Single-serve "pod" coffee makers

Last updated: May 22, 2009.

If you love a good cup of coffee but you can't be bothered with all the fuss of smashing beans, spooning out ground coffee, or boiling a kettle, a pod-coffee maker could be just the thing you're looking for. These truly idiot-proof machines pack all the mess and fuss into a simple, disposal plastic pod—as easy and convenient as a tea-bag—and they can deliver excellent quality coffee in a couple of minutes. Although they're quite expensive, they can quickly pay for themselves if you're in the habit of buying your drinks at the local coffee shop. Let's take a closer look at how they work.

Photo: Left: A typical pod coffee maker: the Braun Tassimo coffee pod machine. Rival machines are sold under the Nespresso and Senseo brands. On this machine, the water tank is at the back, under the circular black lid. The pod fits into the silver compartment at the front, on top. Once you've load up the water and the pod, you press the large black button on the bottom right to deliver your coffee.

Different ways to make a perfect cup of coffee

However you choose to make your coffee, you'll know there are two essential ingredients: water and the coffee itself. To make perfect coffee, the water must not be boiling hot: it needs to be slightly cooler, at a temperature of about 88-96°C (190-205°F); the exact temperature depends on the type of coffee you're using. As most people surely know, coffee grows in beans, which you have to grind up to release the coffee flavor we all love.

Photo: Right: A typical Kenco coffee pod made for the Tassimo machine. There's a selection of coffees for most of the pod coffee makers, but the choice is much more limited than if you were buying ground coffee or beans. Pods made for one machine will work only in that machine.

To turn ground coffee into drinkable coffee, you put the water and the coffee together—but different coffee-making techniques do this in different ways:

• Cafetière (French press): you simply spoon water into the pot and pour hot water over it. The water slowly releases the flavor from the coffee grounds, as convection currents swirl them around. It takes about 5-10 minutes to make a decent pot.
• Filter coffee: You put the coffee inside filter paper and pour boiling water through it. This is one of the quickest and simplest ways to make your coffee, but the end product can seem watery and tasteless if you like your coffee strong.
  

• Percolator: Hot water is endlessly bubbled through a metal coffee container at the top of the machine to make very strong coffee. The trouble here is that you have to clean out the percolator and its mechanism when you're done.
  
• Instant coffee: The easiest coffee of all! You put a spoon of coffee powder (containing concentrated coffee essence) into the bottom of your cup and pour near-boiling water over to make it dissolve. There's nothing to clean beside your cup, but the coffee usually tastes pretty poor.
  
• Coffee-shop machine: The machines you see in coffee shops usually make the best coffee. They work by heating water quickly to the perfect temperature, before forcing it at high pressure through a metal vessel containing ground coffee. But professional machines are expensive. They're also a pain to keep filling with ground coffee. And they're even more of a pain to clean.

Until recently, you had a simple choice: you could either have quick and easy, bad-tasting, instant coffee or you could have decent coffee, but suffer the time and trouble of making it. In the last few years, however, ingenious coffee companies have hit on a way to let us enjoy coffee-shop quality at instant-coffee speed: the coffee pod machine.

Although there are numerous different designs of these machines on the market, the basic idea is the same in each case. The ground coffee is sealed inside a disposable plastic pod with a small piece of filter paper inside. You put the pod into the top of the machine, where it's locked in place. When you switch on the machine, water heated to the ideal temperature is forced at high pressure through the coffee, releasing the flavor into the cup below. In some machines, you put in a coffee pod followed by a milk pod to make a perfect cappuccino or latte; in others, you add the milk or cream separately just as you would with any other coffee-making method.

Photo: Making coffee with the Braun Tassimo. You take a pod (t-disc) like this one, loaded up with ground coffee, and insert it into the machine. The machine reads the barcode on the top and figures out exactly what to do. All you have to do is press a single button to deliver a great cup of coffee in a minute or two.