Posts Tagged ‘Tassimo’
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 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 September 5, 2007 - by deCadmus
Coffee Notes from All Over
- Say what you will about the Grey Lady’s reporting, they still do a great obit, and their remembrance of Alfred Peet is warm and packed with fondness. More still, at The Daily Californian, and The Seattle Post Intelligencer.
- A little late to the party? The big news this week is that Starbucks has entered the fray of single-cup coffee merchants. First question, what took them so long? Second question, why choose Tassimo, a single-cup machine that’s a… what’s the word? Oh yeah… loser.
Kraft launched Tassimo in France in 2004 and later extended the business to the United States, Canada and other countries.
But the business failed to live up to initial expectations and in January Kraft decided to take a $245 million asset-impairment charge related to the business, largely due to lower manufacturing capacity utilization.
Big picture: Starbucks’ entry to the market can only help sell *everybody’s* brewers as they’ll bring more awareness to single-cup at home than any ten other roasters combined. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the first comment found at Gizmodo’s entry on the news. ;)
- Finally — and this one is worth it just for the photoshopped to-go cup — word on Starbucks entry into Russia.
“[W]hile Russians have taken quickly to coffee, drinking patterns here differ from the West. Many coffee shops stay open round the clock, and people like to while away an hour or two slowly drinking and smoking. Coffee House, with 90 shops in Moscow, doesn’t just serve coffee, but beer and vodka too.Starbucks spokesperson Kerry Irwin confirmed that except for some ‘local content’ in the food offered, the company would not be changing anything about its global model to cater to local taste.”
How do you spell glasnost, again?
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…)
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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
