Keurig's new K-Rounds coffee pods are plastic-free and could finally make single-serve coffee-making sustainable
Keurig's new K-Rounds coffee pods are plastic-free and could finally make single-serve coffee-making sustainable
K-Rounds are virtually nothing but coffee
This is quite exciting in that it removes plastic waste. I see no reason why different companies can't make different shape ones to maintain their lock-in. I expect a knock-off market to pop-up, but that exists with plastic pods too. It's a step in the right direction at least.
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.
Do you have any recommendations for a specific brand?
Personally I would always recommend a ‘Sage’ or in the US ‘Breville’ Barista Express. Regularly on sale on Amazon on Black Friday or whatever but easy to setup and use for someone with no experience and simple to use daily. Was always rated as one of the best consumer espresso machines on the market.
I have a de longhi. It grinds the beans into a coffee maker handle and then it makes espresso. There is another brand that also has something similar. It works great.
You should check out getting an Aeropress. They’re cheap, easy to use, and fast.
French presses also make good coffee on the cheap, but I find it is a bit harder to tune in and get going. I got a generic press for about 30$, but they are annoying to clean.
If you are willing to spend 100-200$ on a good grinder you will get really good consistent grinds with minimal effort.
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.
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?
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 used to love my coffee maker (One of the ones with the thermos built in as the carafe) but my daughter wanted a Keurig. I was hesitant at first but I really like them now that I'm used to it.
We use reusable pods so making coffee is as cheap as before, and there's little wasted coffee that sat too long. If I want coffee I get one without worrying if my daughter might want one later, and visa versa. It's always fresh and never has to sit. And since we both don't really have regular schedules this way makes it easier than planning how much to make. It also works just as well if one of us wants tea or hot chocolate instead.
If you are on a fixed schedule and always drink the exact same amount of coffee then it's not as big of a deal though. The only real downside is if you have friends over then sometimes being able to brew a pot is less of a hassle than individually making multiple cups at the same time, but in our case that doesn't happen often enough to keep the old coffee maker out.
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.
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.
Aeropress for the fucking win. It's so beautifully simple and making coffee with it is so easy.
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
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?
They do
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.
I've seen these in hotels in Canada, but it was for use with a standard 4-cup machine
You can also order ESE pods straight from the region of Naples, Italy, they're pretty good.
Also known as ESE pods and available for order from Amazon, and coffee specialty sites!
3rd party Senseo pads are a godsend; good easy fast coffee with a paper filtered coffee pad that just decomposes. I'm sad that it didn't work out over Keurig.
I like Carte noir, but their shape is not perfect for my machine.
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.
I was surprised to learn that the store brand k-cups around here are already fully compostable. It’s just a biodegradable plastic ring with half a sphere of coffee filter on the bottom and a paper disc on top.
i imagine "biodegradable" plastics are the things that we're finding down in deep sediment layers where they shouldn't be; the ones that aren't biodegradable don't fall apart hard enough to hitch rides in water droplets.
I'd bet millions of dollars on the proposition that we don't know the answer to that question yet, if I had it.
That has always been my issue with the K cup. It isn't recyclable and isn't biodegradable.
I want a pod I can throw in the mulch.
I solved this problem by not drinking coffee. I know, it's blasphemy I don't need daily caffeine to function.
Edit: I feel like the people downvoting this have muttered the words "I can't start my day without coffee" and least once in their life.
Never had coffee in my entire life and feel like I'm the least tired person of my social circle. Caffeine is definitely not a must. It only becomes one once you consume it regularly.
Coffee will never be sustainable. We will all keep drinking it but this is just a feel good movement of making something slightly less bad than it used to be.
Coffee is slavery (true)
You can have coffee without slavery, but you can't have slavery without coffee.
🇺🇸🏃DD
