Yeah, that’s a conservative number and doesn’t factor in the lemon cranberry scone anything else I may pick up at the time.

Chris isn’t exactly blameless. He’s addicted to the Tazo Zen Green Tea and chocolate chunk cookies.

So, in an effort to save our spending and stop (me) going to Starbucks as often, we forked out a HUGE amount of cash all at once and bought me (us) a Bosch Tassimo beverage system.

Tassimo Bosch T65 Single Serve Hot Beverage System

It’s not exactly like that one, but super close. In fact, mine is better since it’s red. I’ll post a real picture in a minute.

Setting it up took about 20 minutes. No, it’s not complicated, but it does have a couple of one-time steps. It uses a water filtration system much like a Brita or something similar, so you have to activate that and rinse it a few times. You also have to run 5 cycles of its cleaning system (just a hot water flush). I also made an espresso just to be sure it worked.

Red Tassimo

The concept is that it’s a no-muss, no-fuss, no cleaning system. You fill the water tank at the back probably once a week or so (depending on usage) and you buy these cute little T-Discs to make your beverage of choice. T-Discs are one-time use plastic packs that contain just the right amount of coffee, tea or hot chocolate and are bar-coded so the unit knows how much water, at what temperature and for how long, is needed to make your drink.

Pretty cool. An espresso puck (easier than writing T-Disc all the time) yields a 3 ounce shot of espresso, where-as a Twinings green tea yields a lot more. Drop in the puck, push a button, wait under a minute and you’ve got a beverage. Just pull the puck out and toss it in the trash.

There’s the downside to all of this wonderfulness. Trash. Since each puck is only usable one time, you generate a fair amount of plastic waste just to make a cup of coffee. The traditional system would have used a single paper filter, or even better, a re-usable one. Apparently the discs are recyclable in some areas as long as you dismantle and rinse them.

I had to wait until Monday to use my newest toy otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to sleep last night. I must say, I’m pretty impressed. It’s not quite the same as my beloved SFV-A from Starbucks, but my coffee was good this morning.

We picked up the 8-disc espresso pack for $2.99 from London Drugs (normally $3.99) which means each serving is $0.37. Normally my Venti would use 4 shots, meaning  my cost to do the same thing this way would be about $1.20 to do at home, instead of $3.90 from Starbucks. This first morning, I used 2 discs, mixed in some Splenda, milk and hot water and it tasted very much like the Starbucks one. I need to buy some sugar-free vanilla syrup to give it a try.

Chris had a green tea after we got home last night, and seems to have had another one this morning before I got up.

So, generally speaking, I love my Tassimo hot beverage system and it should save us a bunch of money over a fairly short period of time. If I reduce my spending from $3.60 to $0.70 per day, it will pay for itself in 2 months time. Gotta love that!

Here’s the official Canadian site: http://www.tassimo.ca