The new Nespresso Monsoon Malabar is available to try. It’s an Indian coffee of a fairly high (8) intensity that is ideally enjoyed as an espresso. Time to head on down to the Nespresso shop and grab some to try.
Will report back once have had a chance to sip on some.
Good news comes in three?
1. Checkers have added two new flavours to their Foreign Ground nespresso compatible capsule range.
2. The newer flavours have a newly designed capsule that works in the newer u milk machines
3. They are on special for just R29.99 for a pack of ten, and they actually taste quite decent.
I have two coffee machines. The Nespresso CitiZ (with milk) and a Verona Espresso Caffe Lux machine
Over the past two years or so since I got the first Nespresso machine I have tried out various Nespresso compatible pods. These come with brand names such as :
Now all of these different brands have worked (almost) perfectly across both of the machines I have. The very first Cafe Luxe pods I had sometimes didn’t pierce properly and a little bit of water would come out before the coffee, but it didn’t affect the flavour of the coffee. The did an upgrade which seemed to mostly fix the problem, but the pods remain a rather thick plastic container.
A few weeks back I had a reader complaining that the Caffe Luxe pods didn’t work at all in his machine. I hadn’t had that problem before and replied as much. I didn’t hear back from the individual.
Tonight I heard from another friend that there is definitely a problem. She bought a Nespresso U milk machine. It works quite nicely, makes your coffee then spits the pod out into its little basket without you having to “eject” it. When trying with the Mycoffee pods though, it huffs and puffs and a very little bit of water comes through but no coffee. Then it ejects the pod with no coffee having been produced. On examining the used pod it can be seen that the machine is having trouble piercing the plastic pod and therefore is unable to pump the water through the pod to brew the coffee. A further test with a Foreign Ground pod produced the same result.
Now a number of the local manufacturers seem to use the same plastic pods (numbers 1 to 5 on the list above). that somewhat limits your options in terms of which coffee pods you can buy. Caffe Luxe are quite adamant on their website and in their adverts that their pods work on all machines (they even expressly name the newer generation machines), so it seems more tested is going to be needed on their pods.
I have tested out some of the newer Caffe Luxe (Option 1) “Origins” range and confirmed they work just fine. The “new compatible” Caffe Luxe capsules seem to work sometimes (but not all).
Foreign Ground (Option 5) have introduced two new flavours, which use a new pod design, which work just fine. See post here.
Options 6 and 7 seem to be imported (from Italy) and also use plastic pods, but a very different much thinner plastic. Further testing was done and there is no problem here. The Caffe Impresso capsules have a series of small holes pre-pressed into the back of the capsules. Water flows through here a little slowly at times if further holes aren’t punctured but this doesn’t affect the final outcome of a great cup of coffee.
This is incompatibility of “compatible” capsules is bit of a pain as one of the benefits of using the Nespresso system over some of the others was that there seemed to be a growing range of alternate (and cheaper) pods that could buy for daily use. If you have come across other sources of compatible pods, and have any further test results as to which machines they may work in please do share your experiences.
I received an SMS from Nespresso the other day to say they are currently located at 254 Lilian Ngoyi Road (formerly Windermere road). Their new phone number is 031-303 3374.
Having struggled in the past to find them, and the fact the address and number is not listed on www.nespresso.co.za nor does it come up on a Google search, this may be useful to some of you looking for them.
Update : So as you drive up Windermere road, their shop is a converted house on the right hand side, you can see the palms outside. As you get closer you can see the sign on the road facing part of the building to the left of the palms. At this point you want to be slowing down already as they have off-street parking. and it is easy to miss. The parking is right up against the building, and the solid island does stop so you can turn right into the parking. The security guard will have to open the boom for you.
While you are here, if you are interested in some other Nespresso compatible pods (depending on your machine) take a look at this post.
After one of our readers complained about the Caffelux capsules, the good folk over at luxurycoffee.co.za stepped in and offered to send her some capsules. At the same time they noticed my previous blog post on their coffee still showed the old branding and product. Since the product had been updated with new branding, capsules design improvements and coffee they very kindly offered to send me some of the new coffee to try, which I gladly accepted.
Below you can see the new whiter, lighter branded boxes of the five flavours.
The 5 flavours