Speciality Coffee Pods
Looking for our coffee capsules? If so head straight over to the Coffee Pod section
Nespresso has completely transformed the way many of us make coffee at home. If pressed for time, our options were limited and most people became accustomed to using instant coffee to get a quick fix. There is no doubt that spending time making a filter coffee or Aeropress is very rewarding, but sometimes you need something straightforward and without compromise. Either way, our options were surprisingly limited.
Making great coffee at home using speciality beans requires time, effort and good equipment. Good coffee grinders and brewing equipment can easily cost well over £150 which is out of the reach of many people looking for good but convenient coffee. A great solution to this is to invest in a Nespresso compatible capsule machine as these are often very affordable, heat up quickly, and brew some delicious coffee. Coffee capsules were designed to bridge the gap between instant coffee and freshly made filter or espresso coffee.
Why coffee capsules?
Unlike other forms of quick or instant coffee, capsules still maintain the convenience of having a cup whenever you want. The water heats very quickly in a Nespresso machine, it reaches the right temperature to make a great cup of coffee, and there's very little to clean. Coffee capsules are super convenient and the aluminium type tend to have a long shelf life. This is because the coffee can be roasted, ground, rested to degas, and packaged using nitrogen flushing, removing almost all the oxygen from inside the capsules. We've tested pods over 2 years old and they still retain most of the positive tasting notes!
However, capsules used to have a fairly bad reputation in the coffee world. This is because they typically contained over-roasted coffee that couldn't match the quality of a great filter coffee with carefully-ground beans or even a pour-over. Most capsules companies would use coffee that wasn't traceable and purchased at a low price. This has a significant negative effect on the flavour of the coffee that many people thought to be the fault of the equipment. In fact the opposite is true! Most Nespresso compatible machines can produce excellent results, and the brewing method can achieve very efficient extractions. We'd still recommend avoiding the budget machines. Spend a bit extra and invest in the Opal One, this machine is designed to get the best out of our capsules.
The trick is to make sure you buy capsules that contain speciality grade coffee that has been correctly roasted and ground for capsules.
Horsham's speciality coffee pods
Our speciality coffee pods are a bit different to those sold by most speciality coffee roasters. We've chosen to produce ours using the coffees that we trade directly with producers in Rwanda and Costa Rica. Over time we might add some other origins but our aim will always be to produce these using coffees with a unique and personal story.
We work directly with the coffee producers, which gives us full knowledge of prices paid and you can find this data in our transparency report. This means you get great-tasting coffee from a reliable source that you can trust. This is a level of detail and quality that you rarely get with other conventional methods of coffee making.
The rise of speciality coffee capsules
Many people have started to realise that great coffee, much like wine, can offer a completely different experience when you start experimenting with high-end stuff. Coffee as most people know it is just a black and bitter brew, but when you start preparing coffee correctly and using the right equipment, you can extract some amazing flavours from the beans. Some coffees showcase bright, juicy, fruity tasting notes while others might have a rich body with chocolate notes.
Brewing speciality coffee can produce fantastic results if you take the time to weight your coffee and water and use a timer to achieve a constant brew. The problem with brewing using ground or whole bean coffee is that the user can very easily get it wrong! Under or over extraction can produce coffee that is sour or bitter and very dissapointing.
This is why roasters and producers have turned to speciality coffee pods as a "best of both worlds" approach. You get the same delicious coffee with the amazing tasting notes that you'd expect from speciality coffee, but they come in convenient capsules that you can place into your Nespresso and then receive a great coffee in mere minutes. With these types of machines, there is very little that the user can control, which means almost nothing to go wrong! The Opal One features three buttons that can be programmed to dose different amounts of water. You can either leave these on the preset amounts or easily re-program these to taste.
As more people learn about speciality coffee and start realising just how much flavour is packed into a great cup of coffee, they're going to start looking for convenient ways to replicate those same flavours at home. Since many casual coffee drinkers already have a Nespresso machine at home, it's simply a case of ordering some speciality coffee pods and then placing them into their machine. Others might also find it daunting to make their own coffee, especially when there are so many factors that can negatively impact the flavour. Our speciality coffee capsules are perfect for anyone looking to upgrade from instant coffee to something much nicer!
Even for enthusiasts that already have a great grinder, lots of high-quality beans, and the setup to make excellent coffee, having the convenience of a coffee capsule is sometimes too good to pass up. If you just want a great cup of coffee in the morning or after a long day at work, then all you need to do is to warm up your machine and get brewing!
Own a Nespresso machine? Try our speciality coffee pods today!
Speciality coffee capsules are a fantastic way for people to try out speciality coffee. It's a completely different experience from the coffee you might normally make, especially if you usually use instant coffee or off-the-shelf supermarket pods.
