Lavazza Espresso Pods

Although the company was started in 1885, back in the early 1900′s Luigi Lavazza was one of the first coffee roasters to come up with the concept of the coffee blend, where he would take coffee beans from different origins, roast them and then combine the beans create different flavors.  It is uncertain if he did this out of necessity (he ran out of one type of bean), out of greed (combining less expensive beans with higher demand/priced beans) or what.  Most experts believe it was his goal to make up for some of the missing or undesirable flavors found in the single bean coffees.  Combining a rich flavor bean into one that had a sour finish may combine to make the blend even better than the individual beans.

Lavazza considers itself “Italy’s favourite coffee”, by claiming that nearly 3/4 of the 20 million Italian families that drink coffee drink Lavazza.  As the company entered the 21st century, it uses it capital to open new countries and even purchase major coffee companies in other countries such as Brazil, Portugal, and India.

In October 2007, Lavazza launches its espresso pods and machine.  The company uses the ESE coffee pods standard to allow the Lavazza espresso pods to be used in all ESE compatible machines.  The pods are packed in a sealed dark foil and then flushed with nitrogen to give it a long shelf life and protect the coffee.  The Lavazza Gran Crema is the most popular of the company’s products and is the one they claim is Italy’s favorite.

The Lavazza pods come loosely packed in the larger bulk packaging which results in many of the pods having loose coffee inside.  Some customers have reported that they are not packed well enough allowing the shot to be pulled in 5-8 seconds versus the traditional 20-25 seconds. This resulted in very weak and watery espresso.  An enterprising comment suggested that you wet the filter and then add some additional packing pressure to the pod using something like a coffee mug on a hard surface to pack the coffee grounds.  This seems to have solved the problem for most users.

You can find bulk packages of Lavazza Gran Crema Espresso, (Pack of 150) at Amazon.  Additionally, some users claim that although the Lavazza pod is marketed as an ESE pod, it may not work well in all machines.  There are slight variations of both these pods and the various espresso brewers on the market in size and thickness.  Buy a small quantity of these pods to try them out in your machine before you invest in a large quantity.