Coffee, Tea and Me» keurig coffee maker

Keurig Special Edition B60 Gourmet Single Serve Coffee Maker

RT Cunningham — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:59:28 +0000

I saw this coffee maker at the top of the list when I searched for coffee makers on Google Squared, so I figured I'd go ahead and do a quick virtual review on it. Keurig calls it the "Special Edition Brewing System", but I don't know what makes it a special edition. When I first visited the Keurig website, I wasn't sure it was the right one. When I right-clicked to save the image, the title included "B60", so I'm fairly confident it's the right one. Without further delay…

Features

The Keurig Special Edition B60 has three brew size choices: 6 ounces, 8 ounces or 10 ounces. It has a removable 48 ounce reservoir, which means you don't have to refill it until you've made at least four cups of coffee. It has a programmable LCD message center, but I can't fathom why anyone would need to reprogram it. It has a removable drip tray, blue backlit LCD and water reservoir, chrome accents and a quiet brewing technology.

This Keurig coffee maker is about 13 inches tall and weighs about 12 pounds empty. It seems to be a little taller and a little heavier than most "full pot" coffee makers. It comes with a complimentary 12 K-Cup variety pack of coffee and tea.

Pricing

The suggested retail price is $139.95 and you can buy it directly from the Keurig website. I found it cheaper, at $129.95 ($10 cheaper) at Amazon.com and with free shipping.

That still seems a little steep to me since I usually go for coffee makers that are less than $100. The redeeming features are that it can produce a perfect cup of coffee in less than 60 seconds and, of course, the included coffee pack.

Would I buy the Keurig Special Edition B60 Gourmet Single Serve Coffee Maker (whew, that's a long description)? Not where I live right now because I wouldn't be able to get more K-Cups. Would I buy it in the US? Yes. I used to heat up hot water in a microwave oven and it would take two minutes for just that step. If I had one of these, I wouldn't need to make a pot at a time and risk part of it going bad (getting cold or burned) before getting consumed.

((Image source: Keurig)

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Keurig Coffee Makers

RT Cunningham — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:59:35 +0000

Sometimes things just don't click (with me, that is). I wrote about Green Mountain Coffee and mentioned that Keurig was a wholly owned subsidiary of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, but it just didn't click. It wasn't until I saw something about how the coffee was brewed that it finally registered in my pea brain. Their coffee makers are for gourmet coffee, not the regular kind, and K-Cups are required.

Gourmet Coffee Brewers

The Keurig coffee makers are one-cup coffee brewers designed for gourmet coffee. You have to insert one of the K-Cup packets to start the process, but it seems simple enough. You're not even limited to coffee — you can brew tea or hot cocoa because they have K-Cups for them too. You can even forgo a packet if all you want is a cup of hot water for something else.

There are several Keurig coffee maker models to choose from and they range in prices from $89.95 to $249.95. Ouch! All that and the K-Cups too in order to get the perfect cup of coffee. Of course, this is perfectly understandable from the perspective that people with pay $5.00 per cup at Starbucks on a regular basis. Why not get a perfect cup of coffee without having to go to a coffee shop to get it? It makes sense.

Alas… It's not for me.

Even IF could find one of the Keurig coffee makers locally and even IF I could get a supply of K-Cups, I probably wouldn't pursue that route to getting my daily fix of coffee.

I currently make my coffee one cup at a time, using instant coffee, so it's not the steps toward making a cup that I have a problem with. The problem is the coffee itself.

You see, sometimes I like my coffee strong and WITH sugar and sometimes I like my coffee weak and WITHOUT sugar (I don't use any kind of creamer, except on rare occasions). I kind of like having granular control on how much and how strong my coffee is going to be.

The pre-measured, pre-decided coffee portions that describe K-Cups in a nutshell is the reason I don't like the San Mig coffee products (3-in-1, 2-in-1, etc.).

Of course, I'm only one person. If this is the kind of product that floats your boat, then have at it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using Keurig coffee makers and the K-Cups to go with them. They say there's a product out there for everyone. This one just doesn't happen to be mine.

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Coffee and Coffee Maker Accessories

RT Cunningham — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:03:53 +0000

As any coffee connoisseur could probably tell you, coffee and coffee maker accessories are almost as important as the coffee beverage itself.

You don't have to take my word for it. Bear with me as I list some accessories that you may or may not be aware of.

Coffee Mugs

I really had to start with this one because coffee drinkers use coffee mugs, not coffee cups. There really is a difference. There are companies that specialize in nothing but coffee mugs, some plain and some with logos or writing on them, and they don't need to expand into other areas. There are so many coffee drinkers in the US alone that they really don't need to diversify.

Travel Coffee Mugs

The only thing travel coffee mugs (or coffee travel mugs, depending on how you word it) have to do with regular coffee mugs is that they're designed to hold coffee. The difference is that the travel mugs are usually designed for safety while driving. Some of them have special lids and some are designed to fit into coffee holders, either on a console or hanging from a door window.

Since a lot of people are on the go all the time, especially while traveling to and from work, many convenience stores (and I won't bother to name them) offer several pots of coffee to choose from. They usually offer a limited amount of free or discounted cups of coffee with each purchase of one of their travel mugs.

K-Cups

Although K-Cup portion packs are used specifically with the Keurig single cup brewing systems, other coffee manufacturers are taking that idea and adapting it to automatic drip coffee makers and other coffee makers.

The K-Cup is a plastic container which includes the filter and the ground coffee beans. The Keurig coffee maker punctures the foil lid and forces hot water under pressure through the K-Cup and into a coffee mug. The brewer is pretty simple to use; I've seen a Keurig coffee brewer in action.

Flavored Coffee and Flavored Coffee Creamers

The flavored coffee I'm talking about started out as flavored non-dairy creamers. They were offered in groceries stores and then expanded to the convenience stores to go along with their "coffee on the go".

The dairy people got into the act and started offering flavored dairy coffee creamers and then the coffee people got into the act and started offering coffee products with flavoring in an attempt to steal that market share back from the dairy and non-dairy people.

I really don't know what order it all transpired in, but it seems that's the order as I remember it.

Specialized Water Filters

While some people (including me) use bottled water to make coffee with, others have started buying specialized water filters to purify the water that ends up their coffee mugs. I haven't personally seen one, but I've seen them advertised.

Regardless of how you purify your water, anything tastes better with coffee than tap water that has too much chlorine added.

More Accessories?

There are more coffee and coffee maker accessories available than you can shake a stick at and I'd be naive to think that I could even begin to list them all at once.

I'll end the list here and leave myself the option to list more as I find the time to look around.

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What the Heck is Green Mountain Coffee?

RT Cunningham — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:35:00 +0000

Before I say anything else, I'm not being paid to advertise for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and I may be asked to remove the copy of their logo. I'm basically responding to the search term I saw pop up in my search stats. Like others, I'm sure, I had no idea what "Green Mountain Coffee" was until I started searching for myself. I initially thought it was another type of coffee and I had no idea it represented a company.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

According to Wikipedia, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is a publicly-traded brand of coffee based at Waterbury in the US state of Vermont. The brand specializes in organic coffee, fair trade, and specialty gourmet coffees. Keurig, the company behind the Keurig coffee maker, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., and sells many of their coffee varieties as K-Cups. In 2008, it was a $617 million publicly traded company.

Not being content to read the dry information at Wikipedia, I ventured to the Green Mountain Coffee website to see what I could find. It turns out that it's an online store and it's very well done. That's where I stole the logo from.

I'm being quite honest when I say that I never heard of Green Mountain Coffee or Green Mountain Coffee roaster before today. I grew up in the western states and spent a lot of time outside of the US. Since they're based in Vermont, I double I would have ever known about them if the Internet hadn't made become such as widely-used medium.

Green Mountain Coffee (The Website Store)

Since I enjoy almost anything coffee-related, I simply had to take some time to check out the store. Of the coffee they sell, one caught my eye: Newman's Own Organics. Newman's Own Organics is a separate company from Newman's Own, founded by the late Paul Newman (an actor), but it started as a division of Newman's Own and was created by his daughter, Nell Newman.

The store also sells various brewers and grinders as well as gifts and samplers. They even have a shipping service called Cafe Express, something I might be inclined to use if I still lived in the US. As I checked out the prices, I found they were comparable to gourmet coffees and items sold in other stores so there isn't anything to keep anyone from buying from them, at least not in my opinion.

So there you have it. That's what the searches for Green Mountain Coffee were all about. People were looking for information about the company and I hope I've provided enough to send them in the right direction.

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