Thursday, April 16th, 2009...7:23 pm
Crappy Coffee Maker Senseo Recalled
Years ago I was sent a Senseo Coffee Maker to review for INeedCoffee. I really didn’t want to do an actual review, but I thought I could create an informative tutorial. The coffee was so horrifically bad, I ended up trashing it. In the article Senseo Coffee Brewing, I even go into how I tried to sew together my own pods using fresh home roasted coffee.
I should have given up here, but I didn’t. I grabbed a pair of scissors and performed surgery on one of the Senseo pods. I removed all the stale tasteless coffee from 1 pod and replaced it with some Ethiopian Sidamo that I had roasted 2 days ago. Then I brewed again. Most of the bitterness was gone, but the coffee was still too weak to drink.
I received hate email from that article. It was the only brewing article I ever wrote that inspired readers to send me angry feedback. I learned that some people really like their Senseo. We live in a sick world. Anyway, I stand behind my words. It only makes sense to me that such an awful coffee brewer would have to be recalled for safety reasons. My only surprise is that the safety reasons have nothing to do with taste. From the Fortune article Philips recalls defective Senseo coffee makers:
…a heavy buildup of chalk in combination with a sudden power surge could cause the machine’s internal boiler to burst and spill hot water.
If you are a fan of Senseo stale pod and chalk coffee, feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments. I’ll be sipping a french pressed brewed single origin from Herkimer Coffee.
Vile beverage masquerading as “coffee”.
Hat tip Caffination #327
Sources:
Senseo Coffee Brewing – Original tutorial on INeedCoffee.
Philips recalls defective Senseo coffee makers – Fortune Magazine story from April 14, 2009.
Senseo Revisited – The follow up article on INeedCoffee
8 Comments
April 17th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I think the “chalk” they are talking about is not from the coffee but from city-supplied hard water (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water) in some parts of the country that people could use to brew their coffee. The hard water chalk deposits can also cause hot water heaters to burst if the “scaling” is not monitored.
BTW, I have known a number of people who really enjoy Senseo coffee so it is a matter of preference.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Caffination #327 covered that the chalk is from the minerals in the water. I hope I didn’t imply otherwise.
Rule #1 with coffee is if you don’t like the taste of water by itself, it will not make a good cup of coffee no matter how good the beans are. Even the Senseo consumers shouldn’t be putting hard water into their machine. But then again they aren’t coffee connoisseurs or they wouldn’t own a Senseo.
The name of the site is Coffee Hero. I consider Senseo to be a villain.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Are you sure that the name should not be “Coffee Snob”, MAS?
April 17th, 2009 at 10:26 am
The HERO part gives the website the mission to RESCUE those have succumbed to coffee evil.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:08 am
I hated the Senseo machine until I had to use it a few times at work to stay awake. I found that you also can make a perfect cup of tea, just by using the tea bags in the machine (no need to steep), comes out perfectly (you can buy just normal tea pods from Tetley that work in the system). As for the coffee, I’ve gotten used to it and know that if you want strong coffee, you have to use TWO of the dark roast pods in the deep tray…then you can get your Burnt Starbucks type coffee….yet it is actually much better. My sisters had it and I made sure it had the two pods and they said it was perfect and they’re total coffee snobs.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:14 am
The biggest problem with SENSEO is that pod coffee by its very nature is stale. Double pods solves the weakness, but not the staleness. Coffee should be ground just prior to brewing.
To me the french press or Aeropress is so easy that I don’t understand these single serve pod machines.
May 27th, 2009 at 9:34 am
I have the Senseo – use soft water instead of hard water to prevent the chalk buildup, and as for the coffee problem…
Buy Melitta Filterpads! They are fill-it-yourself pods so you can put whatever fancy schmancy single origin coffee you want it there. I buy beans of my favorite type of coffee, grind them myself, and make the pods in weekly batches. That way, the coffee isn’t stale, and it’s exactly what I want.
I don’t really care for the Senseo brand coffee pods.
May 27th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Faizah,
That is good to know that you can now get empty pods. I don’t believe they were available when the machine first came out.
Leave a Reply