At a look
Professional’s Score
Professionals
- Smarter pod brewing with Brew ID
- Improved pitcher-like water reservoir design
- Glorious foam manufacturing
- Vary of coffees retains getting higher
Cons
- Predictably poor espresso output
- Disposable pods stay an environmental drawback
Our Verdict
The Keurig Okay-Café Good is without doubt one of the finest pod-based brewers we’ve ever tried, with the best water reservoir design round and an extremely strong milk frother.
Value When Reviewed
$249.99
Finest Costs In the present day: Keurig Okay-Cafe Good
$148.58
$219.99
$220.16
$249
$249.99
The Keurig Okay-Café Good espresso maker represents the most recent era of the US market’s main pod-based brewer. With a revamped, post-modern design, improved person 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 area 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, nevertheless, it’s the very best pod brewer we’ve tried thus far, and may make the highest of the checklist for anybody available in the market for a brand new pod espresso maker – within the US, at the least. At this stage, it’s not obtainable within the UK.
Design and construct
In contrast to 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 will have tried, with a flip-up pod chamber that clamps down and bites into the pod to let the water cross via.
The highest of the lid accommodates many of the controls, that are higher labeled than these of older fashions, letting you know the way many ounces you’ll get with every. It additionally sports activities just a few buttons you don’t discover on older fashions, resembling a Shot button for espresso photographs, and an Iced Espresso button, that are nestled in opposition to a small LCD show that reads out data concerning the inserted pod, the Wi-FI connection standing, and different particulars.
We just like the Okay-Cafe Good’s improved accessibility with its pitcher-like water reservoir.
Foundry / Robert Strohmeyer
As quickly as I crammed the water reservoir for the primary time, I immediately favored 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 below 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 most typical factor you’ll do with one in all 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 via to your foaming milk.
The realm below the brew chamber is sweet and tall, and readily accommodated tall journey mugs and tumblers in our exams. With different single-serve machines we’ve examined, becoming tumblers below 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 area, 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 inexpensive worth. You get a collection of brew volumes, 6oz, 8oz, 10oz, and 12oz. It’s also possible to alter the temperature and brew energy with devoted buttons for every.
By way of the cell 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 normal espresso and iced espresso, the Okay-Café Good is a rock-solid performer. Customary 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 simple to make. Whereas the usual temp is slightly low for our liking, elevating the temp to carry warmth longer within the cup is simple sufficient.
The Okay-Cafe Good produces iced espresso with style-specific pods.
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.
Whereas the Okay-Cafe Good’s milk frother works nice, its espresso output leaves quite a bit to be desired.
Foundry / Robert Strohmeyer
What few of those producers appear to know is that espresso requires extraordinarily excessive strain and very scorching water. You want at the least 9 bars of strain at round 200 levels Farenheit to supply 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, virtually 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 properly.
We purchased the one espresso-specific Okay-Cups we might discover, Café Bustelo pods, and put them to the check as single photographs and double photographs, with and with out foam. In each state of affairs we tried, we simply wouldn’t classify the brewed shot as reputable 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 by way of the button on the entrance, and watch for it to warmth and spin its strategy to scrumptious, agency foamy goodness. The machine will wait till the froth is completed to brew your shot, so that you get each in fast succession routinely.
So, in case you’re after lattés and cappuccinos, relatively than straight espresso, the Okay-Café would possibly fulfill your corner-café espresso cravings.
The Okay-Cafe Good’s milk frother produces stiff, strong foam in minutes.
Foundry / Robert Strohmeyer
Verdict
All in all, we actually just like the Keurig Okay-Café Good brewer. It’s the very best design we’ve seen from Keurig, which has the very best collection of pod coffees on the US market. Whereas we nonetheless hesitate to advocate pod brewers as a class on account 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 very best capsule espresso machines we’ve examined. It’s also possible to see the very best espresso machines of every type that we’ve reviewed.