The post today is about the Nescafe coffee machine. You all know I love coffee. That’s all I write about at my blog here, and today we’ll explore the Nescafe coffee machine which is a bit of a misnomer. But we’ll get to that in a bit. First as always, a little background about the brand of Nescafe coffee and the larger company Nestle.
Now before we carry on with this review of Nestle’s Nescafe coffee maker we must talk about the company behind the product or at least the brand. Nestle hardly needs an introduction, the company is one of the largest food manufacturers in the world. In addition they own a quarter of the largest cosmetics company in the world – L’Oreal. Their revenues in 2009 were over 96 billion US dollars.
Nescafe is their big coffee brand which as you probably know is a portmanteau of Nestle and cafe. This instant coffee that Nescafe has become famous for has been around since 1938. That’s quite a long time. In fact I remember drinking Nescafe as a wee toddler. Well not really, but it was amongst my first coffee experiences. This is not surprising if you believe Nestle’s suggestion that 3000 cups of Nescafe are drunk every second around the world. That’s a lot of coffee.
All about the Nescafe coffee machine
Now there is a lot more background information about Nestle and Nescafe that we could get into, but I want to focus the rest of this article on the Nescafe Dolce Gusto coffee machine. But before I do, I just want to comment briefly on Nestle’s problems with controversy. In the interest of full disclosure, this has tainted my impression of them. Some of the criticism is on point, but having said that, it could be part and parcel of their size. Perhaps being such a huge conglomerate and multi-national just invites criticism and controversy solely because of size. Maybe. But not all companies of that size are hounded by the social issues that have plagued Nestle. Enough said. Let’s take a look at their Nescafe espresso machine.
The Dolce Gusto coffee machine is actually made by Krups, and like other single serve coffee makers like the Breville espresso maker or the Senseo pod coffee maker, the Nescafe coffee machine used a version of the coffee pods. To me this is a problem, because it is yet another version of a different kind of coffee pod that you have to use with this cappuccino machine.
A red Nescafe coffee machine
It won’t take Timothy’s k cups or the Keurig coffee pods which use Keurig’s proprietary system. And it also won’t take the cialde Lavazza or the Melitta coffee pods which use the more generic ESE (Easy Serving Espresso pods). So that means, that the coffee supplies you need for this Nescafe coffee maker are yet again another proprietary coffee system that you have to worry about. And so far from what I can tell, the Nescafe coffee capsules are not available from other manufacturers, at least at this time. This is one of the reasons I prefer the Senseo system or the Keurig set up. There is way more variety and oftentimes from more than one producer.
Okay, so that’s what I don’t like. What I do like is the design and durability of the machine. The design is quite unique as you can see, and the finish seems quite stable and durable. It appears to be a well made machine, however, time will tell for certain. I would also hope it to be a very durable and high quality coffee maker, because it is more expensive than the comparable Keurig or Senseo coffee makers. At least it is at the time of this writing.
Some of the other benefits include the ability to make iced drinks. In as much that you can pour the different types of beverages over ice. I personally didn’t like the taste so much of these flavored Nescafe beverages made in this Nescafe coffee machine, but the Nescafe coffee it made wasn’t too bad. They really need to work on making the actual Nescafe Dolce Gusto capsules a lot better. Until that time, I can’t really recommend the Nescafe coffee machine when there are other better choices out there.