Straw poll – bean to cup or Nespresso?

Both bean-to-cup machines and Nespresso are cheap(ish) in John Lewis today. After flogging my old De Longhi to a work colleague I’m missing my coffee fix and am thinking of buying another.

Nespresso seems popular now, anyone bought one and regretted it? They seem slightly cheaper and do the milk automatically, but even with a £60 credit there’s the running cost of pods to consider.

Thoughts appreciated.

https://groundtoground.org/2016/02/22/ban-the-coffee-pod/
im also against milk in coffee.

Nespresso. Great taste and very convenient. We drink ours black. Previously I was a fan of the stove top Bialetti pots but the Nespresso taste is comparable and ifs much more convenient, trivial to make a different coffee for each of us.

Cost is 30-35p a cup, greatest inconvenience is making sure you order the caps as physcial stores are few and far between

Either is good for a nice tasting cup of lukewarm coffee. 🙂

B2C Jura machine and coffee beans from LCS

greatest inconvenience is making sure you order the caps as physcial stores are few and far between

Do you live on the moon? There’s an aisle full of the things in most supermarkets round here.

Neither, get a proper machine and grinder.

Neither. Proper machine and grinder. Do it properly.[edit: beaten to it 😀 , but +1]

Pods I’m not a fan of and work out very expensive, proprietary systems and wasteful in packaging.

Bean to cup can involve a lot of cleaning. Office had one briefly and it kept putting up messages saying to change or clean this and that after every few cups, and then getting a shot out took ages. Way too much faff for something supposedly automated.

Obviously you have to clean a regular espresso machine, but not after every few cups, or you just do a quick wipe, then clean properly end of the day or each week.

Though a lot of the time I just go with cafetiere for a quick brew.

Is your cafetiere self cleaning?

5 seconds rinse, job done 😀

nespresso. Got one last year and still love it. You can get fake pods all over the place and they work fine, although i do like the nespresso ones and they recycle so packaging waste isn’t as bad.

Aeropress and either grinder or buy ground.
Easy cheap and with the oeuvre difference it will pay for about a years worth of coffee even if you buy expensive stuff.
Avoid nespresso unless you are going to get the refillable pods. Environmentally they are shite

and no mess in sink that’s impressive!

I empty grounds into compost heap rather than clogging up the sewage system.

You can pretty much guarantee that if someone asks on here “shall I get ‘a’ or ‘b’ they will get a large number of posts suggesting ‘c’.
Nespresso would be my choice.

I own 2 Nespresso machines (one in work) and I would definitely buy another. I don’t think it is the best cup of coffee in the world, but it’s consistently very good and very low hassle. It’s about 30p per coffee.

I have not been impressed with the bean to cup coffees I’ve had – keeping the machine clean and the coffee fresh seems to be a challenge.

I agree that for the best cup, grinding your own and a proper machine is probably best, but Nespresso wins for me for the lack of hassle, lack of mess, and very good taste.

lukewarm

this.

I have never been impressed when served a mug/cup of nespresso. Will ask for tea if I know nespresso is the alternative. Bean to cup…meh. The one at work is passable but only just.

Aeropress or cafetiere would win out for me if I couldn’t be doing with the faff of a proper machine (la pavoni owner so faff is my middle name). Aeropress creates so little mess you’d be hard pressed to make that a reason not to use one.

I thought the pods were a bit of an environmental disaster, in that they are pretty much impossible to recycle, and so just end up in landfill.

Still, if you’re OK with poisoning the ground water that children will be drinking from, and filling the oceans with tiny bits of broken-down plastic, then I say go for it.

That and the excessive packaging to begin with.

I thought the pods were a bit of an environmental disaster, in that they are pretty much impossible to recycle, and so just end up in landfill.

Still, if you’re OK with poisoning the ground water that children will be drinking for it, and filling the oceans with tiny bits of broken-down plastic, then I say go for it.

this too – does seem to be environmentally irresponsible packaging for first world convenience of the highest order.

I put mine out with the recycle metal bin and cardboard sleeve in the paper recycling also Nespresso will supply a bag so you can put your used pods in and they will take it away when they deliver new pods.

I put mine out with the recycle metal bin and cardboard sleeve in the paper recycling also Nespresso will supply a bag so you can put your used pods in and they will take it away when they deliver new pods.

Irrespective of how well you personally dispose of yours they still need manufacturing in the first place and then there’s all the energy used to recycle them before the raw material can be used again. And that’s before the bulk of them that don’t make it into the recycling system are taken into account. Nestle refuse to say how many are actually recycled. It just seems to be a very wasteful system when other methods (with arguably better results) are available.

After 3 years with a nespresso machine i’ve made the switch to a bean to cup a couple of months ago. Lots of people make an issue of the price of the nespresso pods but quite honestly if you’re buying mail order freshly roasted beans I don’t think there’s much in it price wise.

I’m using HasBean beans and overall I would say I prefer the bean to cup. But there’s not as much in it as some of the nespresso critics would have you believe.

But there’s not as much in it as some of the nespresso critics would have you believe.

But that’s because you transferred to another mediocre system 😉

Do you live on the moon? There’s an aisle full of the things in most supermarkets round here.

🙂 We only buy nespresso and no longer live round the corner from a store

IMO the recycling thing is a red herring when you look at all the wastage in the world, I could make a very long list of more environmentally destructive things we all do

The pathetic whir of the Nespresso machine puts my dinner guests and I right off!

It is the buzz that says “I couldn’t be arsed to make an effort, so here, have this instead.” 😀

Regarding the lukewarm comments….do you not pre-heat the mug first by swilling a small amount of boiled water around the mug?

I do that with our Dolce Gusto one as a cold mug does tend to suck the heat out of the drink.

To answer the op…for me it would be the Nespresso as I don’t have the time or inclination to mess around cleaning a machine.

My Bro-in-Law recently bought and AEG machine that takes Lavazza pods – best tasting coffee from a pod machine I’ve had so far…

Bean to cup coz I like to choose me beans.

If you drink espresso then neither. Get a grinder and a proper machine.

If you stick a load of milky froth in there it probably doesn’t make much difference, so whichever is more convenient.

I used a Nespresso on holiday for 2 weeks. It’s not bad coffee but the pods are undersized – a decent double espresso needs 3 pods not 2 so the cost per cup mounts up.

It won’t seem that bad if you’re comparing to HasBean but their coffee is c£7 for 250g. You can buy excellent quality beans for half that (carwardines – I think I pay £28 delivered for 2kg of their Seattle blend).

Nespresso is great for latte. Not designed for American types drink though – Aeropress is better for that.

For the home I don’t think you can beat it. Most 3rd party cartridges are not great but there is one of two good ones.

Nespresso makes a really thin cup of coffee, too much air and not enough mouth feel.

Grinder and a proper espresso machine for me.

B 2 C

Anything but the Clooney Cyst system.

It won’t seem that bad if you’re comparing to HasBean but their coffee is c£7 for 250g. You can buy excellent quality beans for half that (carwardines – I think I pay £28 delivered for 2kg of their Seattle blend).

I am finding Rave Coffee pretty competitive on price, £12-15 a kilo for a range of stuff, and it’s always roasted a day or two before arriving IME.