The biggest lever you can pull to make your coffee stronger is to use more ground coffee and less water.
But this can be hard to do when you have a plug-and-play coffee maker like a Nespresso. Luckily there are still a few things you can do to change this.
How To Make Nespresso Coffee Stronger?
For the Nespresso Original Line, you can use reusable capsules and program the cup-size buttons to make your coffee stronger. For The Nespresso Vertuo Line, you can use the biggest capsules and program the machine to use less water to make your coffee stronger. Always make sure that you’re using fresh capsules. Capsules older than two months can taste weak and bad.
Let’s get into more detail below on how to make your Nespresso coffee stronger.
Table of Contents
- How To Make Nespresso Coffee Stronger?
- How Do Different Nespresso Capsules Affect Strength And Taste?
- Conclusion
Use More and Finer Ground Coffee
Nespresso coffee can be quite weak, especially if you are used to drinking espresso from a manual machine. That’s because the amount of ground coffee in a Nespresso cup is not much compared to the amount of coffee you use to make an espresso with a manual espresso machine.
So one way to make your coffee stronger is to use more and finer ground coffee, but you can’t really do that with Nespresso unless you use reusable capsules. You can fill the reusable capsule to the maximum with finely ground coffee.
If you use reusable capsules make sure that you’re using evenly fine-ground espresso coffee. If the coffee is not evenly ground, the water will find the path of least resistance, causing the coffee to be unevenly extracted, resulting in weaker coffee.
If you use whole beans and grind them yourself, you’ll want to use an espresso grinder. For the strongest coffee possible, grind the coffee beans so finely that the Nespresso machine barely gets any water through them.
You can also consider using 2 Nespresso capsules, especially if you want a larger but still strong coffee. You can serve two smaller coffees in one cup.
Use Less Water For Your Coffee
Nespresso Original Line
If you use larger cup sizes, your coffee will taste weaker because more water is flowing through the same amount of ground coffee. You can clearly see this when the Nespresso begins to brew a coffee, at first the coffee dripping from your Nespresso will be very dark and then the color will lighten as more water is poured through it.
On most Original Line Nespresso machines there is a small and a larger cup size button. To get a stronger coffee you want to use the small cup button or program the other button to use less water.
You can easily do this by putting the capsule in the machine and closing it. Then push and hold the button until your desired amount of coffee. Then the water level will be saved for this capsule size.
Nespresso capsules are designed for a 2 oz coffee. If you want a larger coffee, it is best to use two capsules for one cup. That is if you want your coffee to still taste good and strong.
Nespresso Vertuo Line
With the Vertuo Line, you can easily program the amount of water the machine uses. If you want a very strong coffee, you can use the largest capsule and program it to use less water.
You can easily do this by putting the capsule in the machine and closing it. Then push and hold the button until your desired amount of coffee. Then the water level will be saved for this capsule size.
Get a Nespresso Vertuo
With The Nespresso Vertuo machines, you can buy capsules with a lot more coffee in them than the original capsules have.
As talked about earlier, more coffee and fewer water results in stronger coffee. With a Nespresso Vertuo, you can easily use more coffee in the form of a bigger capsule and less water in the form of programming your machine to use less water.
How Do Different Nespresso Capsules Affect Strength And Taste?
The Roast of The Capsule
You can buy Nespresso capsules with a variety of roasts. Usually the darker the roast the stronger the taste of the coffee you get.
- Light roast capsule: It tastes more acidic and contains the highest amount of caffeine.
- Medium roast capsule: Tastes well-rounded.
- Dark roast capsule: Tastes the most intense and strong but contains the least amount of caffeine.
I recommend buying a Nespresso Capsule variety pack, to test out a few different roasts.
The Quality of The Nespresso Capsule
The capsule you use has a lot of influence on the taste of your coffee. Cheaper capsules usually contain only 5 grams of coffee grounds, while the original Nespresso capsules contain about 7 grams of coffee grounds.
The coffee beans used for cheaper capsules tend to be older and poorly roasted. Cheaper capsules also often use cheap plastic that gives off BPA when hot water is poured through them. BPA is not healthy for you and can cause your coffee to get a plastic taste.
The Age of The Nespresso Capsule
Coffee is best consumed within a month after roasting. After a month, the oxidation of the coffee beans begins to have an effect on the taste. The coffee will not taste bad right away. At first, the Nespresso coffee will start to taste a little bland and lose some of the sweetness and special characteristics of the coffee.
After four to six weeks, the coffee starts to taste like cardboard and just plain bad. From then on, it’s best to bin the capsules or donate them to someone you don’t really like.
Conclusion
There are a few things you can do to make your Nespresso coffee stronger, here is a list of the things you can do:
- Use less water for your Nespresso coffee.
- Use more ground coffee or a larger capsule.
- Get a Nespresso Vertuo Line.
- Always use new and fresh capsules.
I hope that this article helped you to make your Nespresso coffee stronger.
Thanks for reading!