Anybody use a Keurig coffee brewer?

mtn wrote:

z31maniac wrote: My wife uses it. I don't drink coffee. I wish I could though, if it tasted half as good as it smelled.

I'm not sure that anyone likes it to start with. I feel like everyone starts either choking it down just to fit in, or else choking it down to stay awake as you're taking 17 hours of graduate level mathematics courses your junior year of college. It eventually becomes tolerable. Shortly after, you realize that you actually like the way it tastes.

Why did you hijack this thread talking about cigarettes?

MMM, coffee cigarettes.

On my 2nd one. The linkage got loose on the first one and it also started leaking.

If your "my K Cup" insert pukes water around, instead of through the coffee, open the hatch and remove the rubber seal around the top needle and use a flat washer to shim the seal out a bit. That worked great on mine - 3/16" if I remember right.

As for waste, Melita and PC (in Canada) now use a K Cup-like pod that's compatible with the Keurig and is only a plastic ring with the filter bonded to it. One could conceivably tear the filter and grounds portion off and compost it. The PC coffee is pretty good and these pods are cheaper than the standard K Cups.

I recently bought the Hamilton Beach Scoop machine on sale. It's a single serving machine that uses scoop-like stainless filter baskets. Cheaper to buy and run, but slower than a Keurig and a little more spattery if you have a cup that's between the two height settings. No reservoir either. Once you get the quantities sorted out, it makes a really good cup of coffee. The Keurig is so much less fiddly though.

We have a Keurig at home and one at work. I'm not a big coffee drinker but it's nice to have around in case I really need one.

The Keurig is awful for making anything tea-related, though. I tried an Earl Gray K-cup that had a nasty aftertaste, and the half-and-half (a.k.a. Arnold Palmer) I tried tasted like lawnmower clippings. I made sure to clean the needle and run some water through the system first to try and remove any coffee taste, but it didn't help.

My sisters bought a French press while they were at school in Europe. I haven't tried it yet.

Datsun1500 wrote: I got one of those for Christmas. Maybe mine was broke, but it made a lousy, luke warm cup. I went back to a French press.

The heat was good on mine, but I know people who nuke their coffee. If you're used to a French Press, you may not be able to find a sufficiently hot coffee maker. It took me some experimenting to get it the scoop machine making good coffee. You have so much more control with a French Press.

With a Keurig, you just push a button.

foxtrapper wrote: Have one, like it a lot. Coffee is expensive for it though. The refillable one is lousy (water shoots out over the side, not through the coffee grounds).

+100

put too much grounds in the refillable one and it overflows and you get dirty water in your cup, sans coffee. put a little less and the coffee is just weak. I put up with it for about a year before I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. My wife got me this filter to replace it....but its even worse.

Now I just buy a big box of the cups I like in bulk from costco. No variety, but its cheaper.

Do you guys check the Keurig site? Sometimes they have deals on the coffee. My wife got a buy two get two free deal a couple months ago.

We had a Senseo. It's nice because you don't dump a half pot of coffee every other morning, but the coffee tasted like E36 M3, IMO.

We had the Mini Keurig for about 13 months and it died. My wife then found a great deal on the B60 with the timer and such. I actually like this one because it brews really fast.

I'm not a fan of the tin foil pre-packed K-cups, I really haven't found one that tastes good or non-artificial to me. The insert the Keurig makes for brewing with your own coffee is junk. It is also inconvenient, because you have to pop out the little cup holder thing if you want to use it.

Ekobrew makes refillable cups that are pretty smart. Unlike the Keurig one, you can place it in the cup holder that regular K-cups fit into. It also has a shield around the needle/water injector that keeps coffee grounds from clogging it. Finally, it's all one piece. So you can dump the grinds, rinse it, and not have to worry about having 3 items to keep track of.

My only recommendation is to use a medium to coarse grind.

In-laws have a bigger one. I like it. I love that Wegmans now makes K-cups. A fresh single cup of doughnut shop blend is possibly the best cup of coffee I have ever had.

Other wise at home when the rare mood for coffee sets in, if I have hole bean, I bust out the french press.

akamcfly wrote: I recently bought the Hamilton Beach Scoop machine on sale. It's a single serving machine that uses scoop-like stainless filter baskets. Cheaper to buy and run, but slower than a Keurig and a little more spattery if you have a cup that's between the two height settings. No reservoir either. Once you get the quantities sorted out, it makes a really good cup of coffee. The Keurig is so much less fiddly though.

I've had one of those for a year and it's only second best to a french press for making good coffee. I believe I paid $90 for it. Even using top end beans, I'm still less per cup than a Keurig. I'm actually having some from El Salvador that tastes like dark chocolate right now. I can't drink acidic k cup coffee anymore.

neon4891 wrote: In-laws have a bigger one. I like it. I love that Wegmans now makes K-cups. A fresh single cup of doughnut shop blend is possibly the best cup of coffee I have ever had.

I miss Wegmans' subs.

Datsun1500 wrote: Now I'm starting to wonder if the one I got was broken..... You guys have had good luck with them and mine was horrible....

How much are you putting in there? Only go to the top of the metal, about half full. You also need a fine grind. I have a hand crank burr grinder and have it set just fine enough so that only a tiny bit gets through to the secondary screen. The spice grinder types are very inconsistent and it can actually change the flavor. If you don't have a burr grinder, grind it at the store.

It could be your water. I have a reverse osmosis system that is amazing. I prefer water out of the well vs spring water. Maybe get a Pur filter and run water through that before.

Also Wegmans has EXCELLENT coffee. There's very little difference between some of the really high end I've bought and Wegman's single origin.

Datsun1500 wrote: Now I'm starting to wonder if the one I got was broken..... You guys have had good luck with them and mine was horrible....

I had to play with different grinds and roasts. A French press is not the same as drip coffee and you may never get exactly what you want with anything else.

i've had a few friends that have had them, I've had a few coffees that aren't bad... the cider and hot coca is pretty good... but for coffee fresh beans, a grinder and an aeropress is MUCH cheaper and will give a far better cup of coffee... my wife received one from the in-laws for Christmas... I've re-tried a few of the variety that it came with and it was all pretty awful..

for the most part I drink hot tea... the tea i've had from the machine is just rubbish... plus I find a large part of drinking tea is the preparation process...

in fact... I think i'll go have a cup right now :)

RexSeven wrote: The Keurig is awful for making anything tea-related, though. I tried an Earl Gray K-cup that had a nasty aftertaste

Maybe Earl Gray just sucks. Have you considered that?

I resisted the idea of the Keurig for as long as I could, but my mother in law gave my wife one for Christmas and we have another at work. In fact. Keurigs have pretty much taken over in all of our firehouses. Coffee is a big part of life here. They do seem wasteful and an expensive way to get your coffee, but everybody gets to make exactly what they want and we no longer dump out half pots of old coffee.

Firehouses are great testing grounds for products of all types. They get used hard and are shown very little mercy. The machine at my station locked up on me last week. The linkage got jammed and you couldn't open or close it. It took me a while to disassemble, but I was able to save it. They are not terribly easy to work on, nor are the guts easy to clean. I ended up using Simple Green and a steamer to get everything moving smoothly again.