Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

I have also found capsules at Aldi..they are crap..and Taylor's of Harrogate do them too, I found them at the Pound shop, they were good but they were a limited supply.
I don't wish any reader to think that I normally shop at those establishments, I am not a Chav! I had to visit them for a friend ok?

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

Excellent .....

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

At least one company is making an effort, then .....

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

Yep that's why I said "it ties you into to one or more brands of pods"

i.e. Either the brand that goes with the machine or one of the compatible brands. Either way, you're being given inferior coffee at a huge mark up price. It's kidology, false economy . . . imo.

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

I know the ones you mean but realistically this isn't the same ball park as coffee pods. It's purely a filter coffee machine that operates with coffee bags. So no 9 bars of pressure and therefore no real shot of espresso with crema etc.

Nothing wrong with those machines, it's just they are filter coffee effectively.

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

And instant coffee is in some way superior?
I buy Nespresso capsules, I have a Cafetiere it makes a lot of coffee, most of which is wasted therefore expensive, my Nespresso makes me one cup of coffee, and if I can pick them up from Poundland I can get 10 Taylor's of Harrogate coffee capsules for a quid..work it out. Failing that I order from Nespresso, which averages out at 33p a cup.
On the other hand I could drink Asda own brand instant coffe for a quid per ton.

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

I don't know the actual figure, but it definitely uses a high pressure of water through the grounds. You can hear distinctly the pulsating vibrations of the pump.

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

That's just the sound of the pump moving water from the tank. I'm guessing you have a Senseo machine. Here's the plain admission on their own website FAQs about not being a proper shot of coffee:

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MY SENSEO® COFFEE AND AN ESPRESSO?

SENSEO® coffee doesn't brew an espresso coffee. Espresso is a strong coffee brewed by quickly forcing hot water or steam through darkly roasted, finely ground, coffee beans. SENSEO® coffee grounds are not as finely ground. The mode of filtration is also different which is why the taste of Douwe Egberts SENSEO® coffee is closer to filtered coffee.

Note how they don't even acknowledge the pressure used by proper espresso makers.

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

Also, here's a great article that debunks the Senseo nonsense. Well worth a read.

http://www.bloggle.com/2005/03/the-s...crema-mystery/

The Senseo Crema Mystery

"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.

Re: Coffee and Tea Capsules

Think I'll stick with my bean to cup coffee machine - expensive at the time but now four years old and still going strong.