Refilling ALDI coffee capsules, for limited edition or unavailable flavours

A few months ago I purchased a pack of Irish Cream Expressi coffee pods (capsules), which use the K-Fee pod system.

The Irish Cream pods are one of ALDI’s limited editions, which they sell from time to time and there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever be sold again.

Another limited edition that I’m trying right now is Rwanda, and both of these are shown in the adjacent photo number “1” (click image to view enlargement).

Unfortunately my wife has taken a liking to the Irish Cream flavour, and I had to inform her that when the pack of had been used up there would be no more on offer from ALDI – a problem with ALDI for lots of other items too.

Several years ago I had investigated the emptying of the pods and refilling with non-ALDI coffee flavours.

Back then my results were mixed, because all the pods that I tried had to be sealed off at the top somehow, a my experiments using cling wrap to do the sealing weren’t very satisfactory. So I fairly quickly gave up on doing any refilling.

Because of my wife’s Irish Cream impending crisis, I resumed my investigations into refilling the pods, knowing that this flavour is available from other sources.

Café Palazzo is one such source, and they also offer my favourite flavour French Vanilla shown as number “2” in the photo.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that in 2016 – unlike when I did my experiments several years ago -- most (but perhaps not all) of ALDI’s Expressi pods in 2018 come with a plastic filter that snaps into place at the top of the pod sufficiently well to prevent the ground coffee from coming out of the pod during the brewing process.

In the photo, number “3” shows a pod that has been washed out, and “4” shows a pod being refilled with French Vanilla coffee. The refilling process is a little time-consuming and a bit messy, but it’s something you can live with.

A little Web surfing (include several demos on YouTube) shows that others had alre1ady mastered this technique some years ago, and had come to much the same conclusion.

I certainly don’t claim the be the first to do this, my post is as much railing against ALDI’s attitude to not repeating Limited Edition coffee pods as much as anything else!