Access to the single cup coffee maker has introduced commercial grade coffee making to our home at a portion of the cost of lots of household espresso makers. Such coffee machines empower anyone to make one cup of coffee that can rival those prepared with regular espresso coffee makers without expert instruction, with far less mess and bother, at a budget friendly price also.

While standard espresso makers need you to pack by hand a filter "holder" with grinded coffee, the single cup maker uses coffee that is pre-ground, packed in enclosed "pods" (typically of proprietary design) to create a brew of coffee of consistent flavor and strength. There are a lot of different coffee pod methods on the market, and most single cup machines are confined to utilizing just one particular pod system. Some systems, including the Tassimo Hot Drink Method, also allow for other hot beverages to be produced too, with suitable pods readily obtainable for hot cocoa, tea and so forth.

While generally less costly to purchase than traditional espresso machines, single cup coffee makers have higher ongoing costs. Without any exception the "expense per cup" for pod-based methods is greater than that of coffee made from loose grinded coffee. Nonetheless, in spite of a greater price per cup, the financial savings in comparison to cafe shop take-aways is massive - so much so that the single cup coffee maker is ever more popular in workplaces where staff may normally spend $3 each on a daily basis on one take-out coffee. Throughout a year the cost savings made from using a single serve machine on the job truly tally up, and only go up with each worker that makes use of the premises. For many a single cup coffee maker offers an appropriate compromise between high quality coffee, convenience and cost.

In spite of their popularity singe serve coffee makers are not appropriate for everyone. For lots of people most of the appeal of freshly-made coffee is the routine and ritual of grinding down fresh beans and manually operating a machine. While handy, pod-based single cup coffee makers don't allow for much in the form of manual "tweaks" to the coffee brewing process, something that a few coffee buffs may very well miss.

With that said, even though coffee aficionados reason that pod-centered single cup coffee machines produce a lesser result to a conventional espresso machine controlled by a skilled pro, the fact is that a lot of coffee outlet stores do not coach personnel to the degree where it is possible to distinguish between a coffee bought at a coffee shop and one produced by a pod-dependent machine.

Certain criticism has been directed at some pod coffee systems because they create a whole lot more waste packaging than standard alternatives. Some undoubtedly make use of biodegradable paper-based pods, but others actually make use of hard plastic capsules that are not-recyclable. For those who are eco-conscious then, the validation of a single cup coffee maker may be hard to argue, however, some cite less water boiling as a compensation because less electric power it utilized.