Posted by TheShot on 09 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Quality Issues
What will those wacky Swiss think up next? Apparently, it’s an espresso-tasting machine: A machine with a taste-for espresso.
Yes, it’s the latest invention from the people who brought us yodeling and clandestine overseas bank accounts. But with the Swiss, it’s not all good stuff. They have also brought us brain-dead, monkey-operated, superautomated espresso machines — [...]
Posted by TheShot on 17 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Home Brew, Machine, Quality Issues
In the “unclear on the concept” department, this weekend’s Toronto Star published an article that, in its opening paragraph, mentioned “coffee’s elevated status as the new wine.” However, it then proceeded to discuss coffee-pod-based home espresso machines in the same context: TheStar.com | living | Specialty coffees become the new wine.
This is as incongruous as [...]
Posted by TheShot on 16 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine
Today’s New York Times published a brief article on Francis Ford Coppola’s personal obsession with espresso machines, of which he’s apparently owned some 300 to date: The Epic in a Demitasse Cup - New York Times. Of particular note is a machine that is “an early favorite, a large, silvery old-fashioned machine for the first [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Home Brew
Today’s Guardian (London) featured a humorous (or is that humourous?) piece on Nespresso and its lifestyle magazine: Nespresso isn’t just coffee … it’s an aspirational lifestyle marketing exercise by desperate lunatics | Food and drink | Life and Health. What’s not to like about the dry and wickedly clever British sense of humor?
The author describes [...]
Posted by TheShot on 04 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Home Brew, Machine
Today’s New York Times Magazine published an article on the declining design aesthetic of the espresso machine: The Pod People - New York Times. As the author puts it, “Cape Canaveralesque control centers that have replaced those great machines.” And she blames the meteoric popularity of Starbucks, which inspired a great wave of ensuing greed [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 05 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Home Brew, Machine, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee
An article in yesterday’s Dublin Independent perhaps thought it was exalting the Nespresso espresso. However, it did more to underscore how clueless high-end restaurants are when it comes to espresso quality: The cult of Nespresso - Food & Drink, Lifestyle - Independent.ie. Pre-ground coffee that has aged for weeks in plastic pods since the second [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 28 May 2007 | Tagged as: Home Brew, Machine, Quality Issues
I’ve written both here and elsewhere on how the state of home espresso has both improved and become worse at the same time. While home espresso is mostly out of the Krups Dark Ages, its future is uncertain:
super-expensive, super-disappointing super-automatics are now de rigeur for high-end home kitchen designs
as a new format, coffee pods are [...]
Posted by TheShot on 11 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
In case you thought we were simply making things up for the benefit of a joke, coffee is truly getting worse at the same time it’s supposedly getting better. Today’s commercial flood of poorly designed home espresso machines marks some of these steps backwards. Other examples are more insidious, such as how the Nespresso machine [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 09 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Home Brew
Contrast with the many home espresso machine design failures, Nestlé’s Nespresso pods and machines have been something of a consumer success story. The Nespresso machines do exhibit good design and an impressive amount of convenience. For a number of home espresso lovers, however, these advantages ultimately pale in comparison to their required use of stale, [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 20 Mar 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Home Brew, Machine
Consumer Reports published a home buyer’s guide to espresso makers this month: ConsumerReports.org - Buyer’s guide to espresso makers 3/07. As with a lot of things in Consumer Reports, they often lack sufficient knowledge or background to offer educated opinions beyond winging it with what’s on the surface. (Well, beyond that and Consumers Union’s usual [...]
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