November 2012

Coffee-related products / K-Cups/Keurig brewers: alternatives

K-Cup alternatives: summary and parting thoughts

Updated December 2018

I wrote my first post on an alternative for throwing away those wasteful, pesky not-really-recycled/recyclable K-Cups in 2007.  Since then, I have reviewed a number of alternatives. I’ve even reviewed another single-cup brewer. However, now that some of the patents on K-Cups have expired, we have more variations and and alternatives to Keurig brewers and single-cup pods, cartridges, and capsules than Carter has little pills.

Avoiding sending coffee-related trash to landfills (and using much more sustainably-grown coffee than is typically available in pre-packaged single-cup coffee products) is certainly within the purvey of a web site on coffee sustainability. But it’s come to the point that if I were to review, or even mention, half of the K-Cup alternatives flooding the market this site would veer away from an emphasis on the ecological effects of coffee growing.  I am going to semi-retire from discussing or reviewing these types of products, unless there is some sort of remarkable innovation or noteworthy news.

For my finale, here is a table that summarizes the popular products currently on the market which are reusable alternatives to K-Cups which allow for the use of a consumer’s own coffee that are compatible with many of the original Keurig brewers.

Reusable alternatives to K-Cups

Product
Approx. Price
Capacity in grams*
Notes
My K-Cup Reusable Filter$13, original. $23 for a universal model that fits older AND newer (2.0) Keurig brewers.15 or 17Best to have at least two so that you aren't cleaning one over and over. The best deal is a pack of 4 universal stainless steel version.

My review here.
ekobrew



$1514My review here.



2nd-most popular with C&C readers.
Solofill

See also gold versionthat has less potential to alter flavor.
$1511My review here.


Most popular with C&C readers.
The My-Cap (also known as My-Kap) was a simple and inexpensive ($7 for 3 caps plus a cleaning brush) for refilling used K-Cups. They went out of business, but a similar product is the Recycle A Cup, a product I've not tested.$12 for 29, or however much you can fit into an old K-CupUsed to refill old K-Cups.

My post of the old product here. I haven't tested the replacement.
EZ Cup by Perfect Pod which requires proprietary filters, approximately $12 for 100.



There is a newer product, the Cafe Fill Value Pack by Perfect Pod that includes two reusable filters and a special scoop with a funnel allowing for the correct amount of coffee easily placed in the pod. Very popular.		$9.90 for original, $13 for new pack.Around 9Requires proprietary filters, approximately $12 for 100. Only for older Keurig brewers.

I’m not sure, given the fact that there are so many competitors and K-Cup brands, that K-Cups themselves will ever be truly eco-friendly.  Here is what Keurig owner Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) had to say in their 2011 CSR document:

Widespread adoption of the Keurig® single cup brewing system raises some important — and complex — environmental challenges. To better understand the impact of our products and guide our efforts to address those challenges, we conducted a life cycle analysis comparing single cup brewing systems to drip-brewing systems. We learned that the cultivation of coffee beans, operation of brewing systems, and use of materials in product packaging all represent significant impacts on the environment. The study revealed that packaging disposal represents a fraction of a product’s environmental impact across its entire life cycle.

Literally billions of K-cups ending up in a landfill may be just a “fraction” of this product’s environmental impact, but it is huge in and of itself. With the alternatives listed above, there’s no excuse for using this wasteful product.

*I’ve included the capacity as stated in promotional material, user reviews on outside web sites, and/or my own testing, if available. The volume of coffee grounds that will fit in something that goes in the original Keurig brewers is, in my opinion, the biggest limitation to coffee quality to those machines. The Specialty Coffee Association of America recommends 10 grams of coffee per 6-ounce cup; most people drink larger mugs of coffee and may also prefer a stronger cup. A regular K-Cup can hold about 9 grams of coffee. Despite “bold” selections and brewers that make various cups size, the physical capacity of the older (not the new “Vue” brewers) machines is difficult to overcome. Therefore, getting a well-crafted cup of coffee from a Keurig brewer (and many other brands I have seen or used) is hit or miss.

Climate change / Coffee and the environment / Research on coffee growing

Is coffee really at risk of extinction?

Recently, a paper was published in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, PLoS ONE: “The impact of climate change on indigenous arabica coffee (Coffea arabica): predicting future trends and identifying priorities.”

It specifically looked at wild, endemic populations of Coffea arabica in Ethiopia (and a few points in nearby areas). In a nutshell, the authors created computer models using known localities, environmental conditions, and various climate change scenarios to predict current and future distribution of these populations. The models determined a reduction (ranging from very worrisome to nearly complete) in suitable locations in this region by 2080. This is no surprise. I’m not sure I’ve seen any models that do not show some impact on the ranges (whether expansions, contractions, or shifts) of plants and animals under any accepted climate change scenarios. And we all know coffee is a very climate-sensitive species, especially arabica coffee.

It is a big leap to go from what this paper actually examined and concluded to the shrill, frantic headlines and stories pumped out by mainstream  media. For instance, under the headline So Long, Joe? World Coffee Supply Could Be Threatened By Climate Change, US News and World Reports declared “Nearly 100 percent of the world’s Arabica coffee growing regions could become unsuitable for the plant by 2080.” This is way off base, given the study was only looking at wild arabica in the vicinity of southwest Ethiopia. The article also stated that “If Arabica becomes impossible to raise in its native areas, it could wreak havoc on the economies of the mainly third-world countries in which it grows,” which is ridiculous considering that coffee is already grown on millions of acres in dozens of countries around the world where it is not native. Likewise, Salon.com made the even more extreme statement, “By the end of this century, climate change could wipe out nearly all the world’s coffee” in their piece, Coffee beans at risk of extinction.

I could cite more hand-wringing examples of failure by news outlets to make an honest effort at reporting what this paper really said, but you get the gist. As a scientist, journalist, editor, and world citizen, this lack of accuracy disgusts me. First, there is no excuse for it; the paper is open-access and anyone can read it for themselves! Apparently, this dismal reporting stems from incomprehension, laziness, and/or incompetance on the part of writers and their editors, as well as a disregard for actually informing the public in favor of profit for the news outlet via sensationalism.

If you’ve read this far and want a more nuanced analysis of the paper, I’ll give a few of my thoughts.

I thought the  paper was thorough and well-conceived. The bioclimatic modelling used is pretty standard for looking at the distribution of species under future climate change situations. Computer models, of course, are as robust as the data one feeds into them.  In this paper, the bulk of the data used to model current distribution was based on unpublished field work done by one of the authors; the rest was from herbarium specimens or literature reports, some dating back to 1941.  Ergo, it is technically not possible to evaluate the quality of this data. The climate data emphasizes factors like temperature, rainfall, and seasonality. These are all critical for coffee growing, but the models did not integrate other important environmental influences on coffee production such as soil types, microhabitats, and ecological processes, and the authors acknowledge those shortcomings.

The results and discussion provided didn’t stray far beyond these limitations and delivered on the authors intended goals: to identify conservation, monitoring, and research needs for wild, native Coffea arabica. It established baseline data to help assess future impacts of climate change on these populations, having identified suitable localities for them.

Two paragraphs in the discussion are devoted to the implications of the findings for cultivated arabica coffee, and they are also presumed to be negative. Does this mean the news headlines, while not the subject of the actual paper, are true? Not exactly. The authors note that optimum cultivation requirements for arabica coffee will likely become harder to achieve in the face of climate change, productivity will probably be reduced, and more intense management (especially irrigation) will be needed.

Is the potential loss of genetic resources in these populations something to worry about? In their article Climate change threatens sweet smell of morning coffee, Reuters took a stab at trying to interpret what the paper had to say by writing, “Although commercial coffee growers would still be able to cultivate crops in plantations designed with the right conditions, experts say the loss of wild arabica, which has greater genetic diversity, would make it harder for plantations to survive long-term and beat threats like pests and disease.”  Indeed, a reason the authors focused on wild populations of arabica in their native range was that their genes may be valuable for breeding disease and pest resistance and climate resilience into commercially grown coffee. While this is logical, and maybe even likely, the paper did not provide detail on the genetic diversity, number of unique arabica strains, or other features of the coffee being mapped and modelled. In fact, the authors noted that genetic variation in wild arabica still needed to be assessed. Further, other more tolerant species of coffee (primarily Coffea canephora, robusta, and its hybrids) are being used in breeding programs today and probably hold the best hope for resilience in commercial coffee. (This is not to discount the importance of preserving these populations; I’m a strong believer that genetic biodiversity should be preserved regardless of it’s commercial value.)

One point was made in the paper that I thought was not given enough emphasis. The biggest driver of the loss of wild coffee populations has been and is deforestation and land conversion, which themselves exacerbate climate change. We can sit on our hands and watch one of the models in this paper play itself out, with what the authors term as “profoundly negative influence” on coffee. Or we can encourage the production (and consumption) of coffee grown in an ecologically-sustainable manner, using carbon-capturing shade trees and sensible agroforesty techniques — and reward farmers for their troubles by paying more for eco-friendly coffee. The press  could make a real contribution by informing the public on the issues surrounding the sustainability of one of the world’s most popular beverages, rather than thoughtlessly spew out faulty proclamations with little basis in fact and no call to action.

More of my posts on coffee and climate change here.

Davis AP, Gole TW, Baena S, & Moat J (2012). The Impact of Climate Change on Indigenous Arabica Coffee (Coffea arabica): Predicting Future Trends and Identifying Priorities. PloS one, 7 (11) PMID: 23144840

Coffee-related products / K-Cups/Keurig brewers: alternatives

Review: Melitta JavaJig

Yet another player in alternatives to K-Cups market, this one by the century-old German company Melitta.  As the story goes, the company was founded by the inventor of the paper coffee filter. The Melitta Javajig is, in fact, as straightforward, reliable, and effective as one would expect from this well-respected company.

I’ve reviewed other reusable-and-use-your-own-coffee K-Cup replacements. The JavaJig is so simple, easy to use, and easy to clean that you immediately wonder why someone else didn’t immediately come up with this design.

The JavaJig has three BPA-free plastic reusable parts, plus a fluted paper filter that looks like a mini muffin tin liner. You place a filter paper over the upside-down black frame, slip the green outer sleeve over the frame, turn it over, add coffee (Melitta suggests an espresso grind), pop on the cap, and you have a pseudo-K-Cup ready to place in one of the many original style (not Vue) Keurig brewers. You do not need to remove the brewer’s filter assembly as you do with Keurig’s My K-Cup.

After brewing, the coffee and filter can be composted, the other parts rinsed, and you are ready to create another cup. Not only is this nearly foolproof, but it is dead easy to keep clean and there is no hinged lid that might snap off, as has been reported with the ekobrew or Solofill. The package includes two units, and they are inexpensive enough to have spares on hand if you feel lids may go missing.

I was able to get 12 grams of finely ground coffee in the JavaJig with a little tamping, but not packing. This is more than the insufficient 9 grams used in a standard K-Cup. There is space between the bottom of the green filter and the filter paper (thus, it does not get pierced like the bottom of a K-Cup). I tried a little manipulation of the filter to see if I could get it far away enough from the needle not to pierce the paper, but still allow for more coffee. It was too difficult to get the paper to cover the prongs, so grounds would easily leak out. Using a piece of regular coffee filter failed as it was too flimsy. By this time I realized that this amount of farting around spoiled the ease of use of the JavaJig.

Using fine grounds in some other devices causes back-up or overflow, but not in the JavaJig. The finer grounds also allow for more extraction. This is important not only because the older Keurig brewers just don’t have enough room or a long enough brew time for proper flavor development, but because the entire bottom of the JavaJig is the paper filter. Under the pressurized brewing, water goes through the grounds and filter faster than it would in a more enclosed environment, such as in some of the other K-Cup alternatives. I tried the JavaJig with 9 grams of coffee and two filters, with a 6-ounce cup; it worked, but did not slow down the brew time enough to make a difference.

Ergo, the JavaJig makes a cup of coffee comparable in strength and body to a K-Cup or similar substitute. It just suffers from the physical limitations and brewing method of the Keurig brewers themselves.

However, the resulting cup is much cleaner than the alternatives that use metal filters, since the paper filter helps eliminate sludge and small fines (for purists who can taste paper — not that they’d be likely users of this product — the assembled JavaJig and filter can be rinsed before filling with coffee).

The beauty of the JavaJig, and the reason I recommend it over all the other devices I’ve used so far, is its simplicity, cleanliness, and excellent value compared to the others. The starter outfit includes two JavaJigs and 30 filters. The filters are around $0.07 each, versus $0.16 each for the other competitor that uses filters. It can also be used with loose tea with very good results.

Alas, this will likely be my last review of any sort of K-Cup or Keurig brewer alternative. I will post an explanation, as well as a summary, in an upcoming post.

Coffee news and miscellany

Sips: Brain dump from the hiatus

Yes, I’m still around. The last few months I have been not only busy with my real job, but also with buying a house, moving, and selling the old homestead. I’ve still been thinking about (and drinking) coffee; the print on the right is one of the first items I hung in the kitchen in the new abode.

Here is some of the coffee news I have been bookmarking and might have written about, had I had the time.

C&C will be getting back on track with research news, reviews, and the like shortly.