Real Simple tests Single Serve Coffee Makers

Pod coffee makers are more popular now than ever. They offer convenience, but the quality of the coffee offered with them is higher than it has ever been, making them more appealing to coffee lovers as well as convenience seekers. In the latest issue of Real Simple magazine, they asked the owner of a popular NYC cafe to test 29 models and see how they performed. Then, they narrowed the selection down to just five winners.

• Best for a full house: Keurig Special Edition Brewing System (which I have), which boasts one of the largest selections of coffee and the largest reservoir (48 oz), so you can brew multiple cups easily.
• Best Budget: Mr Coffee Single Serve, which is only able to brew one cup at a time, but is inexpensive and still offers many coffee options.
• Best for Small Spaces: Nespresso Pixie, which features a beautiful and sleek design and brews espresso, for those seeking a richer coffee. The coffee selection is limited, but high quality
• Best All Around: Nescafe Dolce Gusto Genio took this category for being affordable, easy to use and offering the flexibility of brewing a few cups at a time. It’s cute, but the coffee selection is limited.
• Best Espresso: De’Longhi Pump Espresso and Cappuccino Maker EC279 brews quality espresso at the touch of a button, and even has a milk steamer so you can turn your shot into a latte. It’s very affordable compared to larger espresso machines, easy to use and offers a big espresso selection.

Trader Joe’s Sugar, Chocolate and Coffee Bean Grinder, reviewed

As much as I enjoy a good cup of black coffee, I also love topping a cup of coffee or a shot of espresso off with a dollop of steamed milk or whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon or cocoa powder to add a little extra flavor and just generally dress up the drink. It is one of those little touches that somehow makes the drink seem fancier and me feel like slowing down to enjoy it – as I would do at a coffee shop, but might not necessarily do at home. It was clear that the new Trader Joe’s Sugar, Chocolate and Coffee Bean Grinder is designed to make it easy to add this sort of coffee shop flare to your coffee drinks at home. The grinder looks like a pepper mill, but is filled with white and brown sugar, chocolate and coffee beans. A few twists of the cap and you have a sweet sprinkling on top of your drink! The mix is great, and because it comes out of a pepper grinder, everything has a very coarse texture to it, so you get both an attractive look and a lot of flavor from just a small amount of this mix. The sugar crystals are crunchy, the coffee is subtle and the chocolate just leaves a hint of richness on your tongue as it melts. I’m keeping mine by the coffee maker.

TJ’s also recommends putting this on buttered toast, ice cream or other desserts. I can vouch for how delicious it is on top of buttered toast, and I’ll definitely be up for experimenting with it on other desserts that need a little spike of coffee, chocolate and sugar to dress them up.

Tea Bag Tea Infuser

A tea bag is a disposable bag that is meant to make it easy and convenient to infuse your hot water with the tea of your choosing. It is a convenience item, and over the years bagged tea has picked up a reputation for not being as good, as fresh or having as clear a flavor as loose leaf tea. This isn’t true of all brands, of course, and it really has very little to do with the tea bag itself. The bag is still a great way of easily infusing your tea. That said, you’ll want a high quality bag, and while you can find high quality paper tea bags, the Tea Bag Tea Infuser is definitely a step up from most designs. Designed to look just like a regular tea bag, this stainless infuser sits upright in your glass on its silicone base and can be lifted with its silicone tab when your tea is ready. It isn’t disposable, but it brews any loose leaf tea with ease and it is easy to clean. And even if you’re not the type of tea drinker that typically uses bagged tea, you have to admit that this particular “bag” is definitely a cut above the rest.

Capresso Froth Pro

Hot, steamed milk is always a nice addition to a cup of coffee even if you’re not setting out to make a specialty drink with it. But when you’re brewing drip coffee, or any other type of coffee that doesn’t come straight from a high powered espresso machine, steamed milk is usually not an option because the machine doesn’t come with any kind of attachment to make it easy to make! Fortunately, there are all kinds of neat gadgets out there that will make it easy and convenient to get steamed milk at the drop of a hat – and your coffee drinking experiences will probably be the better for it.

The Capresso Froth Pro is a good example of this. This machine delivers enough steamed milk for a couple of drinks in a small pitcher that actually looks a lot like a coffee mug itself. It will froth or steam and it works for both hot and cold milk (or soy/other nondairy milks, per the manufacturer). Perhaps the best part is that the gadget has a very small footprint and a nice, tight lid on it. This means that you can park it on your desk at work and be enjoying your own lattes without treking down the street to a more expensive coffee shop when you want one. You’re not going to be able to make latte art with this, but you’ll still get a creamier cup of coffee.

Coffee Joulies

Insulated cups are the standard for keeping your hot drinks hot and you cold drinks cold. They generally work very well, letting you sip your caffeinated drinks at your desk all morning without forcing you to jump up to reheat. But even insulated mugs don’t keep your drinks at the same perfect temperature for hours. Hot drinks gradually lose their edge as they sit and, if you’re like most people, you’ll eventually head to the pot to top off your coffee. That is where Coffee Joulies come in. This idea was posted as a project on Kickstarter, a food-safe “thermodynamic heat storage device” that looks like a coffee bean. Pop one of these into your mug and it will bring it down to a drinkable temperature 3x faster than usual and will keep it there 2x as long. These work particularly well when they’re used in conjunction with an insulated mug, as you get the benefits of both heat-saving devices. Of course, if you’re an espresso drinker you’re not going to really reap the benefits of this little bean, but if you like to sip your tea or coffee, this is one little gadget worth adding to your collection.