6 tips for good coffee with reusable capsules 

First of all, you need to choose the right reusable coffee capsule. There are many reusable capsules of varying quality and practicality. At CAPS ME, we've tried out all the stainless steel Nespresso® reusable capsules on the market, and the ones we suggest are, in our opinion, the best. Find out why here (coming soon), or here, our final choice.

In a zero-waste approach, you might think that a reusable lid would be the best way to close your coffee capsule. We carried out our first tests on capsules with reusable lids. But we never obtained satisfactory results for the following reason: a reusable lid doesn't allow for good extraction and the physical behavior of a disposable lid. It's important that the water, the air, extracts the coffee's aromas at 19 bars before the lid yields to this pressure.

It's important to use a grind that's neither too fine nor too coarse. If the grind in your Nespresso®-compatible reusable capsule is too fine, the coffee will have trouble flowing. If the grind in the reusable coffee capsule is too thick, the water will flow well, but the coffee won't be extracted sufficiently. You'll end up with watery coffee. That's why at CAPS ME we've carried out sieve tests on Nespresso® capsule grinds, and found that the ideal grind for good extraction is between 400 and 500 nm, which corresponds to an espresso grind.

If your coffee isn't roasted enough, i.e. if it hasn't been cooked enough, it will seem very acidic and not as bitter as you're used to drinking from Nespresso capsules. So, if you go to your roaster to ask for coffee for reusable and refillable capsules, you need to ask for a well-roasted coffee.

If you'd like to find out in detail how we made our coffee specially adapted for reusable stainless steel Nespresso capsules, you can find out more here.

The coffee contained in disposable coffee capsules varies between 5 g and 5.5 g. Either you're lucky with a spoon, or you use a scale, or you shake the CAPS ME kit shaker upright. If you shake the CAPS ME shaker well, you'll regularly obtain 5g of coffee.

Coffee in disposable capsules is not compacted, and you can easily check this. Just take a disposable capsule and shake it close to your ear to see that the ground coffee is not compacted.

The coffee is still compacted by vibration. That is to say, in capsule factories, there is no tamping device to compact each capsule one after the other, but as the capsule receives the coffee, it vibrates to optimize the quantity of coffee inside. By vigorously shaking your capsule feeder vertically, you can imitate the tamping action of disposable capsules, and achieve consistent results. For a full-bodied coffee, we recommend that you press the magazine against your hand.

If your coffee is too tightly packed in your reusable capsule, it won't flow. If it's not packed tightly enough, it will flow too quickly and the coffee won't be extracted sufficiently. It also depends on the grind. 

In short, with the right coffee (combining the right roast and the right grind), the right reusable capsule, the right filling technique and the right lid, all the elements are in place to guarantee excellent quality coffee!

At CAPS ME, we've put together a turnkey kit to help you switch to reusables and stop throwing tons of capsules in the garbage can every year. We're convinced that reusing will always be better than throwing away, so we've developed a solution that will make you love reusing your capsules.