartest single serve coffee brewer yet.
Certainly the Tassimo’s got brains. Like the Keurig brewers, this brewer relies on a micro-processor to manage brew volume and temperature. More, the Tassimo automatically adjusts brew volume, temperature — and even some aspects of how its pump drives the brew cycle — to match the parameters of beverage you wish to brew. How? Well… it reads, of course. But we’ll get back to that.
Offered in two models –the TA 1400
The Keurig Team
Now in its third generation of home brewers, the always-evolving Keurig line currently includes the “Elite” B40
The B40 and B60 are built on the second-generation “B50″ platform, and both feature a similar, generally symmetrical shape. The B70 is the first example of Keurig’s latest brew technology, and is a bit of a departure, too, in its overall design. It has a somewhat more aggressive stance — perhaps a bit of attitude. More, it has an updated brewing system that extracts more coffee flavor and aroma from each brew cycle than the B40 and B60 models.
Keurig’s approach is at once more focused and singular than Tassimo’s. A Keurig brewer makes coffee — brewed coffee — and it does it well. Its microprocessor is wired only with the fundamentals of coffee brewing — time, temperature, turbulence and water-to-coffee ratio — and it’s tuned to deliver consistent results. You push a button, you get coffee. That’s it.
Consequently, there’s no brewing espresso with a Keurig. No cappuccino, and no latte, either. That’s not to say that other drinks aren’t available… you can get a decent cup of hot chocolate in a K-Cup, and quite good tea. But these are products that have been tuned to the specific brew parameters of the Keurig brewer, and not the other way around.
Notes and Links
- Kraft has recently entered into an agreement with Bosch to manufacture its brewers (seeing as how Gillette/Braun was purchased by its rival, P&G.) Bosch manufactured and distributed brewers are scheduled to be in market in Spring ‘08. ↩
Posted on August 9, 2007 - by deCadmus
Revealed: The New and Improved Keurig B70 Brewer
There’s a new single-cup brewer in town… two of them, really. But you might not notice, ’cause Keurig slipped them into production without much fanfare.
The first is an updated Keurig ‘Elite’ B40… the entry-level single cup model. The new model adds a second, larger-volume brew button to its control panel. It’s a feature probably most welcome to tea-drinkers — and it’s especially welcome for iced tea fans — as a 9.25 ounce setting isn’t one I’d recommend for getting the most flavor out of a coffee K-Cup — even an Extra Bold selection.
And then there’s the update to Keurig’s ‘Platinum’ B70… It’s a tiny change — one that you wouldn’t notice to look at it — but you can’t help but notice in the cup. Keurig has tweaked the brewing system itself — specifically, the brewing needle that pierces the K-Cup. 
The change creates more turbulence within the K-Cup during brewing, which, in turn, extracts more flavor from the coffee. (Turbulence — along with dwell-time and temperature – is one of the critical factors for brewing coffee.)
The results? Pretty remarkable, really. I’ve been brewing coffee with one of the first production B70s daily for several weeks now, and it makes a decidedly bolder cup at all brew volumes. More, it makes a cup with more distinctive flavors, too. Green Mountain’s Extra Bold Espresso Blend now finally reveals its dry berry top note, the Extra Bold Kenyan AA offers distinctive wine and blackberry flavors, and the Extra Bold Fair Trade Organic Sumatran Reserve is at once rich, and earthy and ever so slightly mossy.
That’s not to say that you have to brew an Extra Bold K-Cup to appreciate the upgrade. Whether your K-Cup of choice is a Signature Blend or a Partner Blend (PBS Blend is especially tasty with the brewing system upgrade) or even coffee from another roaster (I’m okay with that… really!) I think you can appreciate the results. And, if you’ve found yourself on the fence between brew sizes, the new brewing system may make that larger brew volume just the ticket for your tastes.
So how can you get one? Well… at the moment that’s a bit tricky. Green Mountain has the new B40 in stock now, and should have the B70 near the end of this month, though you can place an advance order today. Amazon is taking orders for the new B70 now, for delivery in October.
Update: Erin at Keurig tells me that the Keurig web site is stocked up and ready to sell you a second-generation B70 today. Thanks for the note, Erin.
Psst… wanna know a secret?
So what if you should you see one in the wild, on a retailer’s shelf? How will you know if it’s a first or second-generation brewer? Chances are that you won’t find a first-generation brewer right now… I think the B70 is out of stock pretty much everywhere as it’s proved rather popular. If you do, however, here’s how you can identify the new B70… Take a look at the stainless steel cover for the drip tray. If its center cutout is a circle, then it’s the first generation B70. If it’s a star, it’s a second-generation model.
A Follow-up: This may or may not prove useful, as apparently some number of first-generation brewers got the new “star” drip tray, too. On the other hand the retail box for the new brewer now clearly reads that it’s got “new brewing technology”.
Posted on April 3, 2007 - by deCadmus
Green Mountain’s Game-Changing Kenya AA
- Rating: Rating:
I have long been ambivalent — or at least something of a fence-sitter — where the whole single-cup coffee thing is concerned. Single-cup brewers are, by design, a study in compromise between convenience and quality. Do you want cup-at-a-time accessibility? Or do you want the full range and nuance of aroma, flavor body and balance that only grinding and brewing fresh-roasted beans can offer? I’d kinda like both. But the Clover is out of my price range and wouldn’t fit in my kitchen anyway.
(more…)
Posted on November 17, 2005 - by deCadmus
Single Cup Coffee Showdown: Tassimo vs. Keurig
– Update Alert! —
It’s two years since I wrote this comparison. I’ve since updated it. The updated version of this article can be found here.
– Update Alert! –
Just when you thought it was safe to cast your lot and pick a single cup coffee brewer (be it a pod coffee machine, K-Cup, capsule or pouch) there arrives on the scene a spiffy new machine — the Tassimo. 
Designed by Braun, manufactured by Saeco, and with its coffee supply manufactured exclusively by Kraft, the Tassimo paints itself as the smartest single serve coffee brewer yet.
It’s not the first single-cup brewer to go to market with a “smarter is better” approach. The Keurig line of home brewers — the B50, and more recently the stripped-down B-40 and the souped-up B60 — have leveraged micro-processor control since their initial introduction a year ago (about the same time the Tassimo was announced.) So how does the new kid on the block stack up against the Keurig brewer? Let’s find out — (more…)
Posted on October 30, 2005 - by deCadmus
Something New Under The Sun: Clover
“But what about me?” says you, a fan of fine, single origin coffees.” I mean… there’s oodles of cool new tools for the espresso-hound — PID temperature control, ever-more-fine grind control, bottomless portafilters, pressure-sensitive tampers — but what if I simply want a really great cup of brewed coffee?”
It’s a fair question. If you think about it, there’s really very little that’s changed in coffee brewing gear for, what, a hundred years? Maybe two? The Turkish coffee pot, or ibrik , was used in the 6th century, and ruled coffee brewing for some 1300 years… Filtered drip coffee made the scene in the 1700’s when folks discovered that filtering their coffee with their cotton hose made it a little less crunchy. The Rumford drip pot came on the scene in 1800; vacuum pots were patented in the 1830’s, and their tippy (yet swanky) upgrade, the balance siphon, in the 1850’s. In the 1890’s early coffee percolators made the scene, but we really don’t consider them an advancement so much as a screaming retreat.
Closer to 1900 and you have the advent of the cafeolette press pot, or French Press (known, we understand, as the Freedom Press on Capitol Hill.) The Melitta paper pour-over filter was invented in 1912, largely eliminating socks from the role of coffee filtering medium… and in the 1970’s you get the first electric auto-drip brewers, pioneered by Joe DiMaggio — er, Mr. Coffee.
It’s only in the last few years that the needle has moved at all; Bodum revamped the vacuum pot with some spiffy electronics and a highly reliable filter, while Phillips, Nespresso and Keurig have taken their respective shots at single-cup brewed coffee via pods and sealed capsules. But these single-cup brewers, however convenient, don’t generally offer the flexibility that the modern coffee snob demands… that is, to brew any coffee under the sun.
It’s high time there were some real upgrades to brewed coffee. Maybe — just maybe — the Clover will shake things up a bit.
Unveiled this week at Coffee Fest in Seattle, the Clover is a commercial-grade single-cup coffee brewer that has clearly impressed some of the most demanding folk in specialty coffee on the left-coast. Say’s Victrola’s Tony (tonx to you and me), “The Clover… delivers flawless cup quality, with granular control of brew parameters from freshly ground coffee, and delivers with unbelievable speed.”
The brew cylinder is all stainless steel as is the filter mechanism. PID controls keep the water and brew environment at precise temperature. The elegant interface allows for granular creation and selection of specific brew profiles for multiple coffees. The brewing of the coffee is visible to the customer and at the end of the brew cycle you are left with a ring of nearly dry grounds swept away in a single stroke. It adds a bit of theater to the brew process, much like a melitta-style bar, but cleaner and far faster.
Did he say elegant? He did. Theater? Yup. He also tosses out bons mots like epic, and uncanny. It’s not only Tonx that’s impressed, but Chris Tacy, too. (Be advised that to find Tacy’s remarks on the Clover you’ll need to scroll past some tasty photos of Kees van der Westen’s sexy new single-group espresso machine… try to keep your eyes in their orbits, eh?)
The Clover. Sounds to me like it may be there’s something new — really new — under the sun after all.
Posted on March 24, 2005 - by deCadmus
The Senseo Crema Mystery
The Mystery: What’s up with the Senseo, Anyway?
The machine produced by Philips and Douwe Egberts has been rather aggressively marketed as the “coffee machine with the delicious crema layer”. I have been asked more times than I can count [and I count fairly well... rarely even have to take off my socks] with questions like,
a) is this espresso? b) is it really crema? c) if it’s not crema, what is it? and, d) how does the Senseo make that stuff?
The answers:
Is it espresso? Don’t be silly. ;)
Is it really crema? No. Crema is… well, let’s defer to Dr. Illy:
“Crema, the dense, reddish-brown foam that tops an espresso, is composed mainly of tiny carbon dioxide and water vapor bubbles surrounded by surfactant films. The crema also includes emulsified oils containing key aromatic compounds and dark fragments of the coffee bean cell structure.”
The foam produced by a Senseo is *not* an emulsion; the coffee in the Senseo pod [or pad] is not ground fine enough, nor is the pressure in its brewing great enough to release the non-water soluble oils and lipids to create such an emulsion… and those few oils that *might* be released would be trapped in the filter material of the coffee pod itself. [This is confirmed in left-handed fashion by Philips/Douwe's FAQ: "The SENSEO coffee brewing process is very efficient leaving hardly any oil in the brew."]
Further, it’s unlikely that the coffee found in a Senseo pod is fresh enough, or been packaged well enough that the delicate aromatic compounds, or even carbon dioxide — both such an important part an espresso’s crema — remain.
So what is this stuff? It’s *foam*. Bubbles. Mostly air bubbles, and water vapor, and probably some CO2, encapsulated by the brewed coffee solution. Again, it’s not emulsified oils.
There are a number of compounds in coffee that make lovely bubbles… long, complex protein chains that have some remarkable [even improbable] properties, surface tension being only one of them. [The physics of coffee rings is a story for another day.]
So how’s the Senseo make that foam? Well, this is where the Senseo’s designers got pretty clever!
At the bottom of the pod carrier [a little tray that holds either one or two pods... think of it as a device-specific coffee basket and portafilter if you like] is a barrel-shaped nozzle. Embedded in that nozzle is a small metal disk. This disk has a very small orifice or aperture at its center… 1mm, maybe 1.5mm in size.
While brewing, the machine’s pump pushes water through this assembly under pressure… we’re not talking espresso-like pressure here, just something on the order of 1.5 to 2 times atmosphere, or 1.5 to 2 bars [by way of reference, espresso is brewed at 9 bars].
Here’s where some junior-varsity physics comes in…
One of the interesting properties of fluids is that, when under pressure and presented with a wee, little aperture as a way to escape, the fluid will first form a little vortex or funnel above the orifice itself, trapping anything that’s *not* a fluid [air, water vapor, CO2, etc.] in its center. For an example of this, look no further than your bathtub… pull the plug on a tub full of water and watch the vortices spin. And listen to the sucking sound as air is trapped in the vortex.
When the pressurized fluid [and its trapped gasses] emerges on the *other* side of the wee, little aperture and is suddenly no longer under pressure, the gasses are *encapsulated* by the fluid in a series of amazingly uniform bubbles. The size of these bubbles can be regulated by varying the amount of pressure, or the size of the orifice, or the surface tension of the fluid solution itself. So, if you want your bubbles to be *extremely* tiny [as you would for, say, an ink-jet printer - which uses this very same principle of fluids] then the aperture would be tiny, indeed.
In the case of the Senseo brewer, then, the designers tuned the size of the orifice to the typical surface tension of brewed coffee and to the amount of pressure delivered by the pump and lo… bubbles. Lots and lots of bubbles. And lots and lots of bubbles is foam… it’s still not crema.
So there you are.
As an interesting aside, I think the fluid dynamics at play here have some interesting implications for why espresso brewed with a bottomless portafilter seems to have a more textural quality to it… but that, too, is a story for another day.
My thanks to Don Holly and Lindsey Bolger who let me tinker with a Senseo in the coffee lab, and to Don especially for sharing my enthusiasm for discovering how things work by destroying them. ;)
Posted on July 16, 2004 - by deCadmus
Are You Pod People?
The PR machinery is running full tilt! It’s single-cup coffee machines — or, pod machines — everywhere you look… Phillips’ Senseo, Melitta One, Black & Decker Home Cafe, and the Keurig Brewer, to name those most buzzed about at the moment.
The Senseo reigns at the top of the buzzheap by a large margin, and you can easily find reviews of all stripes, from the usual tech “news” flaks, to geeks with laser-guided temperature probes… even fellow coffee blogger Randy Glass gets in on the game with his own hands-on review.
Given the mass-marketed hype, and being a skeptic, I was fully prepared to dislike the Senseo. A lot.
Turns out, I don’t dislike it all that much. But keep reading.
The Senseo is a smartly-designed and smart-looking home coffee machine. It’s fabulously simple to use, and it appears to be built to stand up to frequent use [the same can not be said of some of its competitors].
I have lingering concerns about its brew temperature. While Randy notes a brew temp of a respectable 190 degrees F. the folks at GadgetMadness record brew temps of a mere 138 to 140 degrees F. which is nowhere near acceptable. I have no particular reason to doubt either report, so I’m left to wonder if there might be a really high temperature variance from machine to machine… that would be a serious problem.
Temperature issues aside, it’s not the machine I have a problem with at all. It’s the quality of the coffee — and the source of that coffee — that leaves a bitter taste.
Currently, the only coffee pods for the Senseo available in the U.S. are those made by Douwe Egberts [whom you may know better as Sarah Lee] which developed the machine with Phillips. Sarah Lee is one of the Big Four, and together with Kraft, Nestle and Proctor & Gamble, they buy and sell half the coffee in the world.
These organizations are not known for the caliber of their coffee, but instead for their volume, and, more unfortunately, for their collective efforts to reap the benefits of historically low coffee prices, further contributing to the continuing coffee crisis.
So far as I can tell, there are no Fair Trade coffee pods for the Senseo. No organics. No shade-grown coffees, either. If you’re considering the Senseo, and you also want to consider sustainability, you’re in a bit of a bind. You might try to make your own coffee pods, or buy a reusable coffee pod adapter.
If these devices take hold, there will certainly be a number of independent roasters who will produce pods for them… and it’s just as certain that some of those roasters will offer coffee that’s more palatable all ’round.
Meanwhile, if you want to brew a single cup at a time, try some fresh beans, a grinder, and a Melitta filter cone.
Author’s Update: You may also be interested in reading The Senseo Crema Mystery which explores some of the more finicky issues of pod coffee makers… and the Senseo in particular.
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Hello.
Bloggle is the online playground of Doug Cadmus, a usability guy, writer, photographer and sometime dramatist who moved to Vermont for the coffee. When not writing, reading or walking his old, blind golden retriever, he roasts coffee in his garage and is the Web Guy for Green Mountain Coffee in Waterbury, VT. Flickr Photos
