Single cup coffee makers

For one or two people it makes no sense to brew by the pot because by the time you get round to drinking the coffee, it has been sitting in a carafe or on top of a burner, getting more stale and bitter, and most likely poured down the drain. Hence the rise of single-serve coffee makers.

Over the next few pages, we look at some of the bestselling single cup coffee makers and see how they rate.

Before we do, what features matter?

Price, looks, size, sturdiness, how easy it is to clean, how long it takes to brew, coffee temperature, coffee flavor, can you customize it, how easy it is to use, is it programmable, what other drinks do they make, and warranty.

Single-cup coffee makers enjoy soaring popularity. For coffee lovers it means sipping excellent quality, freshly made coffee from a cool looking machine.

Easy to use, you make only as much as you need and it drips straight into your mug within a few short minutes. Some offer tea and hot chocolate too.

Being compact, one-cup coffee makers fit comfortably into bedrooms, office cubicles and even your suitcase when travelling.

Single cup coffee makers are available from top manufacturers in various styles and models, each with their own unique features and design specifications. Most give you the option of serving both an 8 oz American style or 5 oz European style.

Some are used with coffee pods, others you spoon your own coffee in.

First of all, coffee pods.

What are they? Single serve portions of ground beans, prepackaged in a standard plastic cup, already wrapped with filter paper, and sealed for freshness. These pods fit directly into your coffee maker, hot water drips through the pod and collects in the mug below. Popular brands include Keurig, Senseo, Melitta, Krups and Juan Valdez.

Advantages: For coffee to meet your individual taste, single cup coffee makers with pods allows you to customize your brew by choosing pods in terms of grind size, amount of powder and roast type, to suit everyone in the family or office.

Experiment with different pods to find a brewing strength which suits you. Try different varieties too because each serving is individually wrapped.

Single cup coffee machines are a breeze to maintain because there are no coffee pots, scaly water reservoirs, nor messy filters to deal with. Simply remove the used pod and throw out.

No more measuring coffee grounds nor water neither, just pop in a pod.

Disadvantages: Each machine is designed to be used with single-serve K-cups or pods of ground coffee. If the machine you chose is designed to be used with K-cups, you can't use pods, and vice versa.

The cost of pods and K-cups, between 25 and 50 cents each, with some pod coffee makers requiring two pods to brew an 8 oz cup, is relatively high.

Pods are environmentally wasteful because packaging is thrown away with each pod.

Each manufacturer has its own suppliers of coffee and you can be locked into their range. Major coffee brands sell compatible pods but not all types are supported.

At the moment the most popular combination seems to be using Keurig brewers with K-cups, largely because they offer such a wide variety of coffees.

Some coffee pod coffee makers can be converted to become "podless" with a refillable pod filter.

Podless single cup coffee makers are smaller versions of traditional drip coffee makers. Because ground beans are spooned in, you can better customize your brew by controlling the amount of coffee powder used. They work out cheaper too.

Adding too much or too fine a grind can result in hot water spilling over the filter and carrying ground beans into the coffee mug.

Some have permanent steel or nylon mesh filters. Although you don't need paper filters, they might improve the taste and make cleaning up easier because less bean oil would need to be washed off the permanent filter.

If you serve multiple cups of coffee at the same time, for example in corporate meetings or in a household of coffee drinkers sitting down for a cup of coffee, single cup coffee makers may not be best for you.

Prices range from $20 to $200 so before splashing out, make sure the one you choose meets all your requirements.

If cost is a concern, buy a machine with a re-usable filter, make your own pods or buy non-proprietary pods - some people say they contain higher-quality coffee, but make sure the pods you buy fit your coffee maker.

Short coffee makers can only be used with small cups.

Using a small cup with a maker designed for large cups, can result in dripped coffee splashing.

For convenience, some coffee makers come bundled with mugs. Their narrow base may be the only kind that fits and your favorite fat mug can't be used.

Many coffee makers, whether cheap or expensive, are noisy, which can make them unsuitable for some environments, for example a library.

Can a cheap model make good coffee? If so, are expensive gourmet models worth the price?

Premium gourmet single cup coffee makers offer features to customize your coffee making experience. They include: selecting the cup size - cheaper models only make one cup size, or use all the water you poured in; you can select the water temperature which on budget models is fixed; some shut off automatically once the coffee is made; thanks to a 24 hour timer you can set it to automatically make coffee in the morning; some are high powered at 1500 watts for quick brewing, while cheaper models can be as low as 500 watts.

Some of the top rated single cup coffee makers we look at on this site are Keurig B30, Black and Decker Brew 'n Go, Senseo Supreme, Bosch Tassimo 4511 and Breville Gourmet.

Other popular makes are:

• Melitta single cup coffee makers
• Nespresso
• Cuisinart single cup coffee makers
• Nescafe Dolce Gusto
• Krups single cup coffee makers
• Aeropress
• Bunn single cup coffee makers
• Hamilton Beach single cup coffee makers
• Mr Coffee single cup coffee makers.

What is the best single cup coffee maker? It depends on your coffee needs and tastes.

Ideally sample cups of coffee from the various machines before settling on one because everyone has different views as to what is good. Price isn't necessarily a good gauge neither. Sometimes the simplest brewers make excellent coffee and they never break down.

Thanks for visiting us, good luck with your decision and happy brewing!