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Comment by lutorm | Hacker News Reader

I think Keurig coffee is terrible, so I've never seen one of the reusable pods. But what's the point, if you are going reusable isn't it just as easy to make a normal cup of coffee?

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I've only seen 1 legitimate use for a Keurig machine. My company's office used to be on the 9th floor of a very old building (built in 1914). The plumbing is subpar and our office had no sink, despite being otherwise very nice. Having a regular coffee maker would mean cleaning it in the only restroom on our floor, which was a women's room. So we got a keurig.

Exactly. We have no sink or restroom on our "floor." (It's a floor between the first and second floors of an old warehouse.) They have a Keurig and bring gallon jugs of water. To clean a regular coffee maker would mean walking down the stairs and halfway across the building.

Along the same lines, I've seen a lot of touring light & sound techs put a coffee pod machine in their tool roadcase, so they can have good coffee right by the stage / mix position.

Keurig coffee is terrible. It violates two of the most important principles of making good coffee: time and pressure. Making good coffee in 3 seconds with a ton of pressure that destroys the bean is impossible. 10 seconds of extraction at the pressure that Keurig does it at will only ever yield flavors of "burnt" and "chocolatey-ish-I-think?"

And for the rest of us that are not coffee snobs, the Keurig is a great way to get a consistently good cup of coffee without wasting time and effort that could be better spent doing something else.

A consistently mediocre cup of coffee. I drink it every day, but it doesn't fool me into thinking it's good coffee.

Actually, by the time I put in my creamer and sugar it tastes damned good. The thing is, taste is completely subjective. I couldn't give a rat's about all the subtleties of coffee. Same for wine. I want something that tastes fine to my unsophisticated palate and I want it with minimal fuss.

This actually reminded me of a friend of my father. This friend was a chef at some over-the-top fancy (or in my book, prissy) restaurants in his heyday. Anyway he pretty much lost the ability to just eat and enjoy food because he would constantly judge it. If I recall, he would generally just eat some bread and some cured meat for most of his meals. I honestly imagine he would jump over a chance to have Soylent. My thought on the matter is that if I ever get my head that far up my ass that I can't enjoy something that tastes good because of some stupid ideal of what something "should" be, well then I've seriously screwed myself over.

I've never heard this "pressure destroys the bean" theory.

Are you claiming all espresso is burnt or chocolatey?

Espresso machines are designed much differently and as accordingly they are several hundred to several thousand dollars. Really you're looking at $1000 and up for a decent espresso machine in my opinion. And don't even get me started on the amount of skill it requires to pull good espresso shots consistently. Between grind size, tamp, the bean and altitude you have a lot to deal with.

It's because it is also linked to temperature, the higher your pressure the higher your boiling point. It also effects how fast the fluid travels through the ground coffee which effects not just how strong it is but also can have an effect on the balance of what has diffused from the ground and various other characteristics.

There's a lot that can go into making a good cup of coffee. New Zealand (where I'm from) has one of the higher coffee shops per capita in the world (mostly non chain) and you may be surprised how much a coffee can change from barista to barista even using the same beans in the same shop. If you're spending the money every day on that little moment of luxury you can notice the difference. (Whether or not it's suffering from the same biases in experience as expensive wine can I'll leave for someone else to speak on).

Yes! The one with the tattoos always makes the best coffee. If 2 have tattoos, the grumpy one does it better. Once you do your own espresso for a while it become a ritual such that extraction can be very consistent.

I don't know about the other folks hanging around these parts, but I'll go along with that claim. It's also caffeine deficient.

While I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate given that I don't like Keurig coffee much, your numbers are so far off that you're being kind of unfair. It takes about 35 seconds to brew an eight-ounce cup of coffee, not ten seconds (or three!), and AFAIK only uses about 1.5 bars of pressure, hardly enough to "destroy the bean." This isn't that far off from the speed and pressure that an Aeropress brews with, and it's really a fairly comparable method.

"But (nearly) everybody loves the Aeropress! It can't be comparable!"

I'd argue the Keurig's weak spot is not the brewing methodology, it's the coffee itself. The K-Cups are sealed with nitrogen and do their best to stay fresh, but no matter how many tricks you use to try and preserve the flavor of coffee that was ground three months before you brew it, it's going to take a massive quality hit -- and y weren't starting with beans that would bowl a coffee snob over in the first place. When I actually used the correct amount of fresh ground coffee from a good roaster, though, it produced a surprisingly good cup of coffee. And I've cut open a K-Cup and brewed the coffee within using a French Press; what came out tasted, well, a lot like what you'd expect out of a Keurig, just s slightly grittier.

(Then the pump broke and I bought a Chemex and lived happily ever after. The end.)

I actually don't like aeropress either. I found it convenient to use early on in my coffee obsession days but I find it has several flaws. The two biggest in my opinion are the filter actually being too good at filtering and the body of the aeropress dissipating heat poorly.

I use the Chemex when we have company over, it's the best combination of quantity and quality that I have found so far. As for one to two servings, I swear by the Kalita Wave[0]

0 - http://kalita-usa.com/wave_series.html

I do like the Aeropress, although it took me a while to decide that. My quibble with it was that I tend to brew twelve-ounce cups and it really doesn't seem to be that good at that. (And I think I know what you mean about the filter.)

I've heard good things about the Kalita Wave, but I'm not sure I want to add another coffee brewing device to the collection at this point. :)

I have a Keurig but buy my "pods" from various other sources which are cheaper. I think they taste good in general and are very consistent and quick to make.

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