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Thursday, August 13, 2015

Review/Giveaway: Caffe Borsa Single-Serving Coffee System


Finding a good cup of coffee can be a challenge, especially if you’re away from home. The coffee you’ll find in hotel rooms is not much stronger than hot water with brown food coloring. At the office, you might have old coffee that has been heating on a warmer for countless hours, or a single-cup system that generates a mountain of waste.

Even at home, you sometimes might want a cup of coffee without making a full pot.
As a coffee aficionado, this is a puzzle I have tried to solve for a long time. At home, we tried a Keurig and while it made good coffee, the machine is expensive and buying the pods even moreso. (I did the math: You’re paying around $30 to $35 per pound of coffee by buying K-Cups.)

So there was the cost, plus throwing them away gave us visions of archaeologists a thousand years in the future unearthing mountains of colored plastic cups and puzzling over their significance.
Then we tried a couple of reusable K-Cup systems, where you fill a reusable pod with coffee; that gives you more reasonably-priced coffee and eliminates the waste problem, but it’s a very demanding operation at 6 a.m.


Caffé Borsa offers a different solution. With its system, you can make a single cup of coffee using boiling water from any source: a tea kettle, a microwave or a metal pot heated over a campfire.

The Caffe Borsa packet includes thin cardboard clips on each side. To use, you simply tear off the perforated top of the packet, spread the clips to hold the packet in place inside the cup, and slowly pour the water over the coffee inside the packet until the cup is filled to the desired level.

The company sells the packets in boxes of eight. You can buy your preferred variety direct from the company at $9.49 for one box, or $13.99 for two.

The packets are easy to use. However, you will need a bit of patience as the water does take some time filter down through the coffee. You have to pour very slowly, or else pour-and-wait, pour-and-wait as each bit of water passes through.  

The two varieties that Caffe Borsa provided for this review were both excellent.

The Colombia Supremo is robust and rich, with the floral aroma that Colombian coffee is known for. I found that letting it sit for a minute after the initial brewing brought the flavor forward. This is a quality cup of coffee that would be at home in a nice restaurant.

The Guatemala Antigua coffee was also very good, with a hint of spiciness and a complex flavor. Had I been served this without knowing how it was made, I would not have been able to tell it was the product of a single-serve system.

The company also offers Sumatran, Costa Rican and Decaffeinated as well as a  variety pack.

Caffe Borsa solves a lot of the problems of single-serve coffee. The packets are biodegradable, so waste generation is less of a concern. There is no machine to buy, and no clean-up to worry about. It still costs more, cup for cup, than buying bagged coffee and using a drip coffee maker, but for situations where you only want a cup, or have no way to make a full pot, Caffe Borsa offers as close to an ideal solution as I’ve seen.

Read on to see how you can enter a Giveaway to try out Caffe Borsa for yourself.





One lucky reader in the US will win a box of Guatamala Antiqua and a box of Costa Rica Tarrazu (16 servings total), with a value of $18.98.

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment in this entry as instructed by the Rafflecopter, then leave the name you commented under and your email in the box in the Rafflecopter entry. (This allows us to contact you if you win!)  This will open up additional optional entries to increase your odds of winning.

This giveaway is open to US RESIDENTS ONLY
and will end just before midnight ET on 8-27-15. 


The winners will be notified by email within 24 hours after the end of the giveaway.  In order to claim the giveaway prize, the winner will need to respond within 24 hours of notification, or an alternate winner will be selected.

Once the winner(s) have responded and confirm, their first name will be posted on our Giveaways page. 

Good luck everyone!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

15 comments:

  1. I can see how this would be awesome for camping!

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  2. I would like to try the 100% Colombia Supremo. I would also turn it into iced coffee, yummy!

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  3. I would LOVE to try the 100% Sumatra Mandheling,

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  4. I would love to bring this to work

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  5. I would love to try the 100% Colombia Supremo.

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  6. I would like to try the Guatemala Antigua

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  7. I would love to try the 100% Guatemala Antigua. It really sounds delicious. I love how easy it is to make without all the fuss of a coffeemaker.

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  8. I'd love to try the 100% Colombian! My fav! (:

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  9. I learned that no machine is required and there's no clean up! I'd use it at work.

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  10. I had never seen coffee in a tea bag. Who knew?? I would be interested in trying the 100% Guatemala Antigua to see if it really does taste like just brewed coffee.

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  11. I love this idea. Whoever thought this up was a genius. Kind of like a teabag, but coffee.

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  12. I like to try the 100% Colombia Supremo, 8 packets.

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  13. 100% Colombian is our favorite coffee to drink in our family love to try this out.

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