At What Cost Convenience? Testing the New Single-Serve Coffee Systems

Thin but intense aroma, with distinct papaya-toned fruit. Medium-bodied but lively in the cup, where the high-toned fruit, still reminiscent of papaya, takes on a delicate chocolate richness. Sweet, balanced acidity.

The authoritative aroma is dominated by low-toned fruit: apricot or papaya. In the cup the fruit brightens, lifts and intensifies, suggesting a tartly sweet temperate fruit like green apples. Light-to-medium-bodied but roundly smooth in mouthfeel; sweetly acidy.

Sweet, low-key, expansive aroma. In the cup rich and cleanly roasty, with an agreeable bittersweet balance complicated by fresh leather, chocolate and a shimmer of sweet grapefruit. The grapefruit persists in the rich but astringent finish.

Balanced, low-toned aroma with a tickle of fruit and chocolate. Maintains its character in the cup: low-toned, understated, balanced, complicated by a faintly chocolate-inclining prune and apricot.

The aroma is round and intense but limited in nuance. The cup adds a complicating hint of chocolate-toned fruit to a similarly limited but balanced and deeply resonant profile.

Smoky, leathery and sweet in the aroma, with a hint of low-toned fruit. Softens and relaxes in the cup, with the smoky fruit sweetening toward chocolate. Lean in mouthfeel but rich in impression.

Round and full in aroma, with caramel midtones and tartly sweet topnotes: passion fruit and pink grapefruit. The impressive aromatics are overwhelmed in the cup by a rather bitter acidity, though the passion fruit notes emerge again in the finish.

A coffee seen from the far end of the taste telescope, intriguing but shrunk and diminished. The aroma is lushly sweet with a hint of grapefruit. The cup is sweet as well, but complicated only by an agreeable but simple acidity. Once past the aroma little nuance of any kind. Slightly astringent in the finish.

Rich, bracingly bittersweet aroma - caramel, a tickle of chocolate, pure classic coffee fruit notes - but in the cup disappointingly lean and shallow in dimension, particularly as the cup cools. Recovers slightly in the thin but cleanly sweet finish.

Virtually no aroma. The cup is potatoey and flat on first impression, but with patient drinking a quietly satisfying profile emerges, with a balance of bitter, sweet, and acidy tones complicated by a low-key fruit that sneaks up on milk chocolate.

The aroma is delicate to a fault, more neutral than balanced. The mouthfeel is lean and the flavor watery, with a faintly sweet, delicately acidy character complicated by attractive grapefruit notes.

The aroma is full and round with pleasant if rather shallow lemon and floral notes. In the cup a woody bitterness obliterates the floral notes and turns the lemon tones pithy and hard. The finish is both bitter and astringent.

The aroma is shallow and cloyingly sweet, though complicated by pleasant Meyer lemon notes. The lemon notes carry into the otherwise undistinguished cup, which is thinly acidy and simple.

The aroma is woody with faint lemon and chocolate suggestions. The body is substantial, the cup round in mouthfeel with a low-toned acidity complicated by a vague dry fruit, more like prune pits than prunes. Further flattens and turns astringent as the cup cools.

The aroma is full and smokily roasty though monotoned. In the cup thinnish, smoky and simple, with rather unpleasant tobacco notes, the stale ashtray sort rather than the rich pipe tobacco kind.

Caramelly and burned in the aroma; in the cup mildly roasty, crisp and bittersweet with a tickle of acidity. The bitterness intensifies as the cup cools, exaggerating the flat, astringent finish.

Shallow and thin throughout. Sweet, caramelly, high-toned, but without nuance or dimension in either aroma or cup. Thin, astringent finish.

Odd profile: simple, monotoned and woody in aroma, with some hints of cocoa and orange. In the cup very flat and herby, dominated by a bitter nut sensation. The finish is both monumentally bitter and extremely astringent.