Introduction to Single Serve Coffee Machines

Single serve coffee makers, as the name hints, are coffee machines that are built to brew one cup of coffee at the time. They are growing in popularity and for a good reasons: quick, easy to use and you get exactly one cup of coffee that you need – no more no less (well, actually some machines are capable of making two cups). Short brewing time is definitely one of the big benefits with these devices. There’s also lot less cleaning, since many of them are capable of brewing straight to the cup. Machines themselves are often rather small and can be placed somewhere regular machines maybe wouldn’t fit.

In principle there are two kinds of machines: the ones that use regular ground coffee via filter system and ones that use special coffee pods. The first kind are actually not that different from conventional machines, except for the fact that they brew one cup instead of a whole pot. Pod based makers are little bit different in their working system (and in many cases by the looks also). They are using pre-packaged coffee pods which you place into the machine. These pods are sold in many different varieties, flavors and types of roast. They are also individually sealed, so they stay fresh longer than the regular bag of ground coffee.

When it comes to pod machines, there is one thing in particular, that you need to pay attention to – compatibility. There is no industry standard for single serve coffee pods. Many machines are still closed systems, which means that you can only use pods that are produced by the same company that made the machine. On the other end of the single serve coffee makers spectrum are the ones that have many compatible pods available from a wide range of different producers. These are called the open system machines. Since this gives you much wider choice in quality and taste, this is one of the options to go for.

Third choice, actually the combination of the first two, are the machines that support both options – filter and pod, which might give you a little bit more flexibility. However, in the long run you’re probably going to settle for either pods or ground coffee, so you should ask yourself, do you really need a machine that supports both.

Additionally there are available manual single serve devices like french presses in the size of one cup and also espresso devices like Handpresso Wild that we covered recently in our blog.

To sum it up, if you find yourself often making coffee just for one or two cups and you want your coffee fast, single serve coffee makers are definitely the way to go.

Updated: to see some examples, read the post: 5 popular single serve coffee makers.

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