Overview of the Krups Dolce Gusto Piccolo coffee machine line using the KP 100B as an example

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The sim­plest prepa­ra­tion: put in the cap­sule, press the acti­va­tor, in a minute the cof­fee is ready!

The Krups Dolce Gus­to KP 100B Pic­co­lo cof­fee machine, like its twin sis­ters KP 1002, KP 1006, KP 1009, is one of the most com­pact and afford­able cap­sule-type mod­els. If the max­i­mum ease of prepa­ra­tion of an invig­o­rat­ing drink is impor­tant to you, with a min­i­mum ini­tial bud­get, the choice is obvi­ous. The water tank holds 0.6 liters of water (accessed from the back), which is enough to pre­pare sev­er­al cups of aro­mat­ic cof­fee, with­out any inter­me­di­ate manip­u­la­tions. Thanks to the pro­tec­tion against acci­den­tal acti­va­tion, the risk of acti­va­tion with­out a cap­sule is elim­i­nat­ed. Dur­ing the brew­ing process, the built-in pump builds up pres­sure up to 9 bar (with the declared pow­er of 15, but 9 is enough for espres­so), due to which the drink is obtained with a rich taste and aro­ma. It takes about 30 sec­onds to heat up the ther­moblock before start­ing cook­ing.

 

Krups-Dolce-Gusto-KP-100B-PiccoloKrups-Dolce-Gusto-KP-100В-Piccolo front viewKrups-Dolce-Gusto-KP-100В-Piccolo side view

Up to 20 fla­vors, includ­ing dairy and cold, for min­i­mal mon­ey, in any store

The Dolce Gus­to Krups KP100B10 Pic­co­lo Antracite cof­fee mak­er attracts with an afford­able price, and the Dolce Gus­to sys­tem allows you to pre­pare var­i­ous drinks: espres­so, cap­puc­ci­no, lat­te, cocoa and oth­ers, up to 20 fla­vors. More­over, blank cap­sules are very wide­spread, more than for com­pet­ing sys­tems, they are avail­able in almost any net­work gro­cery stores. Among the vari­ety of tastes, you will sure­ly find the drink that you will like. Such an impres­sive selec­tion requires the use of cups of var­i­ous sizes, so the man­u­fac­tur­er has pro­vid­ed for height adjust­ment of the stand.

Por­tion cap­sules are made of alu­minum and are sealed, so they retain the fresh­ness and aro­ma of cof­fee for a long time, pre­vent­ing light and air from pen­e­trat­ing inside. True, you should not rejoice too much, there are some nuances: a dry con­cen­trate is used as a milk sup­ple­ment, while it is nec­es­sary to load two cap­sules from the pack­age in turn. As a result, the price of a cup dou­bles.

 

The lever of giving of drink of the Krups KP 1006 coffee maker

Lever to the left — hot drink, to the right — cold

Accord­ing­ly, for lovers of milk and cof­fee drinks, it is worth pay­ing atten­tion to alter­na­tive cap­sule sys­tems. For exam­ple, Tas­si­mo cof­fee machines use cap­sules with ster­il­ized milk, which is already bet­ter than dry milk. And some Nespres­so machines are equipped with cap­puc­ci­na­tors, both man­u­al — in the form of a steam tap with a panarel­lo noz­zle, and auto­mat­ic — in the form of a com­plete jug.

On the oth­er hand, the sys­tem is notable for the pres­ence of cap­sules for cold drinks, such as Cap­puc­ci­no Ice. Cold drinks are pre­pared by mov­ing the main lever in the oppo­site direc­tion. Of course, the device does not have a sep­a­rate cool­er. It sim­ply sup­plies the water that you poured into the tank with­out heat­ing it.

Exclu­sive­ly for home use by a small fam­i­ly

 

Dolce Gusto Krups KP100B Piccolo top viewI repeat, with the Krups Dolce Gus­to Pic­co­lo KP 100B cap­sule cof­fee machine, brew­ing cof­fee is incred­i­bly easy — you just need to sub­sti­tute a cup, insert a suit­able cap­sule, make sure there is water and turn the lever. Then every­thing will hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly, you will only need to pick up the fin­ished drink. Even in the morn­ing, wak­ing up, mak­ing cof­fee will not cause absolute­ly no dif­fi­cul­ties. The device is ready for oper­a­tion almost imme­di­ate­ly after switch­ing on. To col­lect drip­ping drops, a spe­cial tray is pro­vid­ed, it is com­bined with a cup hold­er.

But you need to sober­ly under­stand that the machine is not designed for stream­ing cof­fee. You can only cook one serv­ing at a time. And even a large fam­i­ly, not to men­tion office employ­ees, will drink 0.6 liters in no time. A cou­ple of espres­sos and a cou­ple of cap­puc­ci­nos — the rest get in line.

An impor­tant nuance of con­trol, which is char­ac­ter­is­tic of this, the most afford­able mod­el of the Dolce Gus­to sys­tem. You reg­u­late the vol­ume of the drink your­self, stop­ping the sup­ply of hot water by mov­ing the lever to the neu­tral posi­tion. That is, the machine is not pro­grammed with any spe­cif­ic vol­umes for dif­fer­ent drinks. Each time you your­self mea­sure the required amount.

Sum­ma­riz­ing, I can say that the machine is ide­al for a small fam­i­ly and for begin­ners in the world of cap­sule cof­fee. If you are already imbued with the triv­i­al­i­ty of the process and want to move on to the next step in the hier­ar­chi­cal lad­der — look at the overview of com­pet­ing sys­tems.

Capsule coffee maker Krups KP 1006

The most pop­u­lar mod­el of the Pic­co­lo series is Krups KP 1006

Similar models

The line includes not only the “stan­dard”, black Krups Pic­co­lo kp100b, but also sev­er­al oth­er cof­fee machines that dif­fer from the one described only in col­or:

  • White — Krups KP 1002, arti­cle-syn­onym Krups KP100210
  • Red — Krups KP 1006, syn­ony­mous arti­cles Krups KP100610, KP1006E1
  • I don’t know how exact­ly to call this col­or, let it be sil­ver-yel­low — Krups KP 1009, arti­cle-syn­ony­mous Krups KP100910

Please note that in the price table below, all col­or options are heaped togeth­er, you need to check when going to the store. But most often it is Krups 1006 that is found on sale.

Alternative capsules Dolce Gusto

In the West, alter­na­tive Dolce Gus­to cap­sules are being sold with might and main, usu­al­ly under the brand name of large chain hyper­mar­kets like Auchan. In World­wide, this direc­tion is not devel­oped. Pic­tured are Span­ish bon­preu espres­so cap­sules

The main technical characteristics of the Dolce Gusto Krups Piccolo coffee machine:
Full instruc­tions: Down­load in for­mat pdf
Device type: Cap­sule cof­fee mak­er
Width x Depth x Height: Com­pact: 16 x 22 x 29 cm
Used cof­fee: Cap­sules Dolce Gus­to
Cof­fee grinder: Not
Brew­ing group: Cap­sule

Heater: Ther­moblock, 1500 W
Max pres­sure: 15 bar
Water tank: 0.6 l, rear access
Com­part­ment for cof­fee: 1 cap­sule, front access
Waste com­part­ment: With­out auto-reset cap­sules
Cap­puc­ci­na­tore: Not
Max­i­mum Cup Height: 15 cm
Con­trol Fea­tures: Pow­er but­ton and one con­trol lever
Oth­er fea­tures: Dairy drinks using pow­dered milk, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of prepar­ing cold drinks from cer­tain cap­sules
Col­or options: Krups KP100B — black
Krups KP1002 — white
Krups KP1006 — red
Krups KP1009 — sil­ver yel­low