{"id":78,"date":"2012-03-03T22:33:03","date_gmt":"2012-03-04T04:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/?p=78"},"modified":"2012-03-03T22:33:03","modified_gmt":"2012-03-04T04:33:03","slug":"roll-your-own-k-cups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Roll Your Own K-Cups"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prices are out of control these days.<\/strong>
\nGasoline continues to flirt with all time highs, that 50 cent candy bar now costs a dollar, and the charge for a gallon of milk makes you think there’s gold in them there utters.\u00a0 And coffee is no exception.\u00a0 The price for a pound of bulk roasted beans is well over 10 dollars at this writing (that’s the cheap stuff) and the the more you process the coffee, the more expensive it becomes.\u00a0 Ground coffee costs more … oh, it might have the same price as a pound of bulk beans, but didja notice that its only 14 ounces of coffee, not a full pound?\u00a0 Uh-huh.\u00a0 And the slow rise doesn’t stop there.\u00a0 Instant coffee is really steep in price, with those pre-packaged paper “pods” not too far behind.\u00a0 Any coffee that requires grinding, forming, freeze-drying, ice-crystalling, bagging or boxing adds more pesos to the pound.\u00a0 And the creation of K-cups are no exception.<\/p>\n

If you’ve got the feeling that those little plastic cups are expensive, you’d be right.<\/strong>
\nI’ve not actually put it on a scale or measure, but I think most coffee K-cups hold about a tablespoon to 1-1\/2 tablespoons of coffee.\u00a0 Maybe about 14 grams by weight.\u00a0 Right now, I can get a 24 cup package of Caribou Blend for 16.99, or about .67 cents a cup.\u00a0\u00a0 That means you’re dropping 67 cents for 14 grams of ground coffee.\u00a0 There’s 454 grams in a pound.\u00a0 Do some loose math and you’ll see you’re buying coffee at about the cost of 21 dollars a pound.\u00a0 Sure there’s the cup and the filter inside and the manufacturing cost, but still … you’re spending 21 dollars a POUND on coffee this way.\u00a0 That’s pretty steep.\u00a0\u00a0 And beyond that, there’s the MORALITY of the K-cup versus Mother Earth.<\/p>\n

Imagine a world that, when viewed from the cold, vast, emptiness of space seems to be nothing\u00a0 but a wide ocean of heaving gray and black.\u00a0 No land, no animals, simply little gray dots upon more gray dots, falling and rolling over one another.\u00a0 That is the future of earth if this K-Cup thing goes unchecked.\u00a0 Humanity will drown in plastic, lose its way in punctured foil.\u00a0 Billions upon billions of used K-Cups will overflow from the landfills like wrathful vengeance from heaven.\u00a0 And man will be snuffed out under an avalanche of little plastic cups with a hole in the bottom.\u00a0 Ugly picture, but one that is coming if we don’t find a better, more earth friendly way to conserve the resources our Keurig’s consume.\u00a0 And that brings us to the topic of this entry:<\/p>\n

Save the mama, save your wallet:\u00a0 roll your own K-Cups!<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are several ways to get this done.\u00a0 Here are but a few:<\/p>\n

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If the Keurig was a muscle car, The My K-Cup would be a factory aftermarket part.<\/p><\/div>\n

First, Keurig has the “My K-Cup” system that you can buy for about 16 dollars at the time of this writing.\u00a0 It replaces the snap out cup holster in your machine, holds a mesh and plastic basket and has a screw on top that mimics the hole punctured in the foil.\u00a0 I’ll talk about the “My K-Cup” in a coming post, but a quick “pro” is you can isolate strongly flavored coffees (think hazelnut or holiday blends) from contaminating other coffees you make afterwords.\u00a0 A “con” is you have to snap in and out some parts to make the thing work.<\/p>\n

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The ekobrew, for those who wish to decrease their Keurig's coffee-footprint.<\/p><\/div>\n

Then there’s the ekobrew Cup, a direct replacement for the disposable K-cup.\u00a0 No special holster, it behaves and handles like a regular little cup.\u00a0 It has a permanent cup with an attached lid and wires mesh sides.\u00a0 About 10 dollars, but they’ve been spotted on ebay for much less.\u00a0 The upside is it requires no holster change, so its easy.\u00a0 The downside is it tends to coat the holster in fine grounds and requires a “blank shot” of water to rinse the system.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s the EZ-Cup, a truly roll-your-own K-cup that has disposable paper filters inserted into a solid, non-disposable plastic housing.\u00a0 About 14 dollars and you have to keep a supply of these little tiny paper filters.\u00a0 I haven’t used them, so it will have to wait for my full review.\u00a0 The itty-bitty paper filter does seem to be a hassle, but we’ll wait and see.<\/p>\n

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I hope that bush isn't to scale, or I'm going to lose it pretty quickly!<\/p><\/div>\n

For the real recyclers among us, there’s the Kaps for K-Cups, which allow you to reuse the cup and built in filter by giving you a snap on cap that is snapped on once the punctured foil is pulled away.\u00a0 They even give you a little brush so you can brush the old grounds out of the filter!\u00a0 Yum!\u00a0 3 Kaps\u00a0 for 10 dollars.<\/p>\n

I have tried the Keurig and the ekobrew cups.\u00a0 I have plans to at least try as many alternative forms of “cups” as I can stand.\u00a0 But I get the impression that the the first two are the most popular, so I’ll be putting together my review of these little reusables in the next few days.\u00a0 They all should technically save the earth from ecological destruction and stretch your coffee-addiction dollar to the max.\u00a0 But how do they work, and more importantly, how do they TASTE?<\/p>\n

I’ll let you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prices are out of control these days. Gasoline continues to flirt with all time highs, that 50 cent candy bar now costs a dollar, and the charge for a gallon of milk makes you think there’s gold in them there … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[12,16,17,18,8,15,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coffee.germar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}