I have been on a quest to find the consistently perfect cup of coffee. Using
a KitchenAide automatic drip coffee maker, I would sometimes get that perfect
taste. More often than not, I would achieve too strong or too weak. Blaaahhh!
Plus, I had to make the minimum amount, which was twice what I would use. I was
wasting water and coffee and money.
I vowed to buy a single cup coffee maker when my automatic pot
went squat. The theory was: each K-cup would produce consistency. I just didn't
expect it to go squat so soon. It happened one day as I was making my afternoon
cup-o’. PANIC! Out I raced in search of a single serve. I bought a Keureg...and
a couple of reusable filters. If you think I'm going to pay $.70 for a cup of
coffee...
I tried the different coffees that came with the coffee maker and
decided I liked the dark roasted, bold. The best was Newman's organic.
Now the craziness begins to find something in a canned coffee that
was as good when using the reusable filter. The short version is: there isn't
any.
Upon analyzing the coffee used in the K-cups, I found the coffee
is ground so fine it's a powder, not grounds. You won't find that grind in a
canned coffee. I'm not sure you could get that fine by grinding the beans
yourself. Even if you ground beans twice on the fine setting, I don't think you
could do it. Also, there are three tablespoons of coffer powder in each K-cup.
You can get three tablespoons of regular grounds into a reusable filter, but not the flavor.
On top of that, when I put the coffee powder from a K-cup (of a
strength I’m happy with) into a reusable filter, it's not the same as the K-cup
alone. What?
What I have been doing is kind of bizarre, but here it is: I open
a K-cup and empty it into a reusable filter. There’s room to spare and I fill
the remainder with a bold, dark roast canned coffee. I told you it was bizarre.
That gives me my consistent, good cup of coffee.
I will try one more approach to this problem of the perfect, cheap
cup of coffee. I frequently get 20% off coupons from Bed Bath & Beyond. I
will use these to buy the Newman's organic, which is perfect.
Eventually, I will have that perfect cup of coffee…cup after
cup.
