Keurig K-Café Smart review

Finest Costs Right now: Keurig Okay-Cafe Good

$213.51

The Keurig Okay-Café Good espresso maker represents the latest era of the US market’s main pod-based brewer. With a revamped, post-modern design, improved consumer ergonomics, and a built-in milk frother, it’s markedly completely different from different Keurigs we’ve tried, and it stands forward of the more and more crowded discipline of pod brewers.

Whereas it seems constructed to compete with Nespresso brewers for a slice of the espresso pod market, it falls woefully brief on that entrance. All in all, nonetheless, it’s the most effective pod brewer we’ve tried thus far, and will make the highest of the record for anybody out there for a brand new pod espresso maker – within the US, no less than. At this stage, it’s not out there within the UK.

Design and construct

Not like the clunky, monolithic designs of its predecessors, with their weirdly formed water reservoirs, the Okay-Café Good presents a triple-tower profile, consisting of the pitcher-shaped water reservoir, the milk frother, and the espresso brewer itself.

It really works like different Keurigs you could have tried, with a flip-up pod chamber that clamps down and bites into the pod to let the water cross by means of.

The highest of the lid comprises many of the controls, that are higher labeled than these of older fashions, letting you understand how many ounces you’ll get with every. It additionally sports activities a number of buttons you don’t discover on older fashions, comparable to a Shot button for espresso pictures, and an Iced Espresso button, that are nestled towards a small LCD show that reads out information concerning the inserted pod, the Wi-FI connection standing, and different particulars.

Foundry / Robert Strohmeyer

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As quickly as I crammed the water reservoir for the primary time, I immediately appreciated this machine extra than simply about any pod brewer I’ve used earlier than. The reservoir is a tall, cylindrical pitcher with an enormous, pleasant deal with. Seize it, maintain it beneath the tap, and put it again.

No hassles dealing with odd-shaped plastic receptacles with no apparent handles as with prior designs. Since filling the reservoir is the second commonest factor you’ll do with one among these brewers, having a reservoir that’s straightforward to deal with issues.

Likewise, the milk frother sits on the entrance of the machine’s base, with a snug deal with and a easy plastic lid that offers you a view by means of to your foaming milk. 

The world beneath the brew chamber is good and tall, and readily accommodated tall journey mugs and tumblers in our assessments. With different single-serve machines we’ve examined, becoming tumblers beneath the brewer typically required eradicating the cup base to make room, so it was nice not having to fret about that with this machine.

And but, the cup base right here is detachable too, so if we have been to discover a mug too tall for the house, we’d have about one other inch of flexibility there.

Efficiency

The Keurig Okay-Café Good is a superb all-around pod brewer at an affordable worth. You get a choice of brew volumes, 6oz, 8oz, 10oz, and 12oz. You may as well regulate the temperature and brew power with devoted buttons for every.

Through the cellular app, it can save you settings for customized brew strengths and temps to keep away from having to set them manually every time, however in our testing the app didn’t add quite a lot of worth, for the reason that controls on the machine are really easy to make use of. 

For traditional espresso and iced espresso, the Okay-Café Good is a rock-solid performer. Normal drip coffees just like the Inexperienced Mountain Mix and Peet’s Main Dickison’s come out properly, and iced coffees just like the McDonald’s Iced Mocha Frappé are constant and straightforward to make. Whereas the usual temp is just a little low for our liking, elevating the temp to carry warmth longer within the cup is straightforward sufficient. 

Foundry / Robert Strohmeyer

Espresso brewing

The Okay-Café will get its title from the truth that it’s designed for espresso brewing, an effort to compete with Nespresso machines and a rising market of different espresso-aspiring dwelling espresso makers, practically all of that are horrible at espresso. 

Foundry / Robert Strohmeyer

What few of those producers appear to know is that espresso requires extraordinarily excessive strain and intensely scorching water. You want no less than 9 bars of strain at round 200 levels Farenheit to provide good espresso with a thick, frothy crema, appropriately viscous mouthfeel, and candy, strong taste.

I’ve no means of figuring out what number of bars the Okay-Café produces, however from the output it’s clearly not even shut. In equity, although, nearly not one of the different pod or home-drip techniques we’ve seen that place themselves as espresso stations do any higher. The one exception is the Nespresso line, which was designed from its first era to do just one factor effectively.

We purchased the one espresso-specific Okay-Cups we may discover, Café Bustelo pods, and put them to the check as single pictures and double pictures, with and with out foam. In each state of affairs we tried, we simply wouldn’t classify the brewed shot as official espresso, however the drinks with foam have been considerably higher than these with out. 

The Okay-Café’s foam is healthier than we ever would have anticipated. Fill the frother with milk to the road, set the temp through the button on the entrance, and watch for it to warmth and spin its technique to scrumptious, agency foamy goodness. The machine will wait till the froth is completed to brew your shot, so that you get each in speedy succession robotically. 

So, should you’re after lattés and cappuccinos, fairly than straight espresso, the Okay-Café would possibly fulfill your corner-café espresso cravings.

Foundry / Robert Strohmeyer

Verdict

All in all, we actually just like the Keurig Okay-Café Good brewer. It’s the most effective design we’ve seen from Keurig, which has the most effective choice of pod coffees on the US market. Whereas we nonetheless hesitate to suggest pod brewers as a class as a consequence of environmental impression, the brand new pod design is simpler to dismantle and compost/recycle than earlier variations.

The general efficiency for non-espresso drinks is healthier than we’ve seen on a pod brewing system, and the espresso efficiency, whereas not nice, is satisfactory for foamy, milky, sugary café concoctions.

For extra pod espresso machine choices and to see our different suggestions, try our round-up of the most effective capsule espresso machines we’ve examined. You may as well see the most effective espresso machines of every kind that we’ve reviewed.