Nespresso Vertuo Orange Blinking Light Not Reading Pod Barcode

Your Nespresso machine may not be able to read the coffee pod barcode, and in that case you will notice an orange blinking light error. In this case generally there will be two orange flashes (on the Nespresso Vertuo Plus machine). There may be other reasons that the orange light flashes on the machine and will not make coffee and I review them in this Blog Post.

Each Nespresso coffee pod has a unique barcode on the underneath circular portion pictured here. This tells the machine the coffee blend, brewing parameters, and optimal water volume to use when making each cup of coffee.

When the pod is placed in the machine the machine reads the pod with an optical sensor and scans it to determine the brewing parameters. Many times, what may happen is that the clear area on the bottoms covered in clear plastic just right underneath the pod will get coffee or gunk on it and the optical reader is unable to read the coffee barcode.

* With the lid to the machine open it is a good idea to make sure the rotating sharp puncture splines are able to rotate above.

What you will want to do if you have any buildup here is to take a damp Q tip, I just dipped both sides of one in water, but you can use alcohol or a cleaning solution if have stubborn stains and let fully dry if using one of those. As shown in the picture clean all the way around under this pod cup holder there is a clear plastic shelf which the optical sensor shines through. If it is not clean then it wont be able to read the pod to brew the coffee.

You may need to use multiple Q tips to clean off this area. If you are unable to reach the backside of the plastic shelf you can rotate it with your finger to reach all sides of it to clean.

(Links to products are Amazon affiliate links, and I receive a small commission at no cost to the buyer) See below for the YouTube full video of how to do this.