Originally Posted by
eternaltransit
I meant that
chelseastu wanted to run from F lounge to J lounge just to get a takeaway coffee to take on the plane, where the plane has Nespresso pods: I don't think I'd sacrifice my F lounge time for that!
I'm not sure that the Nespresso capsules - they use the professional type ones which have a better vacuum seal than the consumer pods - just because they are preground are automatically worse: fresh beans are ground and then immediately vacuum sealed in Switzerland before global dispatch.
Costa beans, I'm not sure how long they've been there - although, I accept the ones in the J lounge are likely to be quite fresh given the turnover.
Baristas, well, rare to find one that actually adds something special, given that baristas are simply cogs in the machine for the service standard
Us South Africans are quite particular about our coffee
. The issue with Nespresso is less about the freshness of the beans, indeed as long as they are immediately vacuum sealed they pretty much don't degrade, the issue is that the quantity of ground coffee in a single capsule (I'm referring to consumer capsules, no idea how much is in the commercial ones) is I think 6g, either way it's approximately enough for a single shot of espresso. I usually have a double-shot which then becomes weak with Nespresso pods as you strain to extract the flavour from such a small quantity of ground coffee.
As for baristas, yes most aren't special but the main difference with barista brewed coffee I find is that the texture of the manually steamed milk is better than what comes out of the machines.