• "Great Machine ... with the Right Pods"

Review excerpt:

I recently had to replace my dear Cuisinart Grind & Brew. To my taste, it made about the best coffee ever. The tradeoff for the great coffee was a clean-up job involving the scrubbing and drying of several parts of the coffee maker. In my search for a replacement, I decided to see if I could find something that would make equally good coffee, but be less of a pain to clean.

Senseo seemed to meet my needs. Many of the negative reviews of both the Cuisinart and the Senseo were that the coffee wasn't strong enough. I figured that since I like the Cuisinart coffee, the Senseo should be just fine. The coffee pods would greatly reduce preparation and clean-up time.

I followed the instructions for flushing and cleaning the Senseo, and prepared my first cup. WOW -- it was TERRIBLE! But that was with two decaf pods. The next morning, I tried it with one dark roast and one decaf, and it was still pretty undrinkable. I've never had coffee that managed to be too weak and bitter simultaneously, but the Senseo branded pods by Douwe Egberts managed to accomplish that trick!

I spent much of that morning looking for suggestions on the Internet, and ordered pods from easypods.co.uk and alohaislandcoffee.com. While we waited for the new pods to arrive, my husband and I continued to try different mixes of Senseo pods, but couldn't find an acceptable combination.

We were, however, totally sold on the convenience of the Senseo machine. We haven't had too much trouble with the smaller carafe; we make two mugs of coffee, and put another pot of water on to heat while we drink them. The coffee pods probably cost about $1 more a day to use than regular coffee, but the ease of use and clean-up is worth it to us. The only thing I don't like about the machine is that my commuter mug is too tall to fit under the spouts, even with the drip tray removed. I put a measuring cup under the spout to catch the coffee and pour it easily into the travel cup.

Finally, the new pods arrived -- and they did the trick. We get hot, delicious coffee. In fact, we probably drink more coffee now than we used to; we'll brew up a couple of cups of after-dinner decaf, which we never would have done with the old machine.

If you're sold on the concept of Senseo, but worried about the taste of the coffee, do yourself a favor and use non-Senseo pods from the beginning.

PROS: Super-simple preparation and clean-up; delicious coffee, if you order pods that are not the Senseo brand.

CONS: The pods made for the machine make terrible tasting coffee; not enough clearance under the spouts.

(5 Stars)

Relevancy: 98% (out of 72 total votes) thought this review was helpful.

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