The 5 Best Nespresso Pods You Can Buy at the Grocery Store
Nespresso machines rely on small doses of encapsulated coffee, which are brewed under high pressure to quickly produce an espresso shot. Nespresso is one of the largest producers of these espresso pods but only sells them online or in Nespresso boutiques. And since Nespresso has only a handful of those boutiques in the US, having pods shipped has long been the primary method for obtaining them.
But although online ordering may be the norm now, it’s not ideal when you’re down to your last pod and your next caffeine boost is two to three business days away. So we made it our mission to find the best Nespresso capsules that you can buy in major grocery stores.
We scoured our local supermarkets and department stores and found that although Nespresso-compatible pods are starting to appear on store shelves, they’re mostly limited to large chains.
Nespresso’s patent on these capsules expired in 2012, but it took a few years of growth in the American market before coffee giants and grocery store chains started to produce their own versions, so variety is still somewhat restricted.
We selected pods for testing with a few factors and criteria in mind:
Available in nationwide stores: We looked for pods that people could reliably find at major stores in their area and settled on a few prominent brands: Good & Gather (Target’s house brand), Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Peet’s, and Starbucks.
Compatible with Nespresso’s Original line: We limited our search to Nespresso Original line capsules, mostly by default — they’ve been reproduced by numerous companies since Nespresso’s patents on the line expired in 2012 and are the Nespresso-compatible pod you’re most likely to find at major retailers.
Vertuo pods, which work with Nespresso’s newer system, are still under patent protection and aren’t made by third-party producers. Because of that, the Vertuo pod selection outside of Nespresso boutiques is extremely limited — you’ll only find the pods made by Nespresso with Starbucks.
Roast variety: We aimed to taste pods across a range of roasts but veered away from the darkest roast offerings, since Nespresso machines tend to accentuate bitter notes. We tasted three light roasts, five medium roasts, and three dark roasts.
Price: We set out on our search in the hopes of finding a delicious espresso pod with a lower price than Nespresso’s own capsules (which, on average, cost about 80¢ per capsule). It turns out that most third-party pods hover around that price, but they do have the advantage of occasionally going on sale.
Material: We did not restrict our testing to aluminum capsules, as availability took precedence over materials. But most of the capsules we tested were aluminum. Unlike plastic, aluminum is infinitely recyclable, but there’s no guarantee that you will be able to recycle pods through your local recycling system. While Nespresso offers a recycling program for its pods, as does Peet’s, these programs may not accept pods from other companies.
We tasted 11 Nespresso-compatible pods with four members of Wirecutter’s kitchen team. (For three of the tasters, the test was brand-concealed). We brewed each capsule as a 1.35-ounce espresso with the Essenza Mini, our top-pick Nespresso machine.
Moving from light to dark roasts, we brewed each drink, evaluating the crema atop each before tasting. After we finalized our picks, I tasted each espresso with warm, frothed milk to see how compatible they were.
We included the Nespresso Volluto pods, which we also used in our Nespresso machine testing, as a baseline in this taste test. Volluto is a balanced, light-roast espresso that we knew we liked, and it’s versatile enough to drink black or with milk.
Tasting the Volluto pod alongside the third-party pods helped us align our expectations appropriately, priming us for what a good espresso from a Nespresso machine should taste like. While most of our picks were not apples to apples with the Volluto pods in terms of roast and flavor profile, they were of comparable quality.
Nespresso pods do have some advantages over third-party pods, partly due to Nespresso’s unrivaled grinder technology (video) and partly due to the build of the machines themselves — the proprietary pods may brew faster and are less likely to leak. But we didn’t notice any issues with our picks.
As we tasted, we paid attention to these key components:
Aroma: The sense of smell plays an outsize role in our perception of flavor. We took a moment to smell each espresso before tasting it. Though some notes in the aroma may not have been detectable in the taste, they still contributed to the overall experience of the espresso’s flavor. Our favorites were aromatic and inviting from the start.
Taste: While Nespresso shots are not as complex as authentic espresso, they can still taste great. During tasting, we looked for desirable flavors, such as spice, cocoa, fruit, and florals, using the Specialty Coffee Association’s flavor wheel as our guide.
We looked for balance among the five basic tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami) and kept an eye out for any off-notes, such as rubber or mold.
When sampling the range of roasts, we kept an open mind but approached them with some basic expectations: Lighter roasts tend to be more acidic and complex, whereas darker roasts tend to be more bitter and rich.
Body: Shots from a Nespresso machine have a lighter mouthfeel than the full, syrupy texture of a shot pulled from an espresso machine. But the espresso’s body still varies depending on the pods used. We looked for rich espressos that provide a tactile sensation of creaminess.
Crema: Distinctive to espresso, this layer of bitter foam that sits atop your shot is often touted as an indicator of quality. This isn’t entirely true, but it can hint to the freshness of your coffee, as well as the strength of your espresso.
We took notes on the appearance of each espresso’s crema, and favored thick, flecked, golden foams, which make for a visually appealing shot (regardless of whether you plan to skim it off).
