Foodie Swellness: Nespresso VertuoLine

September 15, 2014

Despite a few attempts to improve my sleep habits (you may recall that I wrote about my night-owl ways for Glow magazine last year), I haven’t been able to get into a routine with a solid seven hours of sleep with a consistent wake-up time. So I often wake up tired, and most mornings I start with a cup of coffee to help me perk up a little.

And about a month ago, I was given a Nespresso VertuoLine from the fine folks at Nespresso and my mornings have gotten way more swell. I actually wake up and look forward to using my new kitchen toy: popping that capsule into the machine, and within 90 to 105 seconds (yes, it’s that fast) sipping a delicious large coffee with that delicious, frothy crema. I even love how opening the machine causes the used capsule to automatically discard itself into the handy receptacle on the right side of the machine (a feature I’d initially deemed silly, but now I enjoy hearing the little rattle and thump as it conveniently takes care of discarding itself).

The machine’s Centrifusion technology allows it to brew both large-cup and espressos — I usually opt for large-cup but occasionally make espressos, too. Using the bar code, the machine scans the code to determine such things such as temperature, cup size and the time the water is in contact with the coffee.

The resulting coffee is just so good. Having had coffees from other types of single-serve coffee machines at salons and friend’s homes, I was skeptical — I found they almost always tasted watery and weak (unless the machine was a very fancy, and yes, expensive). But the Nespresso Vertuoline (it retails for $299 btw) makes coffee that is rich and flavourful and, yes, there’s that crema. If you talk to anyone who owns a Nespresso, I think you’ll find that they call it a gamechanger and I now see what they mean. (For me, the only downside is that I find the coffee isn’t that hot; I’ve resolved that by drinking my coffee much more quickly, haha, problem solved.) When I’m feeling motivated, I even warm up frothy milk for my coffee, using this trick for making milk foam  without a frother or machine from thekitchn. Drinking my coffee has become a lovely ritual, a pleasure rather than just getting some caffeine into my body.

A warning to coffee lovers who are considering a Nespresso machine: You may find yourself drinking more coffee since you’ll fall in love with coffee even more so. I try to stick to one a day as I don’t want to up my caffeine intake…but have found myself having  more than one occasionally. But at least it’s affordable (a sleeve of Nespresso capsules rings in at $9.50, so less than $1 a cup).

Oh, and if you prefer iced coffee, be sure to try this recipe for an Iceberg Latte. So yum.

 

Filed under: Foodie Swellness

Tags: caffeine, coffee, foodie, latte, Nespresso, nespresso review, nespresso vertuoline, thekitchn