SingleServeCoffee.com Forums

[atugruls]

Hi everbody,

I am almost as new to world of coffee as I am new to singleservecoffee.com forums. My relation with coffee was all about starbucks visits or making turkish coffee at home, either of them happened to be once or twice in a week.

It all started about 3 weeks ago, when I bought a tchibo / cafissimo, on an occasional time-killing visit to the mall.

http://www.tchibo.de/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/de/-/EUR/TdTchBrowseCatalog-Start?CategoryName=cafissimo&phase=kaffee

when I saw this machine in tchibo store, I was totally ignorant of "pod coffee" or "single serve coffee" concepts. so you can imagine my excitement as I saw this machine as a total new invention.

with the machine, I also bought all the available variety of pods at the store, the cream, espresso, privat, decaf and regular.

after tasting all varieties in hand, I decided to search the net for alternative pods. thats when I discovered the big world of single serve coffee's, coffee pods, machines etc. I was a bit dissappointed at first, seeing the alternatives, however now I think i am happy to discover them. since I did not spent really big money on cafissimo (140 eur), I can dump it any time for a better machine.

I could not find any decent reviews of this german make. there is no mention of this brand in US sites at all. guess its never been sold in the states.

there are 3 buttons; blue, yellow and black. these are also the colors of the pods. if you insert a blue pod(regular coffees mainly), you need to press blue button for brewing. yellow button for yellow pods (only coffee cream available for now). black button for espresso. it takes approx. 1-2 minutes to heat up and around 40 secs to brew the coffee. pretty fast, I guess. the steam wand also works ok. makes hot milk and foam fast and effectively.


the machine is more complicated than it looks. you see only 3 buttons though there are many combination of these buttons for; releasing pressure, adjusting water amount etc etc. those buttons are seperately illuminated and every combination of them also means something else.

the water reservoir has a capacity of 1,5 L, it should be making 10 cups of coffee according to the manual however, the steam wand uses too much water, and I can merely make 6-7 cups of coffee everytime I fill the reservoir.

with a little knowledge of myself, I can say that the machine makes good lattes and capuccinos, however the regular coffee was not tasteful as the senseo coffee I had once. espresso is also ok, cafissimo's max pressure is 15 bar, I think just enough for a decent espresso.

in overall, I am satisfied with the machine for now. its biggest problem, apperantly, is the very limited choice of pods. for now there are only 6 options. 3 coffee's, 1 espresso, 2 decafs, 1 cream. All tchibo brand. I am amazed with the tons of different K-cups or T-discs, keurig and tassimo offers.

[wgm]

Hi atugruls - welcome to the forum - interesting machine...

[NDJollyMon]

a few????
_________________
Pete (Jolly) -
Forum Moderator
____________
Keurig: B130 ~ (2) B-50's ~ (1) B-60 SE
Cuisinart SS-1
2-Handpresso Wild/Handpresso DomePod (Portable Espresso)
1-Fresh Roast Plus 8 Coffee Roaster
GSI JavaDrip
Bodum French Press

[atugruls]

guess I am lost a bit here.. or its my english.. when i was saying "a few pods" I was referring to the capsules available for cafissimo. and if you check the web site in my first post, you will see that there are only 6 different coffees offered with cafissimo.

[atugruls]

btw - thanks for the detailed post, wgm.

[wgm]

not your english..

You were just saying you were new to the SSC world...

So I was only pointing out that as you said... one of the weak points of the cafissimo machine is only 6 kinds of pods

and saying... if you ever choose to upgrade to a "standard" size SSC pod machine that uses the generic size pods, you would have lots of choices & at a great value/cost per pod

I got into SSC with a senseo & then upgraded my SSC machine too.

[NDJollyMon]

I can't read German very well....but I can understand pictures.
Looks like another company to get sued by Keurig to me...

Welcome to the group. Looks like an interesting machine anyway.
_________________
Pete (Jolly) -
Forum Moderator
____________
Keurig: B130 ~ (2) B-50's ~ (1) B-60 SE
Cuisinart SS-1
2-Handpresso Wild/Handpresso DomePod (Portable Espresso)
1-Fresh Roast Plus 8 Coffee Roaster
GSI JavaDrip
Bodum French Press

[Justbcaws]

It's a neat looking machine. Is any one of those a video demo. Doesn't Keurig eventually have to let people copy them?

[atugruls]

the only video I could find about it is this commercial;

http://www.cafissimo.de/media/html/video01_hi.html

couple of more things about tchibo though some are not directly releated with coffee, you may find them interesting.

tchibo actually stands as the name of the stores, products called TCM (tchibo certified merchandise) and they make nearly everything from pyjamas to mp3 players, from saucepans to toy robots etc. sounds very unprofessional for 21st century right ? but, they are not the shop around the corner. this chain of stores has an income of 5 billion euros annually.
they have different concepts for every 2 weeks, which means every 2 weeks half of the products on the shelves (the best sellers remains) replaced with different and new ones.

about coffee, they are the biggest retailer in Germany and also they are listed as the 5th biggest coffee retailer in the world.

this fact really hit me because what i understand from your replies and a quick search on the net, is that, this brand does not exists in US market. how come a brand can become the 5th biggest coffee retailer without being present in the biggest coffee market??

[Justbcaws]

They may be paired with an American company, hard to say. For some the frother would be a definate plus to the machine.

Well it could be selfproclaimed that they are the biggest seller, but even here there are things that are regional, and from one end of the US has no idea. I've lived in ND, Ut, Wy, and I'm oblivious to stuff in the east.

[atugruls]

some more information;

i find out that this machine is actually a produce of gagglia. check out the link

http://www.gaggia.com/macchine-da-caffe.asp?_96_K111d-Caffitaly

they are nearly identical.

for my luck, i also found out that, there is a "caffitaly system" in which couple of coffee makers (ecaffe, coffee orange, caffe cagliari, caffe chicco doro) are producing competible capsules for gaggia & tchibo. so i am not restricted to tchibo capsules totally. however, all these brands are offering more or less the same variety with tchibo; one regular coffee, one decaf, one espresso and one cream. there are no hot chocolates or teas. even the coffees look like completely standard (100% arabica) , no suprising blends, aromas, flavors etc.

[Justbcaws]

Maybe in time there will be a better variety. I personally have been disappointed with the teas I've tried so far. Flavored coffees are pretty good tho, and a great variety of coffee. So did you see if they were interchangable with keurig? I know pictures are pretty deceiving so the size is hard to tell.

[darrylr]