Seems I suffered in the ancient world of Mr. Coffee long enough. I have arrived.
No more finding a filter, spreading it open and filling it with the proper amount of coffee only to have it leak and put grounds in the coffee. That was good coffee but way too much work for first thing in the morning, let alone to long to wait.
Now! Bliss from this new Keurig coffee maker. My morning is so easy…
Push on button.
Open top, put little coffee cartridge in the machine.
Put your cup on the little platform.
Push the button for the LARGEST size cup.
Wait 30 secs. while it brews then fills your cup.
Drink one of the best cups of hot coffee ever. Dunkin’ Donuts good, better then 7/11 even. We’re talking really good coffee here and so easy when the eyes refuse to open in the morning.
And about every 4th cup I have to refill the water container on the machine. Easy.
Cleanup.
Open top, throw away cartridge. Nothing wet, nothing messy.
Go exchange that new snow shovel for a Keurig coffee maker and enjoy winter!
Be prepared for a lot of “Its lousy coffee” and “You’re an environmental nightmare!” comments. I can’t believe there haven’t been any yet. Maybe its the holiday cheer.
In your spare time, measure the output of all of your “brew sizes”. 4oz, 6oz, 8oz, 10oz, whatever oz. The data will come in handy later on during any troubleshooting. A 4 inch turkey lacer (stainless needle for trussing a turkey) is useful for cleaning the Kcup-poking-needle’s water injection pathwayS. And I occasionally fill the water reservoir with white vinegar in order clean the inner workings.
FYI, my brother is even more of a cheapskate than I am, and he got a reusable K-cup pod for his Keurig. He refills it with whichever coffee he prefers.
I’ve been using a Keurig for the past six months. I bought a reusable K-cup at the same time, although I haven’t had the motivaton to use it yet. I also got a carafe, which supposedly can hold up to four servings of coffee. Haven’t used that yet, either; carafe-sized pods appear to be really hard to find (although I did get a carafe-sized reusable pod for Christmas).
It really IS pretty good coffee. And now I get to grind and use those French Roast beans I bought in June…
I’m happy that you’re happy with your new machine, but I never liked them. Thirty seconds is too long to wait, and the cups are way too small for my taste. I set up my drip-coffee machine at night on a timer, so it’s ready and waiting for me when I get up. And I can pour out enough to fill the biggest mug I have.
My Wife has one. It is convenient if I just want one cup, but I warm the cup by adding coffee from the pot periodically.
We have a Krups timer pot that makes a horrendous BEEP BEEP BEEP when it starts and stops, a truly unGodly noise in the early morning.
Or any time at all, come to think of it.
I’m glad you got one that you enjoy. Traditional coffee makers, especially French presses and stovetop percolators, are a PITA to use and, especially, clean. What type of coffee do you use in it?
I got a Mr. Coffee branded keurig (or, “K-Cup-compatible instant coffee brewer”) a few years ago. I’m a bit of a coffee snob so I picked up one of the reusable Melitta filter doohickeys so I could use my own grounds (plus, unless I went to Costco the K-cups were prohibitively expensive).
I gave that thing a chance, I really did. I bought a box of Newman’s Own K-cups from Costco and bag of some locally roasted beans. The first few cups of coffee I made had an overwhelming plastic taste to it. I read online that this is sorta normal, it said to give it a good washing, run some vinegar through it, and basically wait it out. I found if I ran two cups worth of water through the machine each morning and then immediately made my coffee the plastic taste was significantly diminished. But even after 80 of the Costco K-cups and a pound of the dark roast had been put through it, the plastic taste persisted. My wife used it to make hot chocolate and could taste the plastic as well.
So I donated the machine to a church yard sale and went back to a French press.
I’m confident that the tech is sound and Mr. Coffee just makes shitty coffee makers. This past summer I picked up a Mr. Coffee 4-cup drip maker at a garage sale and… yep. Plastic tasting coffee. Tossed it in the dumpster and returned to the French press. I’ve often wondered if I would have stuck with the K-cup machine had I picked up a better brand. I’ve had excellent coffee from a Keurig at a restaurant, but I don’t know what brand of machine—or coffee—they used. My only complaint about the tech is that I like my coffee strong—I put just shy of 1 cup of grounds in the French press. The Keurig could never make it that strong.
If I knew a brand for which there was a universal consensus that there was no plastic taste in the coffee, I might give them another chance. They really are easy to use, especially at the office. But right now I’m eyeing a Technivorm Moccamaster instead. I just can’t yet justify the $300 price tag. Plus, I’m worried I’ll shell out $300 and once again get plastic tasting coffee.
I hadn’t thought about cleaning it. I’ll have to look. To me, the biggest thing is how easy it is to use in the morning. There’s a lot of flavors of coffee there, this will be fun.
I drink a lot of coffee in the morning and have a regular coffee maker with a thermal carafe that keeps it warm until I have finished it all. For that reason, I have never considered getting a Keurig. Then, one of the new hires at work brought one in and put it in the break room. She said anyone could use it. I bought some pods (is that the word?) and low and behold…a delicious cup of coffee ready in no time whenever I am on break. I am now hooked! If she ever quits and takes it with her, I shall buy my own!
The filters were costly to replace. I had to use bottled water because we have a well. I never could get the coffee as hot as I like it. I am back to a French press.
There are probably more than half a dozen Keurig threads here, but they often seem to descend into (as someone noted) people coming in to say how bad Keurig is. So a shiny clean new thread is welcome.
We’ve had a Keurig for four or five years, a couple of things I’d note. First, most of the K-cups we get are now recyclable, so that’s not an issue anymore. Second, some more boutique versions of K-cups have come out that make better coffee (in my opinion) by using a mesh basket rather than the pinhole on the bottom. Melitta makes a bunch of them I like, another is San Francisco Bay. Those are a little more expensive than the regular K-cups, but not outrageously so, and I like them (in particular the Melitta Dark Roast).
We upgraded a few years ago from a drip coffee maker to a Keurig. But then this past summer, we upgraded again to this bad boy.
Percolators seem to produce better coffee than the drips (imo), no pod waste, and it takes about a minute per cup to be ready. Plus, it just looks nicer on the counter than that big plastic contraption. We set it up on a timer, so it’s ready when we get up. Plus, I get to wake up to this as the alarm on my phone every morning, which my wife absolutely loves!
I’ve only experienced one type of problem with my Keurig. In spite of using pre-filtered water (Brita filtered pitcher), and the Keurig carbon filter, eventually, I begin to see a reduced stream of water flowing thru the Kcup holder (sans Kcup), and water exiting the overflow (silicone spigot just above the water tank) back into the water tank.
The fine ground coffee in the Kcup, or any fine, or medium, ground coffee used in the universal cup, tends to be drawn up thru the Kcup-poking-needle holes, reducing/blocking water flow at that point. Excess water will then backflow thru the overflow. Keurig recommends shoving a paperclip into the holes, but I find a turkey lacer to be stronger, and straighter with a rounded tip (no scratching).
Last year I decided to buy Mrs. L.A. a Keurig machine for her (late-November) birthday, so I ordered one. It was in transit when a Keurig commercial appeared on TV. Mrs. L.A. said, ‘Don’t buy me a Keurig machine for Christmas.’ I looked at her straight in the eye and said, ‘I did not buy you a Keurig machine for Christmas.’
Turns out, she likes it.
(I got her the reusable filter, but she’s been buying K-cups the last couple of months because they’re easier.)
I’d like to second this. Yesterday I cleaned out my machine with vinegar for the first time since I bought it (probably a decade ago), and the difference in the taste and smoothness of my coffee is measurable. From now on I’ll try to remember to clean it out every six months or so.
