The Nespresso CitiZ, or how McDonald’s has become the home espresso of the future
Posted by TheShot on 16 Oct 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine
A little over two years ago, we lamented the state of populist retail home espresso by reviewing what we thought was one of the better options at the time, the Nespresso C180 Le Cube: The Home Espresso Machine Blues: Rating today’s state of consumer espresso machines. Besides having a name that sounded regrettably familiar to Renault’s Le Car of the late 1970s, we found the Le Cube to be typical of superautomated, pod-based home espresso machines at the time: the overpackaged, overpriced convenience of consistently stale coffee.
Since then we’ve had a whopper of a global recession — and all the mathematically-precise/psychologically-ignorant cost-savings come-ons for home brewing that have followed. With the Fall 2009 release of Nespresso’s new product line, the CitiZ, we wanted to test if the populist retail home espresso situation had changed through all of that.
It’s not an espresso machine, it’s a lifestyle
We first wrote about the new CitiZ line a few months ago in a critique of Nestlé’s recent environmental chest-beating: Nespresso and the definition of greenwashing. If Nestlé’s primary product line goals were to deliberately maximize materials extraction, manufacturing production, and waste by-products with each coffee serving, it’s hard to imagine the Nespresso coming out much differently than it appears today.
As with the Le Cube, we approached one of these new Nespresso beasts in its native habitat: a mainstream kitchenware retailer. Upon entering the Sur La Table, we were accosted with the massive marketing expense of what looked like a cardboard Playland promoting the new CitiZ line. Nestlé is clearly wheeling up dump trucks full of money for their consumer retail marketing campaign. This flash of cash seems like Nespresso’s attempt to convince consumers of its “upscale” ambitions.
Heading to the back of the store, we opted to test with a Nespresso CitiZ & Milk — which sports a built-in milk frother that we had no intention of using. In case you’re not familiar, Nespresso takes a Jelly-Belly-style approach to the coffee varieties in its capsules. Some of these coffee capsules brandish Nespresso’s new, lofty “Grand Cru” designation. However, for consistency, we opted to stick with the scary “flavor” concept known as a Ristretto capsule.
We inserted the capsule and pushed the “espresso” button (represented with an icon of the smaller of two cups). The extraction started out promising enough: a laminar flow of medium-to-dark brown crema from the get-go. We were honestly impressed at first — maybe things have gotten better?
But then the pour kept coming. And coming. And as it did, the richer brown crema turned into a more turbulent flow of what looked like a milky, splotchy hot chocolate with uneven bubbles. Not exactly appetizing. In just several seconds, the shot rapidly turned into the meager espresso we experienced with our 2007 review of the Le Cube.
The Taste Test
Tasting the shot, it had a much frothier and greater amount of crema than we experienced with the Le Cube. But the crema quality was a bit suspect in taste as well as appearance: thin, one-dimensional, and lacking any flavor richness nor depth. The shot was also too large, resulting in a thinner body and making us wonder what diluted mess the Nespresso would have produced if we pushed the “lungo” button.
The espresso itself had a tepid flavor still on par with an average Starbucks and not much better than a McDonald’s. Like most espresso shots made from stale, pre-ground beans packed for weeks in sealed capsules, it has a narrow flavor profile consisting primarily of some mild spices and pepper. And universally, it tastes like it is “missing something” when compared with the real thing. The company and its advocates like to point out the supposed “high-tech” vacuum-sealed freshness of these capsules, but vacuum-sealing ground coffee is a standard practice the likes of Sanka and Maxwell House have been performing since the 1980s.
Our verdict: more crema, but otherwise very little has changed from the last generation of Nespresso machines we tested. At a 5.80 coffee rating, it’s pretty much even with our C180 Le Cube review (a 5.90). We suppose something can be said for consistency. In the meantime, populist retail home espresso still seems stuck in the McDonald’s Dark Ages. (And here the McDonald’s comparison is actually a bit flattering, given that they at least grind to order.)
Read the review of the Nespresso CitiZ & Milk.
80 Comments »
Hey, maybe Isaac Newton himself can’t get any good coffee at his office errr lab. That explains why he went to coffee houses and start doing mathematics there instead…
Hey Shot, as a Brit I loved the poke a stick at the patently ridiculous George and John ads that accompany the Nestle product. However as you see over there Kia and Hyundia are marketed as great cars instead of insipid metal junk boxes. Everyone knows that, the guy driving it knows its a piece of crap, he doesn’t or shouldn’t believe its gonna transport him to an open road with no other traffic accompanied by a gorgeous model. He bought it to do a job. He would like a BMW but the car he has will get him to where he’s going, it’ll sit in the same traffic jams, it plays MP3′s and CD’s it has a SAT NAV. The guy in the BMW will swear the experience he gets in those traffic jams listening to the same CD’s or MP3′s is worth the additional $40000 he paid. If both are happy with the product they have hell I don’t care if Hyundai try to tell me their car is a cutting piece of luxury, if it does a job and I’m happy with the product I’m happy, doesn’t mean that for one minute I believe the crap the ad men tell me.
This is just perfect! (in response to everyone calling TheShot, obnoxious and painfull to read)
Why is it perfect? because everything TheShot is saying is so true.
I’m a barista myself and completely agree with him, excuse us for having a passion and feeling a certain way about the nespresso and the lack of freshness.
Or the lack of businesses in general using real espresso machines/barista’s etc.
The one thing people should appreciate is that he has extensive research on coffee and coffee beans themselves meaning he is at a benefit to you being able to provide you with CORRECT information, rather than rumours or incorrect information.
As much as some may argue the nespresso pods are not fresh and there is no way to justify it whatsoever, if you think it tastes nice than thats your personal taste, but it is noway a high-end restaurant machine but more so a home machine for those who are after convenience and don’t mind stale coffee.
Hmm so its fine that you coffee geeks have your passion and want to spread your knowledge. What is CORRECT is really not so simple when you talk about something as subjective as taste. People of different cultures and generations would also have different opinions on what is good and bad coffee, yadda yadda yadda. I guess you get my point. Which is why this review of nespresso being so one sided, draws more criticism than appreciation.. as for somebody looking to buy a machine it has limited information to draw on.
@Taka: Actually, we’d beg to differ that the review is “one sided”. Just look at the net taste score of 5.80 stated above. Now we don’t normally review home espresso machines per se. However, we’ve reviewed thousands of in-café espresso shots. Given that Nespresso forces their machine owners to solely get coffee from their supplies, and the machines are push-button consistent, we believe a comparison of their espresso quality is valid.
If we look at the 1,050 places where we’ve made a formal espresso rating to date (on CoffeeRatings.com for San Francisco plus other coffeeshops around the world), the average rating is 5.816 out of 10 with a standard deviation of 1.562 and a median rating of 6.0.
This places our review of Nespresso almost precisely in the very middle of the pack. In other words, take the best and worst espresso in the world and everything inbetween, and the Nespresso is about the average. Call it a “C” student.
For some people, that evaluation apparently seems “one sided”. For us, it’s about as balanced as balanced gets: you’re just as likely to find better espresso as you are to find worse espresso than the Nespresso offers. It is not upscale, it is not the greatest. It’s not downmarket, and it’s not the worst. It’s just smack in the murky middle of “average”.
The numerical ratings of 1000+ espresso tastings are
meaningless if the tastings are not done in a double-
blind manner and a consistent control taste sample is not used
at each tasting. Any individual’s personal taste preference
cannot remain consistent over 1000+ tastings – too many
other variables are involved over the period of time required
for the taste tests.
@docray: I very much agree with the merits of double-blind tastings. But they are absolutely impractical to pull off under the obvious conditions. You just can’t bring over an espresso from A Brasileira in Lisbon and compare it double-blind, side-by-side, with Ritual Roasters in Bayview — for example.
But what gives us faith in the methodology is that we have regularly come across examples where we have used descriptors and ratings of the same place, more than a year between tastings, and were dumbfounded by how consistent and similar they compared with each other. So much so, we’ve questioned how consistent a place can truly be because of it. It may not be completely scientific, but it’s given us a high degree of confidence in the reproducibility of our ratings. (Hence each review has a consistency rating.)
Thus despite the obvious methodology imperfections, there’s enough confidence in the data to suggest a strong fit for, say, the difference between something rated in the 50th percentile from something rated in the 70th or 30th. It may be only one person’s opinion. But it’s a consistent opinion of someone who has sampled thousands, and not just dozens, of different espresso places around the world. And as such, in our humble and honest opinion, the comparison is valid enough to value the conclusions.
Certainly over no comparison at all. You may as well suggest that any wine ratings from Robert Parker are meaningless, because not only does he not double-blind his evaluations, but individual wine bottles can vary with just a few months of aging, with variances in transportation and storage conditions, with variations of cork and its interaction with the contents, etc.
And the comparison is certainly valid over most reviews which don’t even dare attempt to quantify themselves with consistent criteria and methods over a large sample size. And certainly enough to scoff at the suggestion that the ratings are “meaningless” without a double-blind study.
Wow! I came here for a review and stepped in a slop of coffee muck!
I heard mention that the company marketing this device as creating god like espresso is wrong. Well, If I like the taste better than I guess it does. Just because a bunch of people sat down to decide what they thought was the perfect espresso, does not make it so for all. If I like my espresso to come out a certain way THAT way is perfect for me. If the company is selling these machines like nuts then maybe consensus has changed what people want from an espresso.
Its unfortunate that it does not line with your views. Guess people just need to find a reviewer that shares similar views and follow them.
Some people prefer Dominos to an authentic Napoli pizza, some people prefer Two Buck Chuck to Opus One. That will always be the case.
But that doesn’t mean Charles Shaw can legitimately claim they’re selling an elite product on par with Opus One. It also doesn’t mean that the relative sales of one versus the other implies that Two Buck Chuck is a much higher quality product.
Nor does it mean people who prefer Two Buck Chuck are inferior. But neither does it suggest Opus One doesn’t exist and can simply be disregarded.
The problem with this review and the people reading it is the unavoidable bias.
You are comparing the espresso made with this to espresso made with $$$$ machines and time and effort. People who are reading this are more likely looking for a convenient home machine, not a professional one. And this is not helpful to those specific people.
If someone who does use a full setup is reading this to see if they need that anymore, then this would be helpful….but I don’t think the majority of people this review is drawing are those.
Plain and simple. If you are looking for a home machine, and by “home” I mean not a professional setup cossting $$$$$ and simple to use. Is this the best bet?
Of course there’s unavoidable bias. If you’ve seen our web site and its hundreds of reviews, we care about nothing but quality. That is our bias.
Which, not to entirely pat ourselves on the back, is quite refreshing — considering the many misleading reviews on sites like Yelp where you often have no idea what is really being scored. Is it quality? Is it how cute the baristas are? Is it because liking the place bestows hipster social cred points on the reviewer? Is it the free WiFi with accessible electrical outlets? Is it some perceived quantification of value — because their $3 latte may taste lame but it comes in a 40-ounce bucket?
People who come to this site may be looking for convenience, but that’s neither the people nor the subject we really care about. We care about quality. If quality isn’t your primary concern, you’re probably looking in the wrong place.
@theshot: to paraphrase, “dude, you’re not an artist, you’re a BARISTA”.
Get a life, bro. NO-ONE cares about your preternatural coffee palate. The Ferran Adria of espresso, i presume? BWA HA HA.
Not everyone has 30 minutes every morning to clean, warm up, select beans, grind, draw, drink and clean up again…unless they perform it as employment.
After my machine’s (jura) last SERVICE cost more than 25% of its purchase value, I almost gave up. When it lasted less than 3 months before requiring another expenive service, i did give up.
So, as a direct result of the above and your lovely review, I am going out to purchase a nespresso. And, you know what, if it gives me any sh!t I’ll simply return it or purchase a new one (cos, it’s cheap). Net result: i’ll be drinking coffee – instead of flushing cash down a coffee-colored toilet.
But what will I have to eroticise now that i ONLY have a nespresso? Oh, the shame of it…
@dr. neek: Methinks you are lost. This is CoffeeRatings.com, where we focus on coffee quality. It sounds like you were looking for screw-quality-i-need-a-lazymans-espresso-machine.com. You’re clearly in the wrong place.
That said, as a longtime owner of Nestlé stock, I suppose I should personally thank you for the Christmas bonus. I may not like their products nor the corporation, but the business of what puts food on the table is, well, just business.
Though I am sorry to hear about your Jura so quickly turning out to be the landfill it was born to be. But I cannot say I’m surprised, given most superautomatic home espresso machines on the market.
Seeing the two photos above and the description of how the machine spilled lots of coffee, and other remarks, i think you don’t know how to work an automatic machine.
It would have been horrible if you had tested a manual machine!
Very often, in cases like this, the tester (or his boss) has a hidden agenda.
These machines are push-button stupid. Are at least that’s their sales promise.
That said, it is possible to tune and tweak them a little — in some cases — to manipulate their standardized operating range. We personally got out of the business of tuning one and simply used a floor model that a major retailer was using. Hence our “native habitat” comment in the post up top.
While you could argue that the retailer mangled the setup, they were selling a large volume of the machines there. They should have every incentive to have their demo (of what is essentially a brain dead machine) work properly.
I literally feel like I’m in the twilight zone right now. I started out reading a review and somehow found myself addicted to the comments…so much so that I’ve now read them all.
To “TheShot” (I think you’re name is Greg?): Thanks for your review. I can’t in all honesty say I completely agree with you (because a) I’m not as invested in the quality of espresso as you clearly are and, both similarly and apologetically, I b) can’t quite differentiate the difference myself). I do, however, find your devotion to excellence both refreshing and done so with quite class.
To almost everyone else (there were a few exceptions): Get a grip. It has all become quite asinine at this point. You’re practically badgering the poor guy (not that he seems even remotely phased by it). Did he run over your dog? Because I swear I thought he was giving a review of an espresso machine? That’s all. Keep breathing. He’s not proposing a legislative ban on your precious little Nespresso pods. You disagree with him? -Use logic, make your argument like a grown up, debate and/or move on. Don’t attack him.
Thanks again for the review. I learned a few things I didn’t know.
Cheers and happy drinking.
your name*
Can you tell me how the Citiz compares to the DeLonghi EC155 non-capsule machine?
If we could, we’d be running the wrong web site for the wrong reasons.
What’s the use of testing one machine and not all kind of cheaper machines to compare it with?
Because this is CoffeeRatings.com, not HomeEspressoMachineRatings.com. This was merely a single blog post about the state of most commercial home espresso machines on the spectrum of quality you can achieve or acquire through other means/methods.
To do an exhaustive survey and comparison between home espresso machines is largely irrelevant to our mission and would be a theme for a different web site entirely. And personally, it’s a subject that would bore us to tears.
Not to mention our key finding from this experiment: that an exhaustive test of the most popular home espresso machines today would essentially condemn us to an endless series of McDonald’s-quality espresso shots.
Don’t understand why it would bore you. You like good coffee in a café and you will also then like good coffee at home I presume. But with everything their are several price categories
.
I can understand you’re not gonna test all capsule systems but their are several non capsule systems available with a low pricetag like the EC155 and EC702 from DeLonghi.
It would bore me because, when given a choice, I prefer really good coffee to run-of-the-mill average coffee. Despite all the marketing lies on these products that promise the push-button ability to produce “perfect espresso drinks like a professional barista”, most of the popular home machines offer systems that produce little beyond predictably, consistently average coffee. If there were truth in advertising, these manufactures should really say, “Make adequate espresso drinks like a minimum-wage high school student who pushes buttons at a megachain.”
Thus the quest of crowning the “best” popular home espresso machine would be an exercise in celebrating adequacy. Not only that, the logistics of acquiring each home machine, tuning it, etc. , would be a real headache where I’m not interested in going down that rabbit hole.
Must post… Bought a Nespresso D190 recently. Yes, indeed it is not the godlike espresso from a well seasoned barista. I do consider myself a coffee snob though. And yes i stll permit myself to buy a great espresso when time permits. Gave up trying to replicate the $8K machine and maintenace / knowledge required… What the new setup does is consistent. Come on. The pics of the the great vs Nes. Never saw that once with my machine unless i forgot to put a new pod in.. At least keep it real.. Bought the nespresso to put on my boat cause coffee houses don’t exist on the ocean. Now it’s not leaving my kitchen. For the boat i now have a Handpresso paired with a hand grinder. There is no HolyGrail… Just enjoy a cup and less thinking… BTW I sold my Porsche… Now a Jeep Wrangler makes sense. Doesnt mean i have settled… Ski hills and performance cars do not mix… Same with my coffee experience…
I enjoy my Citiz for its ease of use, but I also find most of your complaints fairly valid; I’m basically just looking for an acceptable espresso that is better than what most big-name chains will offer me, and the Citiz is excellent for that purpose. I’d also like to reiterate Meghan’s point from above, that the Citiz allows you to control the size of the shot, but also point out that if you get your coffee-sample from a demonstration machine at a shop they are almost invariably set to use too much water, as they are calibrated to the timid public rather than the true afficionados.
One final point: there is a company called “CoffeeDuck” that makes refillable pods for the Citiz and other Nespresso machines from the same line; with these and a little bit (ok, a fair bit) of initial tinkering to find the right amounts, you can get a truly fresh-ground espresso from a Citiz machine!
It’s amazing that one pedestrian review, who tried one variety gets so many people wound up. I am a native of Naples, Italy. We arguably make the best espresso in the world & believe that there isn’t even a second place. Why it’s so perfect is a mystery even to Neapolitans. I have a copper Gaggia machine at home that cost more than my first car. I’ve brought back beans from Naples to California. Wasn’t the same. Even tried bringing Naples tap water back. Still not the same. Must be the atmosphere. Interestingly enough, a stovetop Moka is most Neapolitans method of choice and it’s still spectacular.
Bottom line and I’ll argue til the end of time. My Nespresso tastes consistently better than my blindingly expensive, copper machine with an eagle on top even with beans from Napoli flown in the day before.
Even at the finest coffee purveyors in Los Angeles like Intelligentsia & City Roasters, the trouble is they taste bitter & oily. Why? Because they don’t have time to clean the screen with soap & water after each coffee. Grounds get knocked out. Oils stay in & build up. With Nespresso, it’s virgin everytime.
Furthermore, I have a life and can’t be bothered with the mess & clean up of these antiquated methodologies. I’m guessing your ’92 Nissan is paid for. I need to drink my coffee & MAKE LIFE HAPPEN.
My 2 cents.
While Napoli makes some good espresso, I would argue it’s second best to what you might find in Piemonte. Bar Augustus is great, as is Il… Caffè — with perhaps il Gran Caffè Cimmino being the city’s most impressive overall. But none of them quite measure up to the best-of-the-best you’ll find in Piemonte. (It’s not just us either … just refer to the Gambero Rosso for example.)
Which is all the more reason anyone who tells you something is the “perfect” anything is either lying or self-delusional. I would go so far as to say that anyone who uses the word “perfect” to describe anything should be immediately dismissed of their capacity for rational judgement.
That said, I can most certainly believe that a Nespresso machine can outdo your own hand at a personal copper machine. Maintenance, tuning, your own skill — all of those things matter. But I find it shocking that anyone could so flippantly throw Neapolitan coffee culture under the bus by even mentioning it in the same paragraph as Nespresso. Pre-ground beans left oxidizing for weeks like that? The narrow flavor profile that results? You may as well have told me that Tang makes the best orange juice.
It’s ok to be lazy. We don’t want to have to do everything the hard way, even if it results in higher quality. But convenience and quality are two different things, and almost always at complete odds. To laud praise like that on Nespresso makes me believe you’re either a corporate shill for Nestlé (and there are paid armies out there commenting on blogs like this one) or someone who has never truly had decent espresso in their lives. I’m all for differences in personal tastes. But that so blatantly crosses the line of rationality that I have to call “bullshit” on you.
Nespresso is a consistently mediocre quality product at best with very high levels of consumer convenience — at high environmental costs. I dare you to find one person who has ever professionally entered a barista competition who will disagree with that statement, which is very fair to Nestlé I might add.
But someone has to break this to you: Nespresso does not come with magical coffee oil repellant. It, like any coffee machine, builds up residue and rancid oils and requires cleaning, maintenance, and tuning. Because what you think of as “virgin everytime” has been sleeping around a lot.
Like the fellow several posts above, I too have entered the twilight zone, enjoying the expression of opinions more than the whatever it was I came to find.
Having tried several Nespresso machine coffees at a friend’s house (which has kindly been offered for use by my in laws during their stay here, while my friends are on holiday), I found its product far superior to what I would usually find at a cafe. Perth (Australia) is home to the worst espresso I’ve ever tasted. So, the Nespresso product is definitely sufficient for my purposes.
Yesterday, I went to a Nespresso outlet in our city (yes, my friend’s machine has a disturbing allure for me, and I needed to replace the pods I’ve consumed while seeing the in laws). It struck me, that you buy into the ‘Nespresso experience’. I was dressed in jeans and a ‘heritage rock’ band T Shirt, and had an eight and a five year old child in tow. I’d took two steps into the store, when an attractive staff member greeted me warmly, and efficiently ascertained my need for replacement of consumables. She guided me to another attractive staff member behind a counter (there were about three counters in a row, like a bank!). I walked out of the store with a 150 pod sample pack, a complementary perspex cube (in which the pods can be attractively arranged if you could be bothered to stack them in the manner depicted on the packaging), and a large string handled paper bag (To conspicuously show the world how classy I am. I felt like an episode of ‘Sex In The City’). I felt ‘good’. Yes, I felt shallow and dirty for feeling that way, but I liked it.
I too am from Perth and agree the coffee is generally pretty average with the exception of a few (including Vinyl Cafe, Little Willies and Tartine) which I do a daily 10mins walk for a decent cup. In the office we have free use of a $4k plus Saeco auto machine or I can pay $1 per pod to use $350 nespresso (no onsite barista I’m afraid). I go the nespresso every time as it is miles better.
At home I have Breville Fresca BES860 which, with some initial set up, produces a decent cup.
You have to look at nespresso on the coffee continuum which at one end has Instant -> Bad Cafe Coffee -> Fully auto machine -> Nespresso -> good home machine(+ someone who knows how to use it) -> good cafe coffee.
For me I wont go lower than nespresso but for plenty its the apex (witness the queue of people paying $4.5 for a rubbish cafe coffee).
I also like good food and wine but I don’t restrict myself to only drinking in wine bars and eating in restaurants.