Favorite Product of the Week: Keurig

As you know, I love my Nespresso machine, which makes amazing espresso for lattes, cappuccinos and other high-end coffee beverages. However, I’m not always in the mood for espresso. Sometimes I want regular coffee, and our old coffee machine began failing about a year ago. Because I loved the pod system of the Nesspresso so much I decided I had to have a similar system for coffee. The question was, which one?

I asked for advice right here on my blog. I posted to Facebook and I read every review I could find online. I was obsessed. My husband can vouch for that. I rewound DVR recordings just to watch a Keurig commercial. I read ads in magazines, I read reviews online and I talked to people about their coffee pod machines. While reviews helped me zero in on which machines I was interested in, the only way I felt I could make an informed decision was to taste the coffee. Not as easy a task as you might imagine. Until I discovered (when researching the Dolce Gusto, a coffee maker created by Nestle), that the day after Thanksgiving, Bed, Bath & Beyond was conducting live demos of the exact three machines I was interested in:

Keurig
Dolce Gusto
Tassimo

During my daughter’s naps on the three days following Thanksgiving, I drove over to Bed, Bath & Beyond to taste coffee. The first day I tasted coffee made in the Keurig. They weren’t serving decaf that day and it was about 2 in the afternoon so I limited myself to just a tiny cup, but I must say, it was love at first sip. I tasted the Donut Shop variety and I loved it. It just tasted great, plain and simple. It was exactly the kind of coffee I like, it was the perfect temperature and there were no grinds at the bottom of the cup -- a problem that was getting increasingly worse with our old machine.

Day two was a demo of the Dolce Gusto. I don’t have much to say about this machine other than it’s kind of cute and has a very small footprint, which is nice. I just didn’t like the coffee it produced nearly as much as I liked that made in the Keurig. So I moved on. But I do have to thank the folks at Nestle for posting information about the demo on their website, as that is the only way I found out about the Dolce Gusto demo (and subsequently the other two demos, which I learned about in the store).

On day three I tasted coffee from the Tassimo. We have good friends who have this machine and they love it. About a year ago we even had lattes made in their machine and we talked about those lattes for a week. We loved them. But I wasn’t in search of good lattes. I was in search of good coffee. I will say that the cup of decaf Tassimo coffee I sampled that day was good. It just wasn’t great. I was of course limited to trying the variety they had on display at the demonstration so it’s entirely possible I would have liked a different variety better.

The Tassimo has some real positives. Most obviously, it makes everything: lattes, cappuccinos, drip coffee, hot chocolate and tea. If we didn’t already have the Nesspresso, we may have indeed opted for the Tassimo. It also has a smaller footprint than the Keurig and I think has a slightly better, more sophisticated look about it. To be honest, the smaller footprint was a big selling point for me. However, I didn’t love the coffee I sampled that day and that bothered me.

So, after much debate about which machine to go with, I decided to opt for the Keurig and I must say, I love it! I haven’t consumed this much coffee ever, and I look forward to every cup. The coffee selection is tremendous. I also just happen to like the brands of coffee that are made for the Keurig machine better than the brands made for the Tassimo. To date, my favorite varieties are: Donut Shop by Coffee People, Dark Magic® Decaf Extra Bold by Green Mountain Coffee, Celestial Seasonings English Breakfast Black Tea (I was very skeptical of this one, but I LOVE it!) and….wait for it…Green Mountain Coffee® Half-Calf!!! That’s right, they make half-caf pods, which means the machine truly answers all of my coffee prayers.

We've had the machine since Christmas Eve, thanks to my mom asking me exactly what I wanted this year (I did my research!). I keep telling her that I think this is my favorite Christmas present ever. I love the machine, I love the pods, I love the coffee and the lack of clean-up. I love that I can make a cup of decaf after putting my daughter to sleep and it takes a mere 30 seconds. I just looooooove this machine. I may just have to host a BYOP (Bring Your Own Pod) party one of these days.

Thanks again, Bed, Bath & Beyond, for your holiday demos!