If you have arrived here with the question, which capsule coffee maker to buy? You are in a hurry, and you don't feel like reading all the paragraph that I have prepared below with a lot of love, I am going to cut to the chase and recommend the cheapest and most valued coffee machines today:
- If coffee is your thing, pure and hard, opt for a Nespressocapsule coffee maker. Lots of variety of flavors and brands in supermarkets. Among the best and most reliable, I recommend the De'Longhi Inissia machine or the most recent Krups Essenza Mini.
- If you are looking for a variety of drinks (coffee, chocolates, mocha, lattes, teas ...) and with the option to prepare them hot or cold, then choose a Dolce Gusto single-dose coffee maker, it is similar to Tassimo. Still, in this system, you will find more alternatives to cheap capsules in any supermarket. The best-selling Dolce Gusto machine today is the Krups Mini Me for its good quality/price ratio.
- Tassimo is not at all a bad option if you are looking for a variety of hot drinks but only opt for it if you cannot live without some of its exclusive flavors (Oreo, Suchard, Baileys, Milka ...) since there is less variety in general and it is not that simple. Find them in supermarkets. If this were the case, the Bosch Happy machine is a good, very complete, and cheap coffee maker.
Types of homemade coffee makers
The world of coffees and home coffee makers is vast, so the first thing we have to know when choosing a coffee maker for home is the difference between a more traditional one and another with capsules, so we can choose between one type or another. in a more accurate way, ensuring that the final choice suits our day-to-day needs. And it is not the same to need a fast and frothy coffee to want an intense one that requires more preparation time.
Traditional coffee maker with ground or bean coffee
Among all the traditional coffee machines, there are different types, and they are all focused on making coffee starting from coffee beans or ground, which will give us a wide range when buying the one we like the most. These coffee makers usually stand out for getting coffee with a more intense and natural flavor and use them to prepare larger amounts of coffee beyond a simple individual cup.
On the contrary, the process necessary to prepare each one is usually more complex and slow, you have to spend more time preparing/cleaning the machine and, depending on which machines, they can have very high prices. It should also be borne in mind that if preparing coffee in a "large" quantity is advantageous if we only want to prepare a single cup, it becomes an inconvenience due to all the work and time invested.
The main types of conventional coffee machines are the following:
- Filter/drip
- Espresso
- Italian / Macchinetta / Moka / Greca
- Plunger
- Cold-brew
Single-dose capsule coffee maker
As curious as it may seem, capsule coffee machines were thought around the 70s, being popularized in the 90s thanks to the Nespresso brand, a company that used a clever marketing campaign years later to become famous thanks to George Clooney and other famous actors ("What Else?"). Since then, an increase in the use of these single-dose coffee makers can be seen, being more used today than a traditional coffee maker.
As its name already allows it to be seen by itself, capsule coffee machines are machines to make coffee. The particularity that they use what is known as a capsule that carries already ground coffee. If we are strict, we could define coffee capsules as a portion or counted dose of coffee powder enclosed in a small container, which will allow us to use them to prepare coffees individually.
The capsules for this type of coffee maker are usually made of plastic or aluminum and contain between 5 and 8 grams of coffee per serving. There is usually an aluminum sheet that will be pierced by the coffee maker once you insert it in the upper part of it.
These machines have several advantages over conventional ones and are represented in the market by three major brands: Nespresso, Dolce Gusto, and Tassimo, although we find others such as Senseo Lavazza.
Making coffee has become necessary for the day-to-day life of today's society, increasingly revolutionizing the ways of preparing it. This premise is where capsule coffee machines are born, a tool that optimizes the morning coffee preparation much more while giving a very delicious flavor and aroma to this very particular drink.
What are capsule coffee makers, and how do they work?
Generally, this system uses capsule works with electricity, heating the water that you deposit inside it and distributing the amount of coffee in the capsule evenly under pressure directly into the hot liquid, thus providing coffee at an excellent temperature and with a flavor-rich espresso flavor. It is as if it were freshly ground coffee!
That said, it can be understood that the uses of capsule coffee machines include the preparation of hot beverages based on a capsule with a powder content capable of being diluted and straining into the water, thus preparing any coffee to hot chocolate: milk, tea, and more.
With be aware of the water tank and make cleaning and maintenance from time to time, it is more than enough to keep in good condition a coffee capsule and last long enough, being one of the main reasons why these machines have emerged as the new homemade coffee solution for the 21st century.
Advantages: in most cases, the machines are quite inexpensive, clean, quick to use, and with the possibility of preparing a great variety of drinks beyond simple coffee. The coffee inside the capsule can also last for months without losing its properties, unlike conventional coffee bags. Its maintenance is simple.
Disadvantages: Each coffee can be a little more expensive if we compare it with the traditional ones, and we are limited to the types of coffee that the different brands sell us. However, luckily, there is more variety on the market and even options to buy empty capsules and fill them with our own coffee. Coffee gourmets prefer the taste and brewing process of conventional coffee makers.
Which capsule coffee maker to choose
Once we know the main differences between a conventional coffee machine and a coffee machine with capsules, we are going to delve a little further into the world of the latter, where we find several brands, machines, and types of beverages, each with different characteristics that will make us choose for choosing a capsule coffee maker or another.
For example, if you intend to drink only coffee or if, on the contrary, you like to make yourself chocolates or cappuccinos from time to time, if you prefer fully automatic or manual machines or if you would like to be able to prepare cold drinks, as well as hot ones.
All these options are present in the different types of Nespresso, Dolce Gusto, and Tassimo coffee machines, so it is worth spending a few minutes on finding out which system best suits your preferences and needs to find out which capsule coffee machine to buy.
