We stayed at the Red Lion in Anaheim last week, and the room had a Keurig machine in it. We had cups of coffee and English Breakfast tea.
I had a cuppa tea, but mostly I drank the coffee. I liked it. But there were things I didn’t care for.
You had to do things in a certain sequence. Open the coffee holder and insert the cup. Close that, and the water compartment opens. Put the water in and close the lid, and then press the Brew button. Except if you get distracted you have to power up again and start over. Obviously you don’t have to put in a new cup or water, but you have to open the compartments and close them. I didn’t like that.
And it only makes one cup. I need like two double cups just to get started.
Finally, it seems wasteful. Seems like the cups take up a lot of space and create a lot of waste for a single cuppa joe.
My old workplace had one in the break room. It was kinda nifty, but messy. As you note, it generates a lot of trash. Still, it comes with a lot of really fun flavors.
The creator of the K-cup sort of regrets it: Inventor of K-Cups regrets the idea
I work for a non-profit that is very eco-conscious (as in, we collect and take our own recycling directly to the facility because we think the City’s program is a joke), and we would never consider the K-cup model for our own kitchen. Something about the Nespresso brand being recyclable, but it’s still waste that doesn’t need to be created in the first place. A bunch of us have hot pots and make tea at our desks. Company provides tea bags, many of us have our own. Coffee machine in the kitchen is a Bunn and it will stay that way (albeit with a brand new one) in our new building when we move in May.
My other workplace has a Keurig machine with those re-usable cups. I hate them but more because there’s just two, and people suck at cleaning. So a dirty one in the sink all the time and the one in the machine that’s freaking hot because someone just used it. I’ve been taking my own coffee to that job for over a year now. Blah!
I hate them because there’s no way to get a really strong cup of coffee out of one. You can get “bolder” flavors (really means “Bitter, burnt coffee beans”) but you can’t put MORE coffee in the holder.
I never would have bought a Keurig myself, but we received one as a gift last Christmas. It’s earned a spot on our kitchen counter. If you’re concerned about the waste/cost factor, we use regular coffee grounds in a reusable K-cup. The only con to the reusable pods is they always let some grounds into the cup, but I don’t mind.
I always looked askance at the home models because you can brew three sizes of coffee, all with the same amount of beans. Like Goldilocks’ bears, only one can be “just right.”
I really enjoy the one we have in my office, or at least I enjoy the idea of it. Sharing, well, anything with 12 people you wouldn’t other wise cross the street to piss on if they were on fire rarely turns out well. Apparently “official coffee machine water replacer” is part of my job description. And, I know it’s not a huge thing, but ferfucksale people, take your goddamn used coffee grounds out of the machine when you’re done. Grrrrrrrrr. The last place I worked was worse. No one could grasp the concept that it’s made so you can leave it on, due to the automatic shutoff. Those drawbacks aside, which are certainly not the fault of the product, I think they’re nifty, precisely because one of the larger size cups is about all I need / can handle and I do tend to like my coffee on the milder side.
Johnny, I had the same issue the first time I used one as far as turning it on in the right order and I’ve shown at least three people how to use it in the last few months. That does seem a bit of a design flaw.
I recently gave my Keurig away for all the negative reasons stated above. It’s perfect for a person who drinks a cup of coffee every once in a while, but I drink quite a bit and like it a certain way (strong-ish) so I went back to a really nice Mr. Coffee and normal filters.
I like my keurig for what it does well. I also like my Mr Coffee drip, Breville espresso machine, French press devices, percolators, vacuum globe thing, plastic cone drip device, etc.
I recently bought a Black & Decker Cafe Select and I can brew K-cup between 6-20 oz in a pod or reusable or I can brew a full pot of coffee. It keeps a reservoir of water so I don’t have to refill constantly. I like having the flavor varieties and can still opt for a full pot when I want to. It also came with a mammoth coffee thermos.
If it lasts (it replaced a Flexbrew that malfunctioned after 5 months) - it’s by far my favorite coffee maker ever…
They make several models of Kurig machines and I’m not sure which one I have as it’s at least two years old. It has a reservoir and brews four cup sizes, using the same amount of coffee of course.
Some companies make “cups” that are naked on the bottom with no plastic, just a filter. I tend to use those as there is less plastic involved.
I normally drink one cup of coffee a day so the Kurig is great for me.
FYI, this is only for the small model which I’ve only seen in hotel rooms. The standard models have large water reservoirs, so you don’t have to pour water in it every time. You just open the coffee holder, insert the cup, close it and hit the Brew button.
Unless you use the power-save (auto-off) feature. In which case the sequence is: hit the Power button, wait for it to warm up, THEN open the coffee holder, insert the cup, close the holder and hit the Brew button. (If you insert the cup first, you need to open/close the holder before it responds to the Brew button.)
This must be the hotel model. The standard models have a water compartment so you can make many cups without refilling it. Ours at work must be plumbed because it is never out of water. I love it but then I like my coffee mild.
I have no problem with the design/interface, but I’m about to give mine away because I hardly ever use it. I’ve never been a coffee drinker, but I got it a couple of years ago for the occasional hot chocolate/hot tea. My thinking was that when I craved chocolate, a mug of hot cocoa would be better for me than candy. (And I’m one of those people whose food/drink choice has nothing to do with the season: I’ll drink hot chocolate in the summer and have ice cream in the winter.) Turns out I use it so infrequently that the K-cups tend to expire, plus I find that I use it mostly just for hot water – to make instant oatmeal, soup, etc. So I’m planning to replace it with an electric kettle.
We have one and love it - but our household has a coffee drinker and a tea drinker, and our beverage patterns are such that having a coffee maker is deeply inefficient. My husband wants one cup in the morning with breakfast, another when he gets home from work and a third after dinner. So a 7:00am cup, a 5:00pm cup and an 8:00pm cup. Three cups of coffee separated by more than 12 hours doesn’t go well with a normal coffee maker.
I don’t drink coffee at all - and prefer my tea iced. I hate making a pitcher of iced tea because I don’t drink more than half of it before it gets skunky.
I was given a Tassimo by a friend moving out of the country and after a few months of overpriced bad coffee I shunted it off to the corner and went back to my french press.
