131–140 of 180 posts
Regular Coffee: Grounds inside a tin can you scoop. Depending on your process, a thin paper filter. Coffee to volume is very dense for shipping. Pod Coffee: Single use plastic pods with a foil lid inside a plastic bag inside a cardboard box. Coffee to volume is very sparse for shipping. The benefit of not having to use a spoon is worth all the extra trash? Now with DRM?
I could never justify the cost of a Keurig when a traditional coffee maker costs just 20% the price. After using a drip machine for many years I finally decided to brave a more unique solution, the Aeropress. Now I know what great coffee tastes like. I tried a Keurig equivalent recently and I can't believe how much worse it tastes. With a Keurig you pay a premium price for poor quality coffee.
I actively try to dissuade people from buying Keurig machines, or any "coffee pod" machine and this is just another reason why. Aside from the fact that the coffee is watery, the pods just add such an unnecessary amount of garbage to something that doesn't need to generate any waste. I think the concept is cool but re-usable pods are the way to go. This is stupid of Keurig.
Chemex[1] is hard to beat. I recommend it to all of my aspiring coffee-aficionado friends. Easy[2], inexpensive, and very high quality. 1: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/ristretto-chem... 2: http://www.bluebottlecoffee.com/preparation-guides/chemex
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess value is relative. I prefer good coffee and preparing it is part of the experience. It's like writing this comment on HN, what value does it bring to you ?
I was referencing the "actively dissuade" part. I don't mind if people adopt environmentalism as a religion where all trash is a sin, I just don't want to be a part of it. I want to think about environmental impact broadly and go after the high impact items. Talking about K-Cup trash is a distraction from what is important.
The restrictions on minor consumer items are a penitential hairshirt.
I think your "big-picturism" bypasses the immediate absurdity of consumer environmentalism, but leaves the deeper contradiction untouched.
"Rational" environmentalism implies some cost/benefit analysis. Is it "bad" for one person to burn 100 gallons of gas per day in his commute? Is it "ok" for 100 persons to burn the same amount? What if the one person produces as much "benefit" as the 100 persons? Who gets to define benefit?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?"
I've never heard this "pressure destroys the bean" theory. Are you claiming all espresso is burnt or chocolatey?
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).
This case doesn't have anything to do with DRM as the title suggest. It's more clear in the article: "the java-bean equivalent of DRM". As far as I can tell it's actually just allegations of patent abuse and anti-competitive vertical integration. Keurig had a patent on the technology for both machine and pod. That patent expired in 2012, allowing third-party vendors to start making pods. Treehouse Foods argues (among…
It might end up just being a new shape but the CEO's wording implies that it will be closer to what is used in printer ink cartridges. Following the trail from the submitted article to the article it links to and to the article that one links to finally takes us to the transcript of the CEO's earnings call: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1853341-green-mountain-coffe... "While we're still not willing to discuss speci…
This case doesn't have anything to do with DRM as the title suggest. It's more clear in the article: "the java-bean equivalent of DRM". As far as I can tell it's actually just allegations of patent abuse and anti-competitive vertical integration. Keurig had a patent on the technology for both machine and pod. That patent expired in 2012, allowing third-party vendors to start making pods. Treehouse Foods argues (among…
It might end up just being a new shape but the CEO's wording implies that it will be closer to what is used in printer ink cartridges. Following the trail from the submitted article to the article it links to and to the article that one links to finally takes us to the transcript of the CEO's earnings call: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1853341-green-mountain-coffe... "While we're still not willing to discuss speci…
This sounds remarkably similar to Tassimo's bar code system on the surface.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
60 seconds to clean isn't nothing. Changing the keurig pods takes less than 3 seconds. It might make me lazy, but every second I am not cleaning my coffee device I can be doing something else.
This. Plus I have yet to see any non-pod-style coffee machine that can competently make one cup at a time.
Previously I had the Nespresso Lattissima Premium[2] (the top-of-the line pod machine). I liked the Nespresso coffee fine, but the Primadonna makes better coffee and is no more trouble to use (It's also twice the price...).
The clean up is exactly the same for both machines - you press a button to run steam though the milk frother, detach it and put it in the refrigerator. You press the "rinse" button and it runs water through the coffee system to clean that.
~Once a week you empty the grounds container or the empty pods container.
The one trick is to only put as many beans as you a planning on using immediatly in the bean dispenser. It can take a lot more, but as they get exposed for longer they get more bitter.
[1] http://www.delonghi.com/en-AU/products/coffee/coffee-makers/...
[2] http://www.delonghi.com/en-AU/products/coffee/coffee-makers/...
I actively try to dissuade people from buying Keurig machines, or any "coffee pod" machine and this is just another reason why. Aside from the fact that the coffee is watery, the pods just add such an unnecessary amount of garbage to something that doesn't need to generate any waste. I think the concept is cool but re-usable pods are the way to go. This is stupid of Keurig.
I waste 7 pounds of petroleum driving to work, and .01 lbs from my morning k-cup. My time has value, and I am not going to waste it greenwashing.
http://www.amazon.com/Jura-13626-Ena-Micro-1/dp/B008RZFQKO/r...
At four cups per day it pays for itself in about two years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the patent is expired, one wonders if some company may reverse engineer the Keurig 1.0 design, and continue their manufacture (along with all the factories that are already tooled for the 1.0 cups.)
If the patent is expired, then reverse engineering had better not be necessary, or else the original patent was insufficiently detailed to be valid.