At home or at the bar? Where is the best place to drink Borbone coffee?

Drinking Caffè Borbone: At home or at the bar? What’s your ideal place?

If you’re wondering where drinking Caffè Borbone is best, the real answer is: it depends on what you’re looking for. At the bar, you’ll find ritual, service, and the skill of a barista; at home, you’ll get convenience, consistent flavor, and more predictable costs.
In both cases, Borbone has developed products and formats to ensure an espresso that lives up to expectations: from ESE pods, now also compostable, to capsules compatible with the main home systems such as Nespresso®, Lavazza®, and Dolce Gusto®, to coffee beans, suitable for both professional use and fully automatic home machines. Each blend is calibrated to offer the same intensity and creaminess typical of barista coffee, thanks to constant monitoring of the roasting and packaging in a protective atmosphere.

 

Drinking Caffè Borbone: quality and experience between bars and home

Let’s talk about the quality of coffee in the cup: The difference isn’t “intrinsic” to the location: with consistent blends and the right parameters, the result can be excellent both at the bar and at home. The Italian espresso standard, defined by the INEI (Italian National Espresso Institute), indicates a cup of approximately 25 ml (±2.5), an extraction time of around 25 seconds (±5), a pressure of 9 bar (±1), and 7 g (±0.5) of ground coffee. These are also useful guidelines for home machines, which now replicate these values ​​with good reliability.

Home formats: “Just like at the bar”

Caffè Borbone ESE pods are renowned for their taste and quality, they contain 7.2 g, are packaged in a protective atmosphere to preserve aroma and flavor, and, as a practical tip, are compostable, so you can dispose of them in your organic waste. The same blends (Blu, Oro, Nera, Rossa, Dek) are also available in A Modo Mio-compatible capsules and in a Compostable Line that expands the “green” selection.

Professional Equipment

In-store coffee shops, group machines and grinders are used, allowing for fine adjustments to grind, dose, and time. Borbone also offers beans for professional and vending use (500g/1kg bags) in various blends, allowing bars to set the extraction to their preferred profile and ensure consistent volumes.

User Experience

At the bar, the barista’s skill and speed of service are what count; At home, you play with precision using pods/capsules or automatic machines, prioritizing consistency and convenience. For many users, the “cream and body” effect of Borbone blends in pods/capsules is very similar to that of a barista, thanks to the selection of the finest beans, meticulous processing, and standardization of the single-serve process.

Choosing the Blend

Simply put: Oro is balanced and rounded, Blu is smooth and full-bodied, Nera is intense, Rossa is more assertive (often with a high percentage of Robusta), and Dek is the decaffeinated blend designed to retain its aroma. These indications are recurring in official product sheets and retail catalogs.

Costs: What to Really Consider

In 2024, a cup of coffee at a bar averaged around €1.18 (with significant local variations: from ~€0.95 to ~€1.36); monitoring for 2025 indicates an average of around €1.22 in April and projections towards €2 by the end of 2025 in various urban contexts.

At home, however, the cost of each cup prepared with Borbone pods/capsules varies based on the price of the pack, which depends on the format and official promotions. However, generally, the cost remains lower than continuous consumption at a bar, especially for families or the office.

In conclusion: drinking Caffè Borbone at a bar means enhancing service and socializing, relying on the barista’s expertise and the convivial atmosphere that only a public place can offer. Doing it at home gives you control over spending and taste, with the ability to choose the format, blend, and intensity according to your preferences, without sacrificing the in-cup result thanks to the consistent quality of Borbone products.

The best choice is often a hybrid: the bar for the pleasure of the moment and human interaction, and home for the daily routine with the same blends you know and love, prepared conveniently and always available.