Nespresso

I hate to admit it, but Nespresso impresses me.

I have one that I’ve used on and off for the past 20 years. I bought it for an office, and used it every day for six years. I wasn’t the only person who used it, either – I had a “help yourself” sign on the pod tree. We had a proper, halfway decent coffee machine in the break room, so it wasn’t like I was going broke buying pods.

I mostly made coffee at home either in the espresso maker or via whatever coffee making process I was using at the time, but the Nespresso machine certainly did full duty.

Then I left that company and the Nespresso went into storage for a few years; I’d bring it out when we had people staying at the house, because it was easy and could make a variety of coffee – decaf, dark, light (well, as light as Nespresso pods get, which isn’t very, as a rule). But it was mostly on a shelf.

Recently, we relocated and all my coffee and espresso making paraphanalia is in storage; we simply don’t have enough room at the new house for a dedicated coffee station, and so the Nespresso is back out on the counter making a half dozen (short) cups of coffee a day. What I’ve become aware of both how not-bad the coffee is, as a rule, but also that that little machine with it’s pump and heater just keeps chugging along after all these years. It’s well-designed, looks good, and works. For a modern machine with moving parts, this is pretty remarkable.

I don’t know how durable the new models are, but I give props to Nespresso: they knew how to make a good coffee machine.