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Monday, 17 March 2008

Nescafe Dolche Gusto [Lurks]


You remember these' Bzzagent guys I told you about before? Marketing outfit aimed at word of mouth. Well anyway I signed up and didn't really see anything I wanted to do that took my fancy, and they never sent any invites to anything either. It seemd a bit of a faff for not much reward.Then out of the blue last week they invited me to the Nescafe Colche Gusto campaign, this is one of those coffee machine things based on a pod. It's not something I'd ordinarily do. I want a real espresso machine and I kind of don't approve of having just a single range of stuff you can use in it, meaning you have to buy your coffee from Nescafe. And there's the environmental concern of disposable plastic pods for every cup.But fuck, they only went and sent me one for free didn't they. In a big box, 90 quid worth of kit and a box of pods. So it's rude NOT to try it out eh? What have I got to lose.So I did and... it's pretty good if I'm honest. It really is piss easy though. I like it because it's actually got a sort of cute looking water pod thing that fits on the back so you can fill it up from the tap and just slap it on the back. Putting in one of the pods is absolute piss, twist to the side and out comes coffee... there's nothing to clean at all. The lack of even having to fill a kettle or wait around means it's a question of slapping in the pod and getting a cup from the cupboard and it's good to go. The machine is made by Krupps, who know about this stuff, and it's very practical, good looking and pretty good quality. It's not all metal like some ninja espresso machine, but it's pretty good. Seems you can get them for about 80 quid in the shops.The coffee? First the Dolche Lungo pod, mild coffee. It wasn't what I expected. It's not got the powerful bitter hit of fresh coffee as I expected - it's more like a ... sort of smoother vastly more mild affair not unlike instant, but with aroma and the foam etc. I'm not sure if I'm describing that well, but it's pretty good. Not the sort of coffee (too mild) I'd regularly choose. Instead I went for the espresso and filled a whole cup, making a kind of 'americano' and sure enough that had more of the bitter hit. Very good. Not fantastic by any means, but very good.I thought I'd use up the free supply and chuck it on ebay. Might still do that. But I did come to realise it kind of has a place. Basically it's as piss to operate as making a cup of instant, it really is. And that's what I mostly make now because I tend to jump up from work (or before playing a game for that matter) when I realise something is going to take a little while, make a really fast coffee and come back. If I have longer than 15 seconds, I make a cup of green tea. And I'd like to be able to make late night hot chocolates too - which is a bit of a much around normally, any which way it swings.
And it does this stuff really. It manages to kind of deliver a near espresso machine experience just as quickly as instant coffee. There's no doubt in my mind that pods are a bit of an environmental drawback though, as is the lack of range. But then I vastly prefer Nescafe instant (Cap Columbie) over anything else anyway so it might not be a killer. On the other hand it basically only heats the water you use, which is a bit of a win over a kettle. I shudder when I see the 3 kilowatts of power drawn by our kettle... one just has to remember to switch the machine off after making the first morning coffees etc otherwise it keeps a little reservoir of water hot inside which isn't great either.

The Bzz campaign thing said they'd send me another box of pods if I regged on the Dolce Gusto site. This was all a bit weird, at first I thought the 200 points they gave me was what I had to use to buy a box of pods but fortunately it isn't, they just send a voucher for them which presumably you claim from a supermarket? I say fortunately because they wanted to charge £2.95 for postage. Given a box of pods is £2.83 from Tesco it's clearly not worth bothering with unless you had a couple of boxes to claim for free.

Converted? Not exactly. I'd still like an espresso machine and I'm a bit iffy about the whole two pod process to make a cuppercino (works out at about 35p a cup then), which probably has God only knows What in the milk pod. I wouldn't know because bizarrely they only sent me the cuppercino pods and not the milk pods. Why wouldn't you use an espresso pod and a milk pod? Marketing bollocks I assume.

However I've been pretty impressed by how it all works and right now it's giving me a much better cup of coffee in the same time it takes to make an instant so it's kind of hard to completely write it off. If it makes a decent hot chocolate too it might just earn a place in the kitchen.

It's definately made me a bit less negative about pod coffee machines and I can definately see how they're a complete win for some people. Course what it really needs is people like Dowe Egberts making coffee for it and some sort of bamboo decomposable paper pods. Moon on a stick eh? :)

4 comments:


  1. I think it fair to say that, broadly speaking, EED love their coffee.

    We've got a proper espresso machine at home, with a 15 bar pressure tank slapped on it that'll happily froth milk and so on, if you prefer a cappucino or something. It is however a faff - you need to turn it on in plenty of time to get up a head of steam, and you need to clean various bits and pieces post usage.

    So I've often wondered about these "all in one capsule based" units and the thing that has always put me off is the nature of the "all in one capsule based" machine market. Every Christmas you see new models come out, ranging from the budget to the ludicrous and each of them appears to use their own capsule format.

    If they standardised the format, I'd probably buy one - I'm just not prepared to fork out cash for something that the manufacturers may decide to stop supporting in terms of making the capsules, at any point down the road.

    Still, if you've got one for free... ;)

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  2. Yeah I know what you mean. This is Nescafe though, and they've clearly spent proper wonga launching it so I reckon the pods will be in decent supply.

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  3. I love coffee, and yes I have a proper expresso machine. I think the pod machines are undoubtedly convenient, but I see them really for what they are; a means of locking you into a propriatory format so you buy their pods.

    What a lot of people aren't aware of, is that standard expresso machines can take pods too. I have a supply of pods for my machine for use when I've got visitors and I don't want to be faffing around, I just wap a pod in per cup and I'm done. This means I've also got the flexibility to use regular coffee, or even grind my own blends the rest of the time.

    Brit, check out http://www.easypods.co.uk/coffee_machines.html for different pods and adapters for various machines.

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  4. Bugger me, I didn't know anything about pods. The ones on the page you linked are basically like tea bags. I'd be a LOT happier with the concept of the things if that's what they were like. These Nescafe ones aren't anything like that, they're plastic with foil on top. You aint putting them in any espresso maker I assure you.

    The fact you can buy little pods in degradable bags though... that's ace, exactly how you say too. Buy a proper espresso machine and just use the pods when you can't be fucked. Not quite as convenient as this thing I've got but I'd put up with it no problem. If it didn't take too long to warm up...


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