For fast easy machine single-serve, get a machine that takes beans. They cost about three pod-machines but they're worth it. The pod-machines are cheaper because they come with vendor lock-in for the pods, and they just profit more on those instead.
It's not as convenient, but a moka pot makes the best single serving coffee I've experienced. You can get a small version for less than $30. It takes me less than 5 minutes to make a barista level cup, and even the more expensive coffee is going to cost less than 50 cents per serving.
The only downside is the coffee is highly caffeinated--nearly espresso levels. So you're forced to add water if you just want a "cup" of coffee and it's more of an Americano-style. But the taste beats the shit out of drip or Keurig cups...imo.
Ah a fellow moka pot enthusiast! You tell 'em!
I’ve never been able to get good moka pot coffee, but I’ve gotten good aeropress and french press coffee. I’ve got friends who swear by their moka pot and they’ve served me some excellent coffee.
French press, aeropress, and moka are all good ways to get single servings of coffee. It will always beat kuerig coffee, even freshly ground kuerig coffee.
Unfortunately, french press coffee is often silty, but if you are drinking kuerig coffee, you are probably also drinking silty coffee.
FYI, espresso has roughly the same level of caffeine as a cup of coffee per serving, granted a serving of espresso is a lot smaller than a cup of coffee.
If you want some good coffee you can get somewhat cheaply in bulk, Cafe Zapatista is great, ethical, and you are supporting indigenous mayan communities in Chiapas 😊. I get 3 pound bags every other month. Just know the bag isn’t resealable.
I just use the resuable pods. Can throw any coffee grounds in them, dump them in the compost when done, rinse, and use again. Have used these for at least 5 years.
The biggest area this will be a win in is offices. Areas where groups of different people with different tastes gather and can pick a coffee that’s better suited to their taste. Having reusable k pods is nice, but when people don’t frequently work in there, or don’t realize a keurig is available they might not have one. Although I V60 everyday so this has no real personal impact.
Areas where groups of different people with different tastes gather and can pick a coffee that’s better suited to their taste.
Also places where people have different concepts of cleanliness
Flashbacks of the mold infested coffee machine in my first office that just stood there for half a year with the old grounds still inside. Everyone ignored it and made coffee downstairs where someone else had to clean it 🤢
True. In my office, they provided a Keurig but you had to bring your own pods. I'd just fill up 2 or 3 of my reusable ones and bring those with me, but your point is definitely valid (especially for offices that provide coffee pods).
This might be a really stupid question, but if you're going to use reusable pods, why not just... Use a classic Mr. Coffee-style coffee maker that has been around for decades?
Because Jill in accounting has no clue how to make coffee, yet always gets to the coffee pot first.
This see-through abomination was the final straw before I switched to using the office keurig.
That's some sparkling coffee if I've ever seen it lmao, did they throw out 3 pots first before using the same grounds for that pot?
Cause a k cup is pretty convenient if you just want a cup and don't want to clean the pot regularly. The main drawback is the actual leftover k cup, if it was made out of some thing that would decompose it would be a lot better for the environment. Not saying that the Mr. Coffee isn't cheaper, but I'm not paying for the coffee, so convenience ranks higher on most priority lists.
I've got two: One Keurig which was a gift and an off-brand single-cup coffee maker that uses pods. I'm the only coffee drinker in the house, so one cup at a time is about right (and uses less energy than keeping a carafe warm all morning).
So that's just using a normal coffeemaker basically - putting ground coffee in a filter.
I just use a normal coffeemaker, with good coffee. Keurigs are a scam IMO. It's really not hard to learn how much water to pour in and coffee scoops to put into the filter to make a small pot of coffee. Cone filter style is better than the basket style for that and for taste
Lol, basically. But it lets me fill up the pods and use it in either my single-cup coffee maker or take it to the office and put it into the Keurig there.
I guess there's the benefit that it doesn't require a disposable paper filter, though.
Just to be clear, it was always "finally" able to be sustainable - it just wasn't profitable.
Now that they've saturated the market with makers they can "finally" keep the profits rolling with something that kills the planet less.
Yes! We can finally buy our way out of unnecessary waste, and ultimately climate change, with this new thing that keeps us buying. Just gotta buy the ecological things and everything will be good.
I hear you and ultimately we all have our own versions of utopia. But it doesn't stop us celebrating small steps in the right direction just because we're not at our destination.
Is it a step in the right direction, or is it a refinement to the sinister system that is sending us down the drain?
Or we could stop putting the onus on consumers and demand manufacturers/producers actually do the right thing. Even Keurig said they're still making the plastic pods. The actual answer is regulation.
We need to stop excusing the "it's too expensive to be green" bullshit. If it's too expensive not to poison the planet then it's not economically feasible.
It's like saying "it's too expensive to not put poison in our food", then you shouldn't be making food.
Team Aeropress here.
Good to see Keurig try to cut down on plastic waste, but if they really wanted to make an impact, they could open-source the design of the pods so all the alt-cup manufacturers could switch as well. It may be counter-intuitive, but the more options customers have, the more machine sales and goodwill Keurig will create.
Make it sustainable in pod form specifically. Pour over, drip, French/aeropress seem pretty sustainable. Especially of you use a mesh filter.
Everything in context though. Even if you use a paper filter for coffee every day, the overall paper usage in a year is like the equivalent of what, maybe 2-3 print NYTimes Sunday editions?
“Sustainable”
Coffee can, single piece of packaging for months on end.
Vs.
K-cups, paper, dyes, increased packaging volumes, increased energy in production, increased raw materials, 6 month shelf life = increased trips to the store to purchase more. Sustainable /s
An here I've been making single serve coffee in a French press my whole life.
Ah finally a sane person. Why is normal coffee no longer an option? It doesn't even take any longer unless you grind it by hand.
And it's so much better.
In Switzerland we got something similar, it's little balls though. It comes packaged in cardboard and you can compost the remains https://www.coffeeb.com/en-ch
Oh, cool! How's the coffee?
It's actually pretty good, don't own a machine but have tried it a couple times. It's also comparable in cost to normal capsules.
Awesome. I wonder why it wasn't like this in the first place. Disposable plastics are too cheap I guess
Would like to see this for more than just coffee. Although, the knock off Keurig I have came with a filter cup thing that acts like a reusable pod, so I don't really need the single serve plastic cup pods anyway. I can just put tea, coffee, hot cocoa, etc in that mesh cup and then clean it afterward.
Do official Keurigs not have that?
ESE pods have been around for quite a while now, and they've been a great alternative to Keurig.
Good. Not gonna get me to buy one but good.
Noone else is using Senseo dosettes ?
I think I've only seen these in France, which is crazy because it's such a simple and elegant solution to this "problem".
Senseo is everywhere in the EU. Personally, I rank it below homemade filter coffee though.
All coffee pods are garbage.
Especially espresso pods. There's a place around here that has a 20,000 dollar espresso machine, that serves over-extracted espresso because the owner felt pods were easier or something.
Technology for a Solar-Punk future.
Airships and hydroponic farms...