The original premise of the Tassimo single server brewer was to bring barrister style quality coffee (and other hot) drinks into your kitchen. Because I was spending a small fortune at my local Starbucks, I was happy to give this a try. It would certainly save time in traffic as I headed to Starbucks and fought traffic. The litmus test would be to see if the brew even measured up, and was I saving any money.
My Starbucks fix cost me an average of $25.00 a week. I rarely got their regular brewed coffee because it was much too strong for me; I generally settled for a skinny grande latte which not only gave me my caffeine fix, but gave me my calcium requirement for the day as well.
As I got what I thought might be my final latte, I headed further down the street to Bed Bath and Beyond to get my Tassimo and my first package of Latte “disks. One of the things I immediately liked about the Tassimo is that I no longer needed to keep espresso coffee on hand. To use the Tassimo, simply place a disk, or cup, of your beverage choice into the machine, wait for the water to heat up, and press “start”. Put your cup under the spout and -presto – out comes your beverage.
My first problem was that the “beverage” was tiny. The latte I tried to make actually was the size of an espresso. You do have the option of pressing a button that tells the machine to keep “pouring” and you can serve yourself as much as your cup will hold. However, by skewing the water and coffee measured in the disk you end up with a less than desirable beverage.
Also, for the latte, you need to place a milk disk into the machine before you’re done. Once your coffee has brewed into the cup, now comes the steamed milk and froth. You hope. It sputters, it boils, it makes all the right sounds…it just doesn’t turn into foam and froth. After it’s “done”, this disk is still half full! And the coffee is still dark with only a tiny hint of milk and foam.
A package of this latte mix is about $10. It includes enough to make five lattes at of course $2.00 a piece. My issue is that, yes, it’s cheaper than a tall latte at Starbucks, but is it as good? No! Not even close!
Once I realized the Tassimo couldn’t make a decent latte, I went back for a package of regular coffee disks, and I even purchased the Starbucks disks. I returned home and brewed a much needed “regular” cup of coffee.
Disappointment yet again. I got another tiny cup of coffee – 3 oz! Who drinks 3 oz. of coffee? I know – I can press that special button to tell it to keep brewing, but it always resulted in very poor results. The coffee is bitter. If I chose to have it brew longer to keep filling my cup, I ended up with watered down bitter coffee. Extra water doesn’t make a better cup of coffee – it just makes a bigger bad cup of coffee.
Yes, each cup of coffee is cheaper than Starbucks, but as they say – you get what you pay for. I used this for two weeks and gave it away. I then ran to Starbucks and a double shot latte. I was in withdrawal!
