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’ve been using a Barista Express for a few years and it’s been great. The only issue I’ve had is having to replace the gasket at the head(?) because it kept blowing out (10 minute job with an aftermarket replacement from Amazon). Other than that, it makes pretty good coffee and I can use whatever coffee beans I feel like.
Just get a decent coffee scale, dial it in a bit and you’re good to go.
If you are blowing the seal around the shower head, it is usually because you are locking the portafilter in too tightly. It doesn’t actually need to be fully locked right over. But yeah it’s an easy fix. My issue with the sage is that it starts the slippery slope of realising what good coffee is and then you need better beans and a better this and that. The sage is an amazing piece of equipment, well made and will last years and years being reliable and consistent.
Can it be used for regular brew too or just espresso
It makes espresso but can add water for Americano and has a steam wand for latte and cappuccino making. But pot coffee no not really.
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.
Yes. About four years ago I got an automatic espresso machine. Grinds, presses, extracts, done. Good shot everytime. Maybe not as good as an experienced person with a manual machine, but that’s not my goal. Now I can have a double oat milk Latte everyday made at home.
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 🤢
That’s exactly what happened at my office. The moldy coffee pot stayed there for about a year before someone threw the whole thing away.
We did the same. Taped it all together and carried it like it was a live bomb.
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.
My ninja coffee maker is traditional drip but you can set it to cup mode and only put enough grounds for a cup. I used to have a super automatic but they are so hard to keep clean because the grounds go everywhere inside. But reusable kerug cups make no sense when you could have a drip machine with cup settings.
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).
I WFH and only make 1 cup for myself. I don’t want a whole pot.
LPT - grind coffee into a French press before bed and add water. Leave it on the counter overnight and in the morning you will have much better coffee.
FWIW I use a regular drip coffee maker and I only ever make a cup per day. I fill my coffee mug and dump it in the reservoir, then use one of the smaller size filters and one scoop of coffee adjusted for the size of my mug. Though typing this out, I’m now thinking of getting a reusable filter basket.
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.
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.
When you say “normal coffee maker“ are you just referring to a drip/pot? Because honestly, Keurigs take up less space and require less work so if you’re going to do the drip coffee route, then you may as well just do Keurig (sustainably). The results are basically the same.
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?
Especially when you could just buy a sack of coffee instead of disposables or single use.
It can be both
Not on Lemmy.
Here you have to be angry about everything or you’re part of the problem.
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.
Aeropress for the fucking win. It’s so beautifully simple and making coffee with it is so easy.
Do you use a new paper filter every time or do you use some reusable filter for your aeropress?
Unbleached, round paper filters. Come in 300 packs. Goes into compost bin along with grounds.
Had metal, reusable ones, but accidentally tossed them out.
How did the metal ones compare? Mind you, the paper rounds are really small and compossible.
Same size as paper ones. Thin, perforated metal. Came in two gradations. Taste-wise, couldn’t tell the difference. When opening to clean, it slid off so you could wash it, then compost the coffee as usual.
Pretty handy. But somehow, I managed to dump them away. Went back to paper.
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
If you’re playing that game, you don’t need any coffee at all, so none of it is sustainable.
I mean, it’s a plant. You can grow it, and plenty of it is grown. It is objectively more sustainable than, say, coal or helium.
Please dont’t brew up coal or helium for breakfast.
But how will I make squeaky talk while enjoying my deep fried coal?
A Welshman and a Scotsman meet on a blimp and devise the stupidest idea for a gastropub…
I’m in!
How does the coffee get from where it’s grown and into the can? Where does the space to grow it come from?
Also, what are you talking about? Helium’s uses are largely medical, which is pretty far up there on the list of things we can’t do without.
Also, so what? These new coffee pods are also more sustainable than both helium and coal when you use whatever definition of sustainability you’re using
Fresh account and hardcore supporting an obvious marketing “news” article. Hmm…
Me: no coffee is environmentally sustainable or a necessity
You: damn they must be shilling for big coffee
Also you realise the fediverse isn’t large enough to justify marketing on, right?
My highest rated comment is literally condoning videogame piracy. Did you think that accusation through at all? I’m honestly baffled.
Huh? Your response doesn’t make sense. Were you intentionally ignoring the point of the op: coffee is more sustainable than non-renewable resources?
That’s like saying sunshine is free and then somebody trying to argue against that point but criticizing the price of sunscreen …
Yes because it doesn’t make any sense. Not only is the coffee industry not really all that sustainable, it’s completely meaningless to compare two types of resource in entirely different categories.
It doesn’t matter how “unsustainable” a medically necessary resource like helium is in comparison to literally any amount of environmental or social damage caused by the persuit of a luxury good.
Also, as a rebuttal to a rebuttal to the idea that canned coffee is still better it doesn’t make any sense, because the logic that “coal isn’t sustainable” could justify literally any amount of ecological damage in the coffee supply chain, thereby justifying the pods. You could chop down and burn a tree for every sack of coffee you fill, for fun, and it still probably wouldn’t be as unsustainable as coal.
Ok. You don’t understand what sustainable means. Got it.
“coal exists, so coffee is sustainable, but not coffee in pod form” is legitimately one of the dumbest things I’ve read on this site, so I’m just surprised you’re hitching your wagon to that post
You can literally just eat coffee beans and they are actually pretty good.
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.
Keurigs taste like trash though.
For real? I never drink coffee outside of the very rare frappuccino.
They’re very poor brewers, but most people like that sort of grimy mass market coffee flavor. Or just want caffeine and feel weird about taking tablets.
isn’t that a time issue? Like a lower heat and longer brew should fix that right?
Sort of. You want an even extraction most of all, and while their grinders are probably pretty good, the water coming in doesn’t saturate the grounds evenly and isn’t a consistent temperature.
That makes sense. That seems like something they should focus on at the design stage.
I figured they just used instant grounds which always taste like crap compared to real brewed coffee.
Nope, it is regular coffee grounds, but usually they’re using terrible beans. You can actually get nice third wave pods, but there’s only so much better beans can do if your brewer isn’t doing its job well.
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.
That’s really good. One of the criticisms I always see about capsules is the taste and it seems the Swiss managed to overcome it.
Awesome. I wonder why it wasn’t like this in the first place. Disposable plastics are too cheap I guess
ESE pods have been around for quite a while now, and they’ve been a great alternative to Keurig.
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
Good. Not gonna get me to buy one but good.
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.
Is it actually a cafe or just part of another establishment? What kind of cafe has a pod espresso machine? I would never go there.
It’s a restaurant run by an Italian. Not even Italian American, but a first generation immigrant.
It’s not a pod espresso machine, it’s got normal e61 group heads, perfectly capable of making great espresso if he had a grinder. But instead they use pods of pre-ground coffee that just lets the water shoot through, giving like 4:1 brew ratio.
That’s such a travesty and a waste of a good machine… Wow.
