By: Albert T. Wolf

Often times you might need to make only one cup of a coffee at the time and making that with a regular drip coffee machine is not much fun. There is much better option though - it is called single serve coffee maker or single cup coffee maker and it is created for situations exactly like that. They work quickly, are easy to clean, they can brew straight to the cup and they are often quite small, so they do not take up much space either.

Basically there are two kinds of machines: the ones that use regular ground coffee via filter system and ones that use special coffee pods or capsules. The first kind are actually not that different from conventional drip coffee machines, except for the fact that they are smaller and brew one cup instead of a whole pot. Pod based machines are little bit different in their working system (and in many cases by design also). They are using previously packaged coffee pods which you place into the machine. These pods are sold in many different varieties, flavors and types of roast. They are also individually sealed, so they stay fresh longer than the regular bag of ground coffee.

When it comes to pod machines there is no industry standard coffee pods. Some single serve coffee machines belong to closed systems, which means that you can only use pods or capsules that are produced specifically for this particular system. Some of the most popular systems are actually closed systems such as Tassimo single serve brewers, Nescafe Dolce Gusto, Keurig single cup machines etc.

On the other end of the spectrum are the ones that have many compatible pods available from a wide range of different producers. These are called the open system machines like Bunn MyCafe.

To sum it up, if you find yourself often making just one or two cups of coffee and you want your coffee fast, single serve coffee makers are definitely the way to go.

Albert T. Wolf has found his fascination in coffee and all that's related to it. To find out what are some of the popular single serve coffee makers visit his blog at http://blog.wakeupvibes.com.