We have been gifted a Tassimo coffee machine by our neighbour, she thought it was broken, bought a new one but it turns out it’s fine.

Looking at the pods online and seem to work out at 50p a coffee, so not cheap and lot of plastic.

I see you can buy reusable pods for about £20.

Is it worth getting a re-usable pod? Do they make decent coffee?

With the disposal pods, they offer a cappuccino pod, does it make anything approaching a decent drink?

Should I just scrap it?

we have one in the main office. i bought a pack of pods once and went back to instant once i`d finished them. the wastage was unbelievable and the resulting coffee wasnt any better than a cheap filter machine.

We have been gifted a Tassimo coffee machine by our neighbour, she thought it was broken, bought a new one but it turns out it’s fine.

Do you live next door to my mum? She’s just done precisely this with the one I bought her. It just needed a descaling cycle running on it

Looking at the pods online and seem to work out at 50p a coffee, so not cheap and lot of plastic.

Cheaper if you buy a load of them direct off Tassimo. We stock up. As for the plastic and destroying the planet, you can recycle your used pods

We use ours a lot and it makes a nice coffee IMHO. I’m sure someone will be along soon to tell me I’m a coffee philistine 😉

Our daughter has one of these: https://www.tassimo.com/gb/my-way-2-red – there’s a pod recycling scheme she uses.

She bought it as she likes Mocha, hot chocolate, stuff with milk in basically. And she wanted something she could keep in her (student) room. I’ve had a few things from it and it’s pretty good. I mean it’s not Sage quality or anything but – imo – it’s WAY better than instant coffee or choc, and the milk packaged in the pod seems to work pretty well.

They make good coffee relative to the effort involved which is close to zero. You can get a significantly better cup but it involves going down the rabbit hole or spending a shit-ton of money – or both.

Avoid the ‘cappucino’ or similar cartridges though. They have powdered or condensed UHT milk and are revolting.  I would rather just microwave the milk, or better still buy a frother – my sister got one that heats and froths milk for something like £25 from Lidl.

That said – if you want to avoid the waste then get an Aeropress.  Not really espresso but tastier than cafetiere or filter, and they are cheap and small.

Tassimo is, so far as these things go, pretty reasonable if you like “fancy” coffee, better than nespresso (which is better for normal coffee though I believe the newer nespresso things are a closer approximation of the Tassimo range).

The Tassimo things aren’t great for a bog standard black/white coffee. For things which are milk based such as latte and hot chocolate, they’re not bad/quite reasonable if that’s your thing.*

*Caveat it’s not really my thing so only drink them occasionally so my opinion of “not bad” may well differ dramatically from yours.

i’ve had one of their cheap machines (Vivvy i think – cost about £35) for 4+ years and think their great for a quick coffee that a big step up from instant without a load of faff. dependent on which pods you use, but the kenco 100% Columbian do a good enough job for me when i’m in a rush in the morning. as other have said, you can recycle the pods if you wish. if you’ve got a free machine, by a couple of packs of pods and see if it works for you.

i’m sure others will say that it’s not a faff to make a decent coffee from a proper machine / cafeteria / aeropress / stove top pot  etc, but the tassimo is quick, easy and cheap enough for the pods if your only using it once or twice a day

I have one and I like it.  Just one coffee a day in the morning.

I don’t like the milky drinks so stick with 100% Columbian, Morning Cafe, American Grande, etc.

I preheat the milk first in a microwave first then add the coffee.  Far better than instant IMHO.

Another vote for the Kenco 100% Columbian pods.

I’ve tried all the different ones and thats my default as well @sofaboy73

I use a Nepresso but same deal, have to say really have been Enjoying the coffee.

But one thing i would recommend to add to the experience is a decent milk frother

Pretty much the same Tassimo comments as the others….  OK, but nothing special. The biggest negative for me is that the end result isn’t quite as hot as I’d like.

Another vote for Kenco Columbian pods, americano Grande … haven’t used it since xmas, need to order more pods … usually a few boxes at a time from amazon , I enjoy them , step up from Nescafe 🙂 … Lots of packaging waste though !! … foil wrapping, cardboard sleeves and then the plastic coffee pod !

No.

Dolce Gusto at home and work. Some pods better than others, and the re-useable ones are OK – depending upon your ground, and make a half decent coffee quickly. I hate instant !

We try and get pods from our local shop that sells ‘just past sell by date’ pods, which works out lots cheaper.

Dolce Gusto at home and work. Some pods better than others, and the re-useable ones are OK – depending upon your ground, and make a half decent coffee quickly. I hate instant !

I bought the Dolce Gusto machine, I also have a Tassimo.

The tassimo pods contain coffee grounds, but after opening up one of the DC pods(after use) I found it completely empty, so i opened a fresh one and inside is something akin to instant coffee.

If it was real coffee in them, there would be coffee grounds left inside, but the fact theres nothing can only suggest its some sort of instant.

The biggest negative for me is that the end result isn’t quite as hot as I’d like

Yeah, I found that and pre-heating the milk first in a microwave helps (cold milk cools it down too much).

We’ve had one for about 10 years (first one lasted about 8 years, our second one went pop a couple of weeks ago but was thankfully replaced under 2 yr warranty). I get pods on subscribe and save from amazon which works out around 20p per drink for standard coffee (also recommend colombian, or americano smooth and americano decaff also good). Note that if you like the ones which use milk pods, you use 2 pods per drink (one after the other) which doubles the price per drink. As per other advice, I just add normal milk and then zap in the microwave for 30s for a nice hot white coffee. We have always recycled the pods, a few different schemes have run over the years but podback is the current one – they send out free bags which are free to post back full of pods.

I had a tassimo about 12 years ago…I did love it, …then I tried nespresso and loved it even more ( its a bit more refined) …now I’ve moved up in the world and have a bean to cup machine.

So in all tassimo is a good start up the machine rankings

I have one, and really don’t mind it at all.  The flat white is quite nice and the Kenco Americana Grand is a decent cup of coffee (IMO)  Like other posters say, I use the PodBack scheme so don’t feel too bad about the amount of packaging.

There was a recent code on HUKD for 35% off or so so we put a bulk order in and it worked out very reasonable.  In fact, they must have been having a generous day in the warehouse as I ordered nine or so packs,  but they filled the empty bit of the box with six Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate packs, which the kids love.

This is the fourth time I’ve tried to reply to this thread, the previous three times the forum has gone down for maintenance before I’ve hit Submit has and lost my post.  I’m starting to take it personally.

I have a Tassimo.  I liberated it from work during an office move, it’s not something I’d ever have chosen to buy.  But I like it, it’s brainless coffee when you’ve just fallen out of bed of a morning. Despite my initial cynicism it’s probably seen more use than all the various filter machines et al that I’ve had over the years.

Choice of coffee in supermarkets is limited but (as I discovered literally last week) you can buy direct from the Tassimo website and they have a considerably wider selection.  They also provide a recycling bag which you can drop off at many Collect+ type places.

I’ve never used refillable pods but honestly, I don’t see the point.  A pod machine’s USP is its lack of faff, if I’m going to be messing about with loose coffee grounds then I’d be better off with my Moka pot or Aeropress.

If you’ve been given one and you’re on the fence, why not just try it?  Throwing it out for scrap kinda renders the ‘green’ argument moot, at least take it to charity if you don’t want it.

Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Submit…

Throwing it out for scrap kinda renders the ‘green’ argument moot

not really. Best thing from an environmental perspective is to take it out of circulation & use something which doesn’t require pods. (obviously everyone on here recycles theirs 😉 but I’m sure they are in the minority as a whole). It’s not as if the pods are made out of an easily recyclable material anyway (unlike Nespresso) – plastics recycling is very much a grey area. Reducing consumption of single-use plastics is the only sustainable solution.

Another vote for aeropress.

plastics recycling is very much a grey area

Yep, a large quantity is ‘recycled’ by shipping it to the third world via first world intermediaries, who then dump it in the Pacific or burn it.

Reduce / reuse/ recycle.

Using unnecessary plastics or aluminum and recycling it does not reduce waste – it increases it.  Reduce is the first step.

We had a Tassimo machine but found that we got bored of the same coffee as there was only one we liked (the Columbian). Kids liked the hot chocolate pods though, so much so that Grandma keeps her machine just for that.

We’ve had a Nespresso for the last couple of years and the range of both proprietary and third-party pods is huge and there’s the podback scheme to recycle the used ones. The kids have to make their hot chocolate the old-fashioned way now … or should I say we do 😉

For context, I own  more than one Gaggia Classics, 2 Iberital grinders (we like different beans, Happy Donkey Brazilian for me, Happy Donkey Costa Rica for her) and a bunch of paraphernalia.

If you like the coffee the Tassimo makes, then it’s a good machine.  It’s all about enjoying the coffee, nothing else.  And if it doesn’t take up loads of counter space, time in making and time clearing up the mess, that’s a bonus.

We had a Tassimo machine but found that we got bored of the same coffee as there was only one we liked

Ditto. But see my post above, the selection direct from Tassimo is much wider.

We’ve had a Nespresso for the last couple of years and the range of both proprietary and third-party pods is huge

This very much tempts me but Nespresso delivers espresso coffee rather than long drinks and I only drink ‘long’ coffee.  I’d have to top up anything that came out of a Nespresso (can you do that directly from the machine?)

and there’s the podback scheme to recycle the used ones.

Same with Tassimo.

Give it a go, you may like it. We have one. Got fed up with the cost, the cleaning faff and the wastage (before they rolled out the recycling schemes). Day to day I use a cafetiere and only now use my Tassimo for making espresso before we have a party. Tassimo espresso has a good crema so I fill a whisky bottle with espresso and refrigerate it for espresso martinis.

Tassimo espresso has a good crema so I fill a whisky bottle with espresso and refrigerate it for espresso martinis

I’d never thought of that before. I do like an espresso martini so I’ll definitely be giving that a go

Cheers for that! 😃