Soft pods, hard pods or capsules?

Single serve coffee is all the rage. Gone is the time when you counted how many spoons of coffee to put in your coffee maker. You buy single-serve coffee and discard it after use. It's easy, clean and generally good. Here are a few tips so as not to get lost among all types of pods and capsules.

Soft pods: a generous coffee

Soft pods are almost always senseo®* pods. It is untamped ground coffee to prepare a 80 or 110ml coffee at approximately 2 bar. Ideal in the morning to wake up, with milk or biscuits. You can drink it all day long, around the coffee table, which is what most French people do. What about you?

Pros

They are cheap, easy to find in all supermarkets and enable you also to vary your drinks. Indeed, with the gourmet pods, you can even prepare a chocolate, a cappuccino, all kinds of milky drinks for youngsters as well as grown-ups.

They adapt to the Senseo®* coffee makers using this type of pods, which is logical!

Hard pods: the quality of an espresso coffee

Hard pods are exclusively espresso pods. Also called E.S.E (Easy Serving Espresso) pods, they can be used in pod coffee makers with an open system. They produce a 40ml espresso at about 16 bars. Just as in a café.

Pros

These pods match the Italian format. As a result, all famous Italian roasters offer them. Italians are really the kings of the espresso. Illy coffee, Lavazza coffee, Covim coffee, to name but a few, allow you to prepare a good espresso with hard pods. In addition, they are ecological and certified compostable pods.

Handpresso’s manual espresso machine and electric espresso machine for the car (Handpresso Pump and Handpresso Auto) use them. And if you want to know it, the Handpresso Pump is my favorite because I can bring it along wherever I go!

Capsules: a format considered top of the range

The capsules are increasingly "in". Nespresso®* paved the way, and all the great roasters have followed suit. In addition to the nespresso®* capsule or the nespresso®* compatible capsule, there is the Lavazza capsule, the Tassimo capsule... which adapt to percolators of the same brand (dolce gusto, AModoMio, LavazzaBlue, EspressoPoint, Iperespresso ...)

Pros

The capsules are the easiest and cleanest to use. They are very well distributed and there is a wide variety of them. But they are a bit more expensive too. Well, eco-friendly minds should forget them. But for its aficionados, nothing beats the luxury of enjoying a good espresso in the exclusive world of theirs!

*Nespresso® and Senseo® are third party trademarks having no connection with Handpresso SAS