Recommended espresso machine?

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Master Geek
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#810047 2-May-2013 10:53

So... I bought the Nespresso U.

As tempting as it was to buy one of the $100 jobbies from the Warehouse or Countdown, I picked the $350 Nespresso U. ($399 minus $50 cash back)
It looks much nicer, and feels like a better quality product.
It also comes with a 2 year warranty.
Caution: Goodguys comes up in price comparisions as being the cheapest... but they sell the 2 year warranty for an additional $80, so if you want the warranty, just buy it from Nespresso.

Despite what most people say, it is cheaper for me to buy Nespresso capsules and use that machine than making my own coffee with my Rocket. Historically, a $15 250g bag of beans lasts me a week and I use a tonne of milk. Now I'll spend around $10-$15 a week on coffee and use a lot less milk (not that I can see how much is in the confounded bottle

).

I'm now enjoying consistently good coffee in an attractive, simple, clean, efficient, small, fast package!

freitasm

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#810049 2-May-2013 10:55

"Consistently good coffee" is the main point with the Nespresso system. It just works (TM).

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langers1972

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#810059 2-May-2013 11:08

Does anyone know whether there has been any noise in terms of a Wellington store as I know there was talk of it at one stage?

I love my machine but can't help feeling a little guilty for throwing all those aluminium capsules away so would welcome the chance to drop off for recycling (as well as buying/sampling some of their wares!!)

Sancho

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#810065 2-May-2013 11:15

I went the other way, after a lot of testing, humming and research and bought the Breville BES900 Dual Boiler. It was at a crazy price over Christmas and with a free grinder thrown in which I sold for $200 to offset the price I couldn't pass it up! After a few test runs I am now making effortless consistently great long blacks. My main concern with Nespresso was the lack of variety. I tried all the variations and there were only 2 - 3 I actually liked, and even they wern't fantastic. I visit C4 coffee here in Christchurch each Friday and get my favourite blend, which is super fresh, and I also get to try many other blends as I please, I have always hated being locked into anything, coffee flavours, internet plan, whatever!

I actually really enjoy the process of making the coffee, grinding the coffee, experimenting with different coursness, the machine heats up very quickly and I have no real gripes at all.

I do struggle to get milk drinks consistent, but thats more operator error than anything, but any tips are appreciated, one will be fantastic, the next will have hardly any foam at all. But bang for buck I love the machine, I love the coffee I get and if/when this machine does its dash I'm pretty certain i'll get a more serious machine like a rocket etc myself.

Being the OP I thought I'd give an update anyway :)

Oh, and has anyone tried Jacks coffee? The machine came with 6 packs free, well worth a try, at first I wasn't overly impressed but it grew on me very quickly. Coffee of choice at the moment is the Cuban from C4 for those in Chch although they do daily courier deliveries also.

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Edwood

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#810068 2-May-2013 11:20

I asked about other stores and was told that there aren't any and that there were no fixed plans to have any, although they are looking at where else they can set up... "We will let you know if/when we are going to have another store somewhere".

I'm not planning on making trips to the store, I had assumed I could just biff the empties in with the other recycling... or do you actually have to take them all to the drop off?

freitasm

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#810084 2-May-2013 11:34

If you clean the coffee from the capsules then just dump in the recycle bin.

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#810087 2-May-2013 11:36

Sancho: ...I actually really enjoy the process of making the coffee, grinding the coffee, experimenting with different coursness, the machine heats up very quickly and I have no real gripes at all.

I do struggle to get milk drinks consistent, but thats more operator error than anything, but any tips are appreciated, one will be fantastic, the next will have hardly any foam at all. But bang for buck I love the machine, I love the coffee I get and if/when this machine does its dash I'm pretty certain i'll get a more serious machine like a rocket etc myself...

I know of a great Rocket that is going to be for sale soon :)

Its hard to explain how to get good milk, but they key is to airate the milk only a tiny bit while it's cold, and then just to have the milk circulating with the nozzles in the milk far enough to avoid making bubbles... the bulk of the air will come from the milk folding over itself as it circulates and you end up with perfect silky hot moo juice.

Speaking of which, I had low expectations of the obligatory nespresso milk 'frother', and I am resigned to the fact that it just can't make the aforementioned silky moo juice.
I will learn to live without my coffee art.

I'll admit, the last couple of mornings have felt quite strange without the rigmarole of grinding, packing, pouring, wurring, cleaning, hissing, art-ing, cleaning, and cleaning... I feel like something is missing from my life, but I'm sure i'll get used to that... I feel like I've got so much more time in the morning, I might just make an omlette :)

Fred99

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#810089 2-May-2013 11:37

Edwood:

Despite what most people say, it is cheaper for me to buy Nespresso capsules and use that machine than making my own coffee with my Rocket. Historically, a $15 250g bag of beans lasts me a week and I use a tonne of milk. Now I'll spend around $10-$15 a week on coffee and use a lot less milk (not that I can see how much is in the confounded bottle ).

There's about 6g of coffee in a Nespresso capsule - slightly less than used in a standard single shot.
$60/kg for roasted beans is an outrageous price. However, it's still much less than the cost for discount pods from Countdown.
A local (to me) roaster like Ristretto in Chch (top end of Barbadoes st) I think price for 200g is about $9.00, which is about 1/3 of the cost per shot of cheap capsules.

Plenty of glowing reviews for Nespresso on the net. Nestle conducted one of the best saturated marketing programmes ever seen on the internet. A tip for meta-analysis of the reviews is to copy and paste text from the review back in to google, which might lead the more skeptical to suspect that most of these "reviews" aren't reviews at all.
Deeper searching is needed to find reviews like this:
http://www.coffeecrew.com/gear-equipment-coffee/458-we-review-the-nespresso-pixie-pod-coffee-for-the-masses

If you couldn't pull a shot of coffee which wasn't in a completely different league to the quality you get from a Nespresso machine out of your Rocket, then something was seriously wrong with your technique.

freitasm

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#810098 2-May-2013 12:06

That reviews is from someone who is obviously biased somehow. For example:

"The long brew on the Nespresso Pixie (I imagine) is a whopping 4 fluid ounces (OK, maybe 3.5) -- which is way over-extracted any way you slice it on a machine and pod size like this. Simply not enough coffee in the capsule - and you can only stretch it so far. Who knows, maybe some people enjoy this watery result - who am I to say that this would not be universally desirable. Cannot imagine that it would be."

That's why the machine allows the user to customise their own extraction. If you think it's too much and over-extracted, insert a capsule, get a chronometer watch and measure the exact time you want the extraction. Press the button to start and keep it pressed until you reach the time or volume you want. Release the button. Done. The machine will forever do the same time/amount each time the button is pressed.

"Sure, I am an espresso lover - but I do not believe that the average consumer realizes when they buy one of these units that they are getting a single shot brewer -- as opposed to a coffee maker. I know, I know - they are called N-Espresso machines. I get that. But laying out an array of dramatic pod/capusle offerings implies that it is something that it isn't."

Please. This is condescending. I do follow a few single shot blogs and reviews around and this guy is seriously not coming into my feed reader.

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Edwood

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#810101 2-May-2013 12:11

Yup, its a fair comment that I failed to make compare apples properly...
I've gone from making a double shot to a 6g capsule, so I'm actually drinking a lot less coffee.
Including wastage, I would normally use 3 times that amount of coffee (ie. 250g bag lasts 12-14 coffees)

Of course what I'm producing with the Nespresso U is inferior in every way to what I produce with super fresh beans and the Rocket, but it still fares better than most cafes, i get the same coffee every time, and I think the trade offs will be ok for me.

edit: whats the term for multiple people making simultaneous posts and getting all mixed up?

freitasm: Press the button to start and keep it pressed until you reach the time or volume you want. Release the button. Done. The machine will forever do the same time/amount each time the button is pressed.

Wow, I wonder if the "U" will do that... I might shorten the espresso shot a little to see if I can reduce the bitter aftertaste. Thats a cool feature.

Fred99

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#810106 2-May-2013 12:32

Edwood: but it still fares better than most cafes.

That's absolutely understandable. There are plenty of cafes who despite having the right gear and pretense (and prices) to suggest that they might be at the better end of the market, they're a rung or three below the not particularly great - but IMO usually perfectly acceptable and consistent coffee you can be almost guaranteed to be served at McCafe or Wild Bean etc.

You could have tried an experiment - there are pod adapters to fit e61 style group heads. AFAIK nespresso machines don't do pre-infusion, I don't know what would happen if you did pre-infuse a pod, but you could bypass that step anyway.

Me - I'll pass on pod systems. Everything about them, from Nestle themselves, the marketing model, the limitation to single-shot pulls - I don't have any positive thoughts about it at all.
There are domestic machines (someone else mentioned the Breville Dual Boiler - but also domestic machines from Lelit and others) which get away from one of the inconveniences of e61 type machines - the slow warm-up time.
The smell of coffee being ground more than offsets the inconvenience to me.

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Fred99

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#810107 2-May-2013 12:36

freitasm: That reviews is from someone who is obviously biased somehow.

I couldn't agree with you more ;-)
I'm biased too - I like a really great cup of coffee. I only get the chance to drink a few each day (or I get the shakes), so I'm not going to waste those chances by drinking something where the compromise of quality vs convenience doesn't meet my expectation/needs.
As always, YMMV.

Sancho

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#810109 2-May-2013 12:40

Fred99:
The smell of coffee being ground more than offsets the inconvenience to me.

Amen to that! :)

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Edwood

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#810110 2-May-2013 12:49

Fred99:...There are domestic machines (someone else mentioned the Breville Dual Boiler - but also domestic machines from Lelit and others) which get away from one of the inconveniences of e61 type machines - the slow warm-up time.

I've always just had my espresso machine (Rocket for the last year or so) on an electronic timer. It turns on half an hour before wake-up time, and turns itself off again after a few hours.

lchiu7

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#810116 2-May-2013 13:02

I have toyed for the longest time about getting a capsule espresso maker and it became very tempting over Xmas/Boxing Day with the sales on. And the coffee I have had at the stores has always been fine for me (I drink it black and my usual cafe choice is an Americano)

But I have a Delonghi espresso maker the family bought me for Xmas a year ago.

http://www.delonghi.com/nz_en/products/icona-eco-310r/

I have a conical grinder so I grind my own beans to use in it.

The machine heats up fast enough and makes coffee without too much delay. But for some reason no matter what size grind I use or what beans, the coffee comes out with lots of crema - much more than I see from commercial machines.

It's not a big deal since I then will add hot water to it to make it an Americano but even when I called Delonghi, they said they had no idea why there was so much crema.

The device also takes ESE pods which I have tried but they are really fiddly to place in the coffee holder so I gave up on them.

And to reiterate a point in this thread, capsule systems make the per unit/weight costs very high.

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