Pod machines in a nutshell

Nespresso explained

What’s the deal with pods?

The Nespresso pods and others like it are simple aluminium pods filled with finely ground coffee and sealed with a foil lid, the coffee is usually ground similar to that of espresso grind size as a high surface area is needed for the extraction to take place in such a short time.

How these machines work

There are two main types of pod machines, one uses dome capsules from Nespresso specifically, and the other is using conical pods that can be used in both Nespresso and other branded machines.

Dome pod machines

These pods are super cool as when inserted into the machine, the barcode is scanned (the bit around the rim of the pod) and from that the machine knows what brew ratio to use for that pod.

Then the pod is pierced through the foil in the centre and in smaller holes around the edge, water is then shot into the larger centre hole while the pod is span at around 7,000 RPM. This spinning causes the water to be pushed through the coffee evenly via centrifugal force, the liquid espresso then leaves the pod through the smaller holes and into your cup via the spout.

Conical pod machines

These pods are fairly universal now as this shape is used by many different companies and roasteries. They are much less cool than the dome ones as they don’t spin super fast, but instead are pierced through the non foil part (the nib at the top). Water is then pumped in and builds up pressure in the pod until the foil breaks and allows the espresso to pour out the spout and into your cup.

The Machines

In general these aren’t super accurate machines as they need to be fast and so have opted to heat up fast rather than to a good temperature for coffee extraction but overall these machines work best with dark roasted coffees and make espresso incredibly fast, sometime as short as 30 seconds from completely off to coffee in your cup so the highest quality isn’t always the biggest concern.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s info dump and have a great week with some even better coffees!