A Better Way to K

 Like a lot of people, I succumbed to the convenience of Keurig coffeemakers about six or seven years ago, but I have always felt a bit guilty about the plastic waste from those little single-use K-cups. That and their expense were enough to keep me from initially jumping on the Keurig bandwagon for several years after they first came out.

I have several of the reusable K-cups that can be filled with regular ground coffee, but they've always been less than satisfactory. The coffee has always come out tasting fairly weak. My solution to date has been to add a small amount--less than a quarter teaspoon--of instant coffee to the grounds to boost the flavor without giving it that bitter instant coffee edge. Fortunately, I've now found a better way. 

For quite some time, I have suspected the coffee grounds were too coarse, so I finally decided to test my theory by getting an electric coffee grinder to grind my coffee a little finer. The grinder arrived late yesterday, so I decided to test my theory and re-grind some coarse-ground coffee to a finer state, then loading up a reusable K-cup for my morning coffee. All I can say is this is what the coffee should have tasted like all along. And with the lower cost per cup for ground coffee versus K-cups, my $10 coffee grinder should pay for itself in no time.

I'm glad to have solved this conundrum and I can now have the convenience of my Keurig with less of an environmental impact. Still, there's one other problem. I only have one single-serve reusable K-cup that works with my Keurig 2.0 brewer. The problem is the Keurig 2.0 models use a digital rights management technology to lock out unlicensed K-cups. Thankfully, the DRM scheme garnered enough consumer backlash that Keurig phased it out with the Keurig 2.0 models on which it had been introduced. There are YouTube videos out there describing which wires to cut to disable the system, but that's a little more "Mission: Impossible" than I really want to get into with my coffeemaker.

Unfortunately, that DRM system locks out most reusable K-cups as well, unless they have a lavender stripe around the lid, which only one of mine does. The others are solid black and the system doesn't recognize them. Those will soon be retired, now that I have just ordered a six-pack of Keurig 2.0 compatible reusable K-cups so that I can use loose coffee grounds instead of single-use K-cups on a more regular basis. 

From a practicality standpoint, I'll still be using single-use K-cups at work, because I don't have the time or facilities to be grinding (or in this case, re-grinding) coffee there. It may take a little while to fully transition to the reusables at home, but I will will be manageable and in time, and soon I will be going loose, instead of single-use.