excellent idea. we have the same crap at work. i have a single cup french press that i use at work. i saw some people who do the same. that flavia gives me a headache whenever i drink it. the problem with using ground coffee, you don't know what's added for flavors on top of coffee.
I love good coffee. For a short period of time, I became obsessed with it. Here is what I have learned. Good coffee is about extracting as much flavor from the beans without getting too much of the bad stuff that causes coffee to be very bitter. Bad coffee results from not using enough beans for the amount of water (sour and weak) or not keeping the beans in contact with the water at a high enough temperature for a long enough period of time to get a proper extraction of flavor (bitter and bland). Unless you spend over 200 bucks, cheap drip machines like Mr. Coffee don't really get the water hot enough for a proper extraction, don't steep the coffee long enough, and don't hold enough coffee grounds to make a proper pot without overflowing the filter. I can get half a pot of decent coffee out of a drip machine, but it takes some work. French press machines are cheap, but you need a very good grinder to get a nice coarse grind without a lot of irregular bits and coffee dust. Because there's no filter, the worse your grinder, the more silt you have in the bottom of your cup. Making french press coffee takes time and concentration, and is a pain to clean up. My method involved weighing the coffee, heating the water, weighing the water (to get the proper 16:1 weight ratio of water to beans), and timing the extraction. Great results, but a pain in the butt every morning. An aeropress is a great tool to make coffee. You can make concentrated coffee that is similar to espresso and there's no silt because of the filter. Cleanup is a breeze, but it's even more complicated to use than the french press, and you only make one cup at a time. I used to be a doubter of the Keurig, but we got one for Christmas, and it's become my go-to tool in the mornings. It's a bit expensive per use, but buying in bulk online gets the price down to about 55 cents per cup. The secret is to use either dark or extra-bold medium roast k-cups and use either the smallest or second-smallest brew setting. If you want more coffee to fill your cup, use two k-cups. The Keurig allows my wife and I to drink different blends at different strengths, back to back, and cleanup is a breeze. If our Keurig broke, I'd buy another one.
Had a K-cup Keurig and since moved to the Vue-cup. Gets you a bit hotter and arguably stronger cup. Also has the ability to do "cafe drinks" (I only like black coffee, but my wife and daughters say the cafe drinks are good... whatever. Completely agree on the preferred flavors being the strongest ones... I like Sumatran, Dark Magic, and Emeril's. Downside... Keurig treats the newer Vue model as its redheaded stepchild. Limited coffee selections and you can't buy Vue cups at grocery stores (only at Bed, Bath, and Beyond). I suspect Keurig soon come out with a third design that will kill off the Vue.
Yup, that sucks. But at least BBB always has those nice coupons. My wife makes a killer iced coffee with that thing.
The branding of the packets changed to Alterra a while ago but still exactly the same other than the name.
No problem. Just recognize one guy instantly knew where to get green beans (and rolls with a Speedster machine) and these other punters talkin bout keurig.
I only drink dark. No matter how many cups I drink, it has no effect on me. Anyone else. Actually, it makes me sleepy at times. I am pretty resistant to alcohol too. So much drinking is macho. I think it has to do genes.
Yeah, really. You can get a good-enough cup of coffee out of a Keurig if you buy good k-cups and you don't use the largest cup setting. It won't be transcendent, but it will be consistent and fast. I don't live in a big city, meaning the best beans I can get locally are Starbucks or Duncan, so there's only so much I can expect out of a cup of coffee made with any method. I'd rather sleep an extra ten minutes a day than try to squeeze a little bit more out of mediocre beans using an all-manual brewing method.
Thanks for the info. For some reason, the Keurig stuff never grows on me. I still like the old fashion brewed coffee. I do drink black though.
I use Flavia coffee as my air freshener in the office. I love the smell of the coffee, so I would brew a cup in the morning and dump it to my trash can under the table. Works perfectly.
Gents, Been drinking freshly roasted coffee beans and it is really really good. I used to use creamer on my coffee but this time i'm drinking it black, the flavor is so pure, it's dark but not bitter at all. this morning i tried my keurig, two different flavors, I couldn't drink it anymore. give it a try.
Big Coffee fan here. After 10 years of drinking coffee I still can't master the perfect taste that I like. I use a french press and grind my own beans (when I'm at home anyway). The coffee grinds usually smell great, like being inside of starbucks but once you brew it, it doesn't have that roasted coffee taste anymore. Every now and then I will get that perfect roasted taste but it's luck. I usually set mine in the french press for 4 minutes before I press and serve. The roasted smell and flavor I like is like the Mcdonalds ice coffee but I don't drink that too often because it's loaded with cream and sugar.
