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…)

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!”

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, and the TA 1200 (which I can’t seem to find to link to) — the Tassimo fits the same kitchen counter real estate as the Keurig (and the Senseo, and the Bunn Home Café — let’s face it, these machines are all of them fairly compact). In overall looks the Tassimo is singularly rounded and squat. I think its designers took their cues from the armored, waddling Mondoshawan in Luc Besson’s space opera, The Fifth Element… (but I digress.) The Tassimo’s shape belies its dimensions; its rear-mounted water reservoir towers over the machine, lending it the same vertical dimensions as the Keurig. Both Tassimo models — indeed most all of the single-cup machines — fit comfortably under most any kitchen cupboard. The only apparent difference between the two Tassimo units are the 1400′s slightly larger reservoir (68-oz. vs. 50-oz.), the addition of a charcoal water filter, and some shiny gold-colored accents. (Nothing says premium like a gold package, right?)

The Keurig Team

Now in its third generation of home brewers, the always-evolving Keurig line currently includes the “Elite” B40, “Special Edition” B60 and “Platinum” B70 brewers. 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.

K-Cup vs. T-Disc

Keurig’s K-Cup is a deceptively simple device that seals a miniature drip brewing system — replete with drip-style filter and all — in a no-muss, no-fuss, disposable package that protects its payload from moisture, light and oxygen. Keurig has now licensed its K-Cup packaging technology to nine different specialty coffee brands, which today offer more than 150 varieties of K-Cup 100% Arabica coffees and teas between them. That’s a significant expansion on the five brands and 100 varieties of coffee and tea just two years ago.

The Tassimo reads a page off Keurig’s play book² (and perhaps Nespresso’s before it) by encapsulating its coffee in its own sealed package — the T-Disc — which boasts a number of innovations. T-Discs can be manufactured with an array of options in terms of overall capacity, payload type, and the size and shape of its exit aperture.

Each T-Disc is printed with a bar-code that describes its required brewing parameters to the Tassimo. When inserted, the brewer scans the code to determine the amount of water to deliver, the temperature of that water, and the timing of the brew cycle — which may include pre-infusing the T-Disc’s contents. The array of sizes allows for payloads of not only coffee, but also chocolate syrup and both refrigerated and shelf-stable dairy products. The various apertures of the T-Disc allow the Tassimo to deliver a simple stream of liquid to your cup, or a frothy, textured foam.

Not only can you brew a cup of coffee, but you can also brew a shot of espresso (2.5 ounces at 192 degrees F), and frothed milk (6 ounces, 156 degrees F) to make a cappuccino or a latte. With its liquid chocolate T-Disc, you can brew a more than passable hot cocoa, too (5.5 ounces, 160 degrees F). The capabilities of the T-Disc make the Tassimo more than a coffee brewer — it’s a hot beverage delivery system.

In use

Both brewers employ grab-handles to lever open the brew-head. The Keurig brewer’s business end is smooth in operation, and remains open until you close it, allowing easy one-handed operation. The Tassimo’s brew-head lever requires two hands, and it closes stubbornly — the force required to close it is a little unsettling. (It took me some time to be certain that I really needed to use that much force to close the brew-head assembly — I was concerned I was going to damage the brewer.)

Each of these brewers has fairly simple and descriptive buttons to activate brewing. Brewing coffee with a Keurig machine couldn’t be simpler: insert a K-Cup, press a button. The number of brew options vary with the model: the B40 offers two brew volumes; the B60, three; the B70, four. It should be noted that as you choose a larger brew volume you’re changing the water to coffee ratio… a 6-oz. cup will a much more robust cup than a 10-oz. cup. Arguably, folks have different tastes for the strength of their brewed coffee — me, I don’t have much use for the largest brew volumes.

Brewing a cappuccino or a latte in the Tassimo is a three-step cycle. First insert and brew an espresso T-Disc, and then insert and brew a cappuccino or a latte T-Disc. (The difference: quantity of dairy product, and a different spout — the cappuccino version aerates the milk more than the latte.) Finally, insert the cleaning disk (an empty T-Disc with its own special barcode) and run a rinse cycle. And don’t lose that cleaning disc — you can’t run a rinse cycle without it, and a rinse is highly recommended after you brew either dairy or hot chocolate. It’s sticky, don’t ya know.

The sophistication of the Tassimo’s brewing capability has its price: the relative simplicity of the Keurig’s brew cycle lends it a performance advantage in both brew cycle and reheat / recovery times. The Tassimo’s heating cycle from stand-by mode may take as long as 60 seconds, and its brew cycle another 60 seconds — twice as long as the Keurig brewer. More, if you choose to program wake and sleep times into the Keurig’s clock you can ensure that you’ll never wait more than 30 seconds for a cup.

Some additional observations…

• All single-cup brewers use a pump to deliver water to the brew-head. The Tassimo’s pump is considerably louder than the Keurig’s, and especially so when the pump is oscillating (aerating?) heavily for “frothy” drinks: espresso, cappuccino and hot chocolate.
• Most every brew cycle, the Tassimo delivers some water to its drip tray through its backpressure relief valve. That’s not a problem, unless you’ve had to remove the drop tray to brew into a particularly tall cup, and then it can create a fair mess. The Keurig returns unused brew water to the reservoir via its backpressure relief system.
• When you choose a brew volume on the Keurig, the brewer pre-fills its brewing system with the entire volume of water required before beginning the brew cycle. This ensures it doesn’t run out of water mid-cycle. The Tassimo does not, and may run out of water mid-brew. To complete the brew cycle you’ll need to add more water to its reservoir.
• The Tassimo’s water reservoir is in the back of the machine, and may require that you pull the machine out from under an upper cabinet to add more water. The Keurig’s side-mounted water reservoir can be easily removed and replaced without reaching over, or moving the machine.

But what’s in the cup?

In the end, any question of brewing technology is answered by what’s in the cup. This is, of course, a wholly subjective matter — but I’ll take a crack at it.

The Tassimo offers a wide variety of beverage types — coffee, tea, espresso, cappuccino, latte and hot chocolate. That’s a substantial step forward in single-cup brewing capability, however you slice it — and if your goal is to create passably good espresso-based drinks at home with the simplicity of pushing a button (and doing so for a fraction of the cost of a super-auto espresso machine) then you may have found your match in the Tassimo. No, it’s not going to be coffee-house quality — but it’s not bad, either.

The brewed coffee varieties that I’ve sampled with the Tassimo, however, are another matter. I didn’t care for these coffees. Their aromas were baked and flat, with taints ranging from wet cardboard to wet dog. Their flavors are somewhat nutty and too much cereally and altogether indistinct of anything much like coffee. Their body is thin; their finish harsh and astringent. At the Tassimo’s standard brew volume they are helplessly over-extracted and bitter.

Keurig-brewed coffees are generally quite good, and some are remarkably so. Extra Bold coffees, in particular, offer coffee-house strength, ample body and plentiful aromas, and especially so when brewed at smaller brew volumes. The flavor characteristics of each coffee — and each coffee roaster — are clearly manifested in the cup. Which is, I think, as much as anyone might hope for — that the result be about the coffee, and not about how it was brewed.

Selection & Variety

The selection of coffee, tea, espresso and other beverages for the Tassimo has increased somewhat in the last two years. Worldwide there are now (by my count) more than 50 offerings from Kraft’s own line-up of brands, and brands that Kraft has licensed for distribution. Many of these brands — Mastro Lorenzo, Jacobs, Carté Noir, Kenco, Suchard — live in the European market; you’ll be hard-pressed to find them stateside unless you buy direct from Kraft’s Tassimo Direct web site. More familiar, North American brands include Gevalia, Tazo Tea, Twinings, Nabob (Canada), Seattle’s Best, Maxwell House, and — recently announced though not yet in-market — Starbucks.³ You’ll find no more than a dozen or so offerings for the Tassimo on Amazon, for example… and none of them Fair Trade, or Organic.

The Keurig line-up of coffee, tea and chocolate brands includes names you may find more familiar: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Tully’s, Caribou, Coffee People, Diedrich, Newman’s Own Organics, Celestial Seasonings, Gloria Jean’s, Timothy’s, Van Houtte, Bigelow, and Ghirardelli. Unlike the Tassimo selection, most all of these brands offer a half-dozen or more (much more!) coffee and tea selections. Altogether there are more than 150 different coffees, teas and assorted other beverages for the Keurig system. You can find about a hundred of them on Amazon, including dozens of Fair Trade and Organic options.

Conclusions

Tassimo has an advantage in terms of the flexibility of its brewing technology — its ability to brew espresso, cappuccino and the like — but that advantage comes at the cost of brew-cycle recovery time and diminished capacity to brew a regular cup of coffee. The introduction of additional brands is welcome, and may yet result in a more palatable cup of Joe somewhere down the road.

Keurig’s focus on brewed coffee — and nothing else — hands it a clear victory in the category. Its inability to brew espresso-based drinks may or may not be a liability; that depends entirely on what you want from your single-cup brewer. Ultimately, I find the array of coffees — and coffee roasters — to be one of the most compelling feature of the Keurig brewing system.

Two years on I find that now, as before, choice rules.

Notes and Links

1. 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.
2. Keurig is convinced that Tassimo has read too much from their play book. They’ve filed suit against Kraft for patent infringement.
3. I find it remarkable that many of these brands offer only one or two products to the overall line-up… it would almost appear that Kraft is making every effort to show that a great number of brands have adopted their system, when — in fact — most of them are Kraft’s own.

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”.

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.

I’ve had my hands on what I believe to be most every at-home single serve coffee machine on the market. That would include (in no particular order) machines from Senseo, Tassimo, Keurig, Nespresso, Melitta, Bunn, Grindmaster, Flavia, Juan Valdez, and Black & Decker. Have I missed any? Oh yeah… the Aeropress. While I’m long overdue in writing a full-blown roundup of the single-cup machine landscape — judging by the numbers of folk who flock to single-cup posts in the Bloggle Archives, anyway — this isn’t that article. Instead it’s about a coffee Green Mountain has just released for the Keurig brewer. A coffee that’s something of a game-changer.

Green Mountain’s Kenyan AA (the traditional, whole bean version) has won accolades from Kenneth Davids at Coffee Review, where he awarded it a whopping 96 points and described it thusly:

A coffee at once voluptuous and austere. Delicately complex aroma: flowers, chocolate, tobacco leaf, lemon grass. In the cup an amazingly rich, wine-like acidity, sweet flowers, and a gently crisp, dry berry fruit. Hints of chocolate re-emerge in the cleanly long, almost perfect finish.

Nice. And now that same bean has been tweaked to perform for the Keurig machine. The roast is a touch darker, to hedge against the Keurig brewer’s wont to make acidity a little shrill. The result is an honest to goodness grand cru coffee in a K-Cup.

The Kenyan AA Extra Bold offers stunning coffee flower and tobacco aromas, winey acidity — held in check, but not tamed by its medium roast — with flavors that include jammy dark fruit and chocolate, and the distinctly sensual, musky note that you will only ever find in a Kenyan coffee. With it, ample — even surprising — body, and a crisp, sweet and resonant finish. And all of it at the press of a button.

This one’s gonna turn a lot of heads.

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 —

Certainly the Tassimo’s got brains. Like the Keurig, this brewer relies on a micro-processor to manage brew volume and temperature. Unlike the Keurig, however, the Tassimo automatically adjusts brew volume, temperature — and, it would appear, 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.

While it fits the same kitchen counter real estate as the Keurig (and the Senseo, and the Bunn Home Café) let’s face it, these machines are all fairly compact) the Tassimo is singularly rounded and squat. I think its designers took their cues from the armored, waddling Mondoshawan in Luc Besson’s space opera, The Fifth Element… (but I digress.) The Tassimo’s shape belies its dimensions; its rear-mounted water reservoir towers over the machine, lending it the same vertical dimensions as the Keurig. At just under 14 inches high, both fit comfortably under most any kitchen cupboard, but the Keurig’s side-mounted water reservoir can be easily removed and replaced without reaching over the machine. Advantage: Keurig.

Both brewers employ grab-handles to lever open the brew-head. The Keurig brewer’s business end is smooth in operation, and remains open until you close it, allowing easy one-handed operation. The Tassimo’s brew-head lever requires two hands, and it closes stubbornly — the force required to close it is a little unsettling. (It took me some time to be certain that I really needed to use that much force to close the brew-head assembly — I was concerned I was going to damage the brewer.) Advantage: Keurig.

T-Disc vs. K-Cup

Keurig’s K-Cup is a deceptively simple device that seals a miniature drip brewing system in a no-mess, no-fuss, disposable package that protects its payload from moisture, light and oxygen. Unlike its progenitor, the Nespresso capsule, Keurig has licensed its K-Cup technology to five different specialty coffee roasters, which today offer more than 100 varieties of K-Cup 100% arabica coffees and teas between them.

The Tassimo reads a page off Keurig’s play book (and Nespresso’s before it) by encapsulating its coffee in its own sealed package — the T-Disc — which boasts a number of innovations. T-Discs can be manufactured with an array of options in terms of overall capacity, payload type, and the size and shape of its exit aperture. Each T-Disc is printed with a barcode that describes its required brewing parameters to the Tassimo. When inserted, the brewer scans the code to determine the amount of water to deliver, the temperature of that water, and the timing of the brew cycle — which may include pre-infusing the T-Disc’s contents. The array of sizes allows for payloads of not only coffee, but also chocolate syrup and shelf-stable dairy products. The various apertures of the T-Disc allow the Tassimo to deliver a simple stream of liquid to your cup, or a frothy, textured foam.

Not only can you brew a cup of coffee, but you can also brew a shot of espresso (2.5 ounces at 192 degrees F), and frothed milk (6 ounces, 156 degrees F) to make a cappuccino or a latte. With its liquid chocolate T-Disc, you can brew a more than passable hot cocoa, too (5.5 ounces, 160 degrees F). The capabilities of the T-Disc make the Tassimo more than a coffee brewer — it’s a hot beverage delivery system. Advantage: Tassimo.

In use

The sophistication of the Tassimo’s brewing capability has its price: the relative simplicity of the Keurig’s brew cycle lends it a performance advantage in both brew cycle and reheat / recovery times. The Tassimo’s heating cycle from stand-by mode may take as long as 60 seconds, and its brew cycle another 60 seconds — twice as long as the Keurig brewer. More, if you choose to program wake and sleep times into the Keurig’s clock you can ensure that you’ll never wait more than 30 seconds for a cup.

Brewing a cappuccino or a latte in the Tassimo is a three-step cycle. First insert and brew an espresso T-Disc, and then insert and brew a cappuccino or a latte T-Disc. (The difference: quantity of dairy product, and a different spout — the cappuccino version aerates the milk more than the latte.) Finally, insert the cleaning disk (an empty T-Disc with its own special barcode) and run a rinse cycle. And don’t lose that cleaning disc — you can’t run a rinse cycle without it, and a rinse is highly recommended after you brew either dairy or hot chocolate. It’s sticky, don’t ya know.

Noted quirks

• All single-cup brewers use a pump to deliver water to the brew-head. The Tassimo’s pump is considerably louder than the Keurig’s, and especially so when the pump is oscillating (aerating?) heavily for “frothyâ€Â? drinks: espresso, cappuccino and hot chocolate.
• Most every brew cycle, the Tassimo delivers some water to its drip tray through its backpressure relief valve. That’s not a problem, unless you’ve had to remove the drop tray to brew into a particularly tall cup, and then it can create a fair mess. The Keurig returns unused brew water to the reservoir via its backpressure relief system.
• When you choose a brew volume on the Keurig (B50 or B60 — the B40 offers only a single cup size) the Keurig loads its boiler with any additional water required before beginning the brew cycle to ensure it doesn’t run out of water mid-cycle. The Tassimo does not, and may run out of water mid-brew. To complete the brew cycle you’ll need to add more water to its reservoir.

But what’s in the cup?

In the end, any question of brewing technology is answered by what’s in the cup. This is, of course, a wholly subjective matter — but I’ll take a crack at it.

The Tassimo offers a wide variety of beverage types — coffee, tea, espresso, cappuccino, latte and hot chocolate. That’s a substantial step forward in single-cup brewing capability, however you slice it — and if your goal is to create passably good espresso-based drinks at home with the simplicity of pushing a button (and doing so for a fraction of the cost of a super-auto espresso machine) then you may have found your match in the Tassimo. No, it’s not going to be coffee-house quality — but it’s not bad, either. Likewise, while the Suchard hot chocolate is a little too sweet for my taste, it’s chocolatey — its finish has marshmallow notes, and it’s not bad at all.

The brewed coffee varieties that I sampled with the Tassimo — Gevalia Signature Blend, and Signature Blend Crema — are another story, altogether. The aroma of these coffees is uniformly baked and flat, with taints ranging from wet cardboard to wet dog. Their flavors are somewhat nutty and too much cereally and altogether indistinct of anything that’s much like coffee. Their body is thin; their finish harsh and astringent. At the Tassimo’s standard brew volume they are helplessly over-extracted and bitter.

And it’s not going to get much better. I must remind you that the Tassimo’s coffee content is wholly in the hands of Kraft and its brands — the T-Disc technology is altogether proprietary, and altogether a lock-in to this particular coffee giant. If you enjoy Gevalia Café and Maxwell House coffee, or Kraft’s European brands: Café Norte, Suchard and KenCo, then perhaps you’ll find something to like about these coffees. I tried — and I failed. Utterly.

No, if you like coffee — brewed coffee — and if you have any interest in exploring the depth of flavors and aromas that specialty coffee offers, I think you’ll be happier with the Keurig. And if you’re interested in supporting Fair Trade coffee farmers, or prefer organic coffee then I’m certain you’ll be happier with the Keurig — Kraft has made none of these available in a T-Disc.

The Keurig single-cup model ensures that not only are you not tethered to any single roaster’s coffee selection, but you can also choose to brew your own coffee — from your neighborhood coffee roaster, or your own home-roast — with Keurig’s new single-cup insert. (The insert is available now only with Keurig brewers purchased at Williams-Sonoma, but should be available everywhere come January.)

Choice — it’s a wonderful thing.

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.

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. ;)