4 Reasons You Should Avoid Keurig Coffee (If You’re A Real Coffee Lover)

We’re not coffee snobs. I promise.

But we are in love with coffee experiences that are flavorful, mindful, and rewarding. And frankly, Keurig coffee just doesn’t get us there. In fact, we believe that using Keurigs on a daily basis is a missed opportunity to experience the focus, gratitude, and rich flavors of stellar coffee and manual brewing.

Some people have made the argument that ‘life’s too short to waste waiting on coffee’, but we tend to think a different way: life’s too short to take shortcuts and drink bad coffee.

We get it: K-Cups are convenient and fast, but there’s so much more to good coffee out there and what you’re missing may be the difference between a difficult and a mindful day.

K-Cups Are Wasteful, Like Insanely Wasteful

If you’ve been on the internet at all in the last few years, you’ve probably read about the environmental issues surrounding K-Cups.

Read: 5 Ways To Make Your Coffee More Eco-Friendly

Let’s review.

In 2015, over 10,000,000,000—yes, billion—K-Cups were produced in the United States. If you placed them next to each other in a straight line, they would wrap around the entire Earth… 10.5 times. That’s insane!

In a single year, in the USA alone, we wrapped the globe in K-Cups 10.5 times.

As of late-2016, only four brands that make K-Cups were using recyclable plastic. That means over 200 producers are still using plastic that can’t be recycled. This number is shrinking, but we know that not everyone will recycle the K-Cups that can be recycled.

Basically, it’s a mess—and it’s a mess that hasn’t changed since the truth about K-Cup waste was revealed back in 2012. Please avoid disposable pods at all cost. They’re not our friends.

The Instant Gratification Isn’t Really Worth It

Sure, there’s something to say about getting a super-fast cup when you’re running late to work, but on the average day, there’s a better way to drink coffee.

We spend enough time in life racing from one thing to the next. The morning is sometimes the only time of the day we can control and tailor to our own needs. It’s the chance for a few moments of peace, focus, and gratitude.

Read: How Manual Coffee Brewing Can Change Your Life

Keurigs rid us of an amazing opportunity to create something that’s just for us. They reinforce our addictions to business and don’t actually help us personally by slowing us down.

Brewing coffee manually (and giving yourself a few minutes to do so) has some powerful personal benefits:

• Focus
• Clarity
• Waking up on our own terms
• Enjoy a delicious brew that you crafted by your own hand

These rewards can’t be quantified—we know—but we and thousands of our customers agree that taking the time to brew a rich cup you love can affect the rest of your day very positively.

Keurig Coffee Is Expensive For What You Get

Convenience aside, Keurig pods tend to be on the expensive side when you consider the actual value of the pods themselves. To get this conversation started, let’s look at a chart and draw some conclusions.

Read: How Much Should You Pay For Coffee?

Upon first glance, it may look like the big K-Cup brands have the advantage over regular coffee —but let’s look a little deeper.

Keurig K-Cups only have 7-8g of coffee in them.

This is worth noting for a few reasons: The average American consumes just under 225mg of caffeine per day via coffee (1-2 normal mugs). Since this 7-8 is only half the coffee used to make a normal cup, it’s only responsible for about 50mg or so of caffeine—and that means, to get the average caffeine amount in, you’d have to drink 5 cups.

• 5 K-Cups: $2.50 per day

When it comes to caffeine alone, K-Cups are more expensive. But cost and caffeine aren’t the only issues here…

Those K-Cups are filled with stale, low-grade commodity coffee and they make a sad, weak brew. 

Read: Here's Why Some Coffees Are Very Expensive

K-Cups Are Full Of Low-Grade, Stale Grounds

There’s a reason that Keurig coffee is generally unexciting, dull, and tasteless: it’s the beans.

Not all coffee beans are made equal. Some coffees are grown, processed, and roasted with a commodity mindset. The goal is volume and speed, not quality. These beans rarely taste like anything other than “just bad coffee”.

However, other coffees are grown, processed, and roasted with a craftsman mindset. These beans are rich, balanced, and can be very diverse.

These kinds of vibrant and fascinating flavors are common when it comes to specialty-grade beans, but you’ll never find them in K-Cups.

Bean quality aside, there’s another reason those flavors won’t be found in K-Cups: the grounds within are already stale. Coffee beans only have 2-3 weeks of peak freshness once they’re roasted—and that’s whole bean. Ground coffee only has 20-30 minutes.

Read: Why Fresh Coffee Is The Best Coffee

By the time you make a cup of Keurig coffee, those low-grade beans are long past their prime, which limits the experience even more. Simply put, you’re missing out on the wide world of coffee flavor when you stick to K-Cups.

K-Cups In Review

Let’s look back real quickly at the main reasons you want to avoid K-Cups

• They’re astoundingly wasteful and eco-unfriendly
• They rid you of the chance to take control of your morning
• They tend to be pretty expensive if you want more than one cup
• They’re dull, uninteresting, and stale

Listen, we’re not snobs here, but we really do think K-Cups are a crutch more than an empowering tool, despite the convenience. Your coffee habit should inspire you with incredible flavors, rejuvenate you by offering you a moment to focus, and not pollute the Earth.

Image sources: one, two.