

Yet all beans are not created equal with a Keurig brewer. (Follow the math above for the cup size.) You’ll also need fresh beans, nothing older than three weeks past the roast date. You’ll need a burr grinder to ensure an even grind, as well as a scale to know how much coffee you ultimately dump into the reusable filter.

It could have been a sign the coffee’s oils had become oxidized, despite the high-tech packaging. One pod, a Colombia Huila from Laughing Man, tasted particularly foul to Finkelstein, who thought it went down like rancid oil. We brewed numerous K-Cup pods that contained off flavours. It’s the only way to guarantee fresh coffee. Article content Jim Wells / Postmedia Networkĭitch the pods altogether and grind your own beans. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The company’s packaging gives the pods a shelf life that’s the envy of the caffeinated world: Keurig’s “coffee products can be experienced at the highest standards of quality within a 24-month window,” she notes. What one coffee drinker deems the “highest standards of quality” can be another’s brown dreck “The coffee for each K-Cup® pod is roasted, packaged and sealed with an aluminum lid which is resistant to moisture, oxygen and light after being nitrogen-flushed to help ensure freshness,” emails Doyle. The K575 machine allows you to brew cups much larger than five or eight ounces, which will contribute to weak and under-extracted coffee with these pods.Ĭlearly, the machine presents challenges, and that’s not even taking into account the freshness of the coffee. The Ethiopia Yirgacheffe should yield, at most, about eight ounces of coffee. Put this in context: Those 9 grams of breakfast blend should, at most, yield 5.4 ounces of coffee. Experts argue about the perfect ratio of coffee grounds to water but generally agree that for one part coffee, you should use between 15 and 18 parts water. We weighed the contents in eight pods, and they ranged from 9 grams (Keurig Green Mountain breakfast blend) to 13.1 grams (Keurig Green Mountain organic Ethiopia Yirgacheffe). Joe Raedle / Getty Images / Photo Illustrationīut we also had to determine the amount of coffee inside those K-Cup pods, and the only way to do that was to rip them open. Keurig spokeswoman Amy Doyle says the K575 heats water to between 187 to 197 degrees, but when we measured the stream without a pod installed, the hottest temperature we recorded was 187 degrees.īy using the “strong” brew feature and grinding beans fairly fine into a reusable K-Cup filter, we were able to extend the brew time to 1 minute 30 seconds, still a minute short of the optimal time. The Keurig K575 machine was deficient on both, despite a feature that allows you to control water temperature.
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(The water temperature can fluctuate plus or minus five degrees, while the brew time can extend to 3 minutes.)
