Why is keurig so good

Avoid the eight-ounce option whenever you can. You're essentially just watering down your coffee, since it's the same amount of grounds regardless of how much liquid you use. If you're feeling guilty about all the waste, Keurig offers a K-Cup recycling program.

A cup of joe from a Keurig can be notoriously bitter. The tiniest bit seriously, just a pinch creates a chemical reaction and mellows out the acidity and makes for a noticeably smoother taste. The selection of ready-made Keurig pods leaves a lot to be desired. Get yourself a My K-Cup reusable filter , where you can use freshly ground or pre-ground beans of your choosing with the same instant gratification you've become dependent on.

Got a 2. This genius tutorial shows you how to get around that. Okay, you bought a My K-Cup. Things are starting to look up, but you still want a bolder brew. You can take your reusable filter even further by inserting the body of a used K-Cup into it. Creating a double chamber keeps the water in longer and enhances the extraction process.

It's gonna take a bit of effort, but you can read a step-by-step guide right here. Another way to get around Keurig's pesky DRM-reader which, in newer machines, will only brew authorized Keurig pods printed with a specialized ink is with the Freedom Clip , which attaches inside and effectively tricks your Keurig into thinking every pod is the real deal. Because coffee should be about the people, damnit! Some of the unpleasant flavors in Keurig coffee are the result of bacteria build up.

Keep your machine in tip-top shape by running white vinegar through it. Fill the entire chamber with vinegar, and continue to brew cups until it runs out. Then, run some plain water through it to remove any vinegary taste, and you're good to go. I see the draw. However, now I think coffee is so much more enjoyable when you take the time to brew it yourself. You notice how every little change actually makes a pretty big difference in the way your coffee tastes.

So, I stand somewhere in the middle I guess. I get the convenience aspect of it and I want everybody to have good coffee. While the keurig might not brew the best coffee in the world, there are some things you can do to get the most out of it while also being environmentally conscious.

No matter the brew method,making a good cup of coffee follows a few basic rules. Buying whole beans and grinding fresh will always produce a better cup than pre-ground coffee.

Water temperature, grind size and brew time all work together. Your coffee to water ratio is a very important thing to get right.

You might be surprised what a few ounces of extra water would do to your overall taste. The ratio of coffee you are brewing with is uncontrollable to you, outside of choosing the size of your cup ,if you are brewing with standard, prefilled Kcups. By purchasing reusable Kcups you can not only choose the amount of coffee used but you can change the grind size too. The roast type and original density of the bean will determine the weight of your coffee. The generally accepted ratio of water to coffee is Now, this is just a guideline, your tastes will be completely unique to you.

So you will have to adjust to how you prefer coffee. We know how coffee and water interacts with each other and a good starting ratio to making a perfect cup with our keurig. Not only is it better for the environment but by using the reusable cups you gain lots of control.

You are able to grind and dose the coffee yourself. To figure out how to get a ratio we need to first measure how much water is actually coming out of our keurig. The K-Classic can make 6-, 8-, , and ounce cups of coffee, but we found anything larger than a 6-ounce cup tasted laughably watery. Like all Keurigs aside from the K-Mini, which is around the size of a blender, the K-Classic is a bulky machine that takes up about as much room on your counter as a drip coffee maker.

The K-Classic suffers from many of the same flaws as the other Keurigs we tested. The machine makes a terrible gurgling noise as it brews, and the resulting stream spatters past the drip tray and onto the machine and countertop.

Twice as expensive as our budget cup coffee maker , the K-Classic costs more to do less. Unlike Nespresso machines, which use minimal amounts of water to make small espresso drinks, all Keurigs guzzle water for each cup and require near-constant refills.

Slightly more expensive than a Keurig, the Instant Pod is the only machine that can brew both K-cups and Nespresso capsules. The Instant Pod 2-in-1 Single Brew Coffee and Espresso Maker brews both Keurig K-cups and Nespresso capsules, making it a good—and the only—option for households who want both in one machine.

Made by the company that makes Instant Pot multi-cookers , the Instant Pod can brew Keurig coffees in 8-, , and ounce sizes. The machine can also brew Nespressos in 2-, 4-, and 6-ounce sizes, which are roughly equivalent to the espresso drinks a basic Nespresso machine can make.

The Instant Pod is user friendly to beginners, with a grid of one-touch buttons on the top of the machine specific to each brew size. It was hard at first to tell that the buttons are touchscreen, which led us to press them hard several times to no effect.

But if you press the button lightly, it will begin blinking to indicate the machine is warming up, and then brew your coffee. The rectangular Instant Pod is approximately the same size as the K-Classic, though a little narrower and deeper. The Instant Pod has a one-year limited warranty that covers manufacturer defects, which is equivalent to the warranty on Keurig machines.

Like the Labradoodle , Keurig is one of those things whose inventor regretted ever creating. Making good on their commitment to make all their pods recyclable by , Keurig now makes cups using 5 plastic, also known as polypropylene. This is an improvement over the previously used 7 plastic , or polystyrene, which comprises a cocktail of plastics that cannot be recycled.

To understand exactly what this means, we interviewed Steve Alexander, the president of The Association of Plastic Recyclers. Polyethylene terephthalate 1 , high-density polyethylene 2 , and polypropylene 5 are the most valuable plastics currently in the recycling stream and therefore the most likely to get recycled.

But 1 and 2 plastics, which can be found in soda bottles and milk jugs, respectively, have historically larger markets and are more commonly recycled than 5 plastic. To recycle a recyclable K-Cup, you need to peel off the lid and remove the grounds and paper filter with your fingers. The lid can be recycled with other aluminum products, but Alexander says any remaining foil from these lids acts as a contaminant to the plastics recycling process and could affect whether the pods are sorted correctly to be recycled.

Most materials recovery facilities have filtering grates with holes so large that anything smaller than 2 inches across will slip through and end up in a landfill. All this could change. But in our testing, the reusable filter still made watery, disappointing coffee that lost many of the tasting notes we noticed when brewing the same coffee using a drip or pour-over setup.

At this point, you might as well use a real coffee maker, which will make better coffee anyway. While most Nespressos make concentrated, espresso-like drinks rather than a big cup of coffee, the cheapest Nespresso we recommend can make a drink called a lungo—an espresso made with double the amount of water—for people who dislike the strength of espresso.

And our upgrade pick can brew two sizes of Americanos, a diluted espresso drink more similar to coffee than an espresso. If you like both Keurig and Nespresso, the Instant Pod will make both. Unlike Keurig, Nespresso uses aluminum capsules, which are much more easily recycled than plastic. Nespresso also offers a recycling program that makes it easy to ship your pods free of charge to a Nespresso site that will take care of everything for you.

Nespresso also works with reusable capsules—there are many brands, but we tried Sealpods —but we found the resulting coffee tasted a little weak. Each process takes a little longer than Keurig, but the brew time for either is still under five minutes.

In , Keurig released a new 2. This feature is frankly ridiculous. And even if you think you only want to make one cup at a time, a drip coffee maker is a better bet if you end up drinking multiple cups of coffee a day.

But the water reservoir system left too much room for human error, as it would brew a cup of coffee with however much water happened to be in the tank. So when we forgot to check for leftover water before adding more to the reservoir, the K-Mini gushed ounce cups of coffee that spilled all over the counter and tasted even more like water than a normal Keurig coffee. In testing, we liked the K-Select the most because it offers a button for a stronger brew that makes coffee that tastes more like what coffee is supposed to taste like.

Many reviewers complained that after a few weeks of use the K-Select uncontrollably spews cold water as soon as you press the power button.