Hello. We're looking for a coffee machine for the office, and I think that something like Nespresso might be the only suitable option. In my research I've tried them and the taste, as everyone seems to say when they've been discussed here before, is ok. Certainly not as good as a coffee I can make at home, but not that bad either. Cafes often produce a much worse coffee, much to their shame. That has prompted this post -

How do they make it taste ok even though they are breaking all the so-called rules of good espresso? The coffee in the capsule was pre-ground likely months ago. small amount of ground coffee 5.5grams per capsule they say. extract longer shots from those 5.5g that you normally would extract from 7g or even 9g per shot on a real machine. claim to extract at 19 bar pressure rather than 9 bar. If I could adjust my home machine to pump at 19 bar, and then extract the Nespresso standard amount of 40ml (1.35? oz) from 5.5g of ground coffee I expect it would taste very bad even with freshly ground beans.
and then they have lungo capsules with 7g of coffee for a 110ml (almost 4oz?) extraction. how is that not very over-extracted?

I searched the Internet and couldn't find any discussion of the technical aspects of how Nestle can make espresso the wrong way and with a small inexpensive machine and still have it taste better than many cafes who think they are making it the right way with their expensive brand name equipment. can anyone offer any explanation of how this could be?

It's an excellent question. A lot of the information is proprietary. However I do have a couple of insights.

For me, the standout Nespresso capsule is the Robusta based "ristretto" capsule; which makes a crema laden 25ml volume shot. This is about 12 grams in weight, and so a roughly equivalent to a cheap Italian shot. The arabica capsules are unacceptably dilute and woody tasting.

I got a tour of the Green Mountain Keurig capsule plant, and they use a foil that works the same way as a one way valve. They pack the ground coffee before it is degassed, in a nitrogen flushed capsule, and then cover it with this one way foil. So the coffee stales but does not oxidize. This works well for medium-dark roast flavors, but not for fruity aromatics or for very dark roasts. I'm guessing the other capsules use the same technology.

I do not know how the pressure works on the Nespresso capsules. But if they have a restrictor valve at the capsule exit and a gicleur at the entrance, they could get the pressure drop across the coffee to be similar to that in a conventional espresso machine.

Clearly, in the arena of no fuss coffee, i.e. the same as the one occupied by prepacked brew envelopes of office coffee, the Nespresso and Keurig systems are big steps up. This is for people who are looking for no work, no-brainer, decent consumer coffee, not anything memorable; within that context, it works well.

Can preparation have any effect on the taste or is it pretty consistent from person to person and machine to machine? It doesn't seem like it would vary. I only ask because I gave these capsules another try last weekend at Sur La Table. Even with low expectations I can't say I was impressed. I think it tastes terrible. I don't know why it gets a pass, even if it's only with a "no fuss" caveat. Factor the price as well and the whole package is completely unappealing to me. The Aeropress is a far better "no fuss" coffee solution. Anyone who doesn't want to put even that little effort in to coffee probably doesn't care too much anyway. They should drink tea.

We've got the Nespresso ES-100 Pro machine at work because we moved upstairs and there's no running water or sink in our part of the building. I typically avoid it, sticking instead to a Twist or Aeropress to prepare my own coffee, but others in the company seem to like it. It's probably fine for office coffee, but probably won't satisfy anyone who's a regular here. If you go with Nespresso, you're locked into buying their proprietary pods/capsules.

I blogged about this machine here and had a little fun and went crazy trying out my own coffee in home-made capsules here.

Even though I don't use the machine, it's become an unspoken agreement that I clean the machine, empty the drip tray, and even wash the demitasses I brought in from a thrift store. Not sure how this came to pass, but I know that if I don't clean the machine it'll end up tasting [more] like crap.

As for how they make them taste acceptable, not sure but they spend a lot of money at it.

We have both a Nespresso and a Jura superauto at work.

We used to have a LaPavoni semi-auto a few years back but no one would take the time to clean up and our president just got fed up with the mess. The steam wand was also getting scary.

I would agree that the black capsule is the only palatable option for making drinkable espresso. When those run out, we go through the other colors and make funny faces at each other as we drink our shots. We are talking dirty dishwater here.

We even have the whirly milk foaming cup. This makes uber foam that can be formed into anything you like. Why just yesterday i made spare coaster for my chair and it's still holding up.

Nurturing a Nespresso habit is an expensive proposition so we got the Jura and have fresh beans delivered from a local roaster weekly. In my opinion, this is a better solution. Yes the machine needs more attention in terms of cleaning but at least i get to choose the beans and control freshness.

To me the shots seem better (or at least on par with the famed black capsule) with this latter option and the costs should be lower in the long run. We have about 30 employees that like to drink lots of shots, so the machine should pay for itself with the money saved on buying whole beans vs capsules.

Just wanted to share our experience with the whole coffee thing at work.

On the plus side, this ho-hum setup really makes me appreciate my setup when i get home!

They do make a filter basket so you can put your own coffee in. I have played with one but the results were not super, but better than those stock cups.

thanks for the responses so far - I realise that specifics of how they work would be proprietary knowledge, but I was hoping someone might have some theories on how they work, such as how they extract a relatively high volume of espresso from a lower-than-standard dose. I don't have a good understanding of the science behind espresso - I've looked for web resources without much luck other than the useful stuff in forums like this one. Maybe it's time to buy some books.
I know most of us don't rate the taste of Nespresso very highly at all, but not long ago there was a review I read from someone who I'm told is quite respected in the coffee scene (coffeereview.com??) who gave ratings of 87 to 91 for a few different Nespresso pods.
I always assumed that they must allow the coffee to stale before packing it in the pods so that they didn't explode with degassing, but apparently it's ground and packed within a day of roasting, so maybe the one-way foil explanation is correct, but I wouldn't think you'd call them "hermetically sealed" if they were still able to "breathe". Their non-standard approach to espresso made me curious about how it works, but in the end I'm sure there are better & more productive things for me to investigate