Coffee-related products

Coffee-related products

Review: Hamilton Beach Single Serve Coffee Maker

Hamilton Beach sent me their “The Scoop” single serve coffee maker [discontinued; replaced with this] to try out. Longtime readers know that I’m not keen on single-serve machines.  I completely understand wanting to make only one cup of coffee, but there are so many ways to make a truly excellent cup the manual way; my favorite ways are with an Aeropress or Clever Coffee Dripper. My complaint is primarily with machines like the Keurig brewers or Nespresso machines that sell you wildly overpriced, stale, questionably-sourced coffee in hideously wasteful little packages. Nespresso hasn’t really caught on in the U.S. as it has in Europe, but everyone and his brother here seems to have a Keurig brewer. Thus, insofar as I have talked about them at all, I have tried to encourage alternatives to K-Cups that use fresh coffee purchased by the consumer.

For those who haven’t jumped on the Keurig bandwagon yet but feel the need for some sort of single cup machine, I encourage a good look at The Scoop. It’s a better designed machine than a Keurig, dead simple to use, far cheaper up front, and you will make better coffee with it.

Design

First off, The Scoop is an attractive, sturdy, and sleek machine with a smaller footprint than the typical Keurig brewer; the two are shown side by side on my desk on the right. The Scoop retails for around $60, whereas most Keurig brewers retail for over $100.

The Scoop has a number of features that make it easier to use (and clean) than a Keurig. The water reservoir holds up to 14 ounces of water. The minimum amount of 8 ounces is held in a marked depression in the main reservoir. You just fill your mug with water and dump it in the top. It’s not only easy to see see how much water is too little or too much, but because the reservoir is shallow it’s easy to wipe clean. However, since you probably won’t store water in The Scoop like you would in the water tank of a Keurig, it is unlikely to get any filmy build up. This can occur in a Keurig, and their water tanks and lids are not dishwasher safe, so you have to find a way to thoroughly clean the inside walls of the Keurig’s water tank.

There are three parts on The Scoop that are part of the brewing process and come in contact with coffee: the filter well, the filter holder, and The Scoop brew basket. All simply lift out to rinse clean, and are dishwasher safe.

Unreachable residue in a Keurig brewer. Click to enlarge.

On a Keurig machine, the K-Cup holder can be snapped out, taken apart, and put in the dishwasher. However, the housing in which the holder sits is part of the machine and cannot be removed. I have found that it accumulates a lot of oily gunk, especially if flavored or dark roast coffees, or chocolate, cocoa, or sugary beverages are made in the machine. There is no easy way to clean the inside well of this housing, as the close-up of one of my machines shows. I have never succeeded in getting it clean despite forcing damp paper towels down from the top or up through the hole, and some of this residue ends up in every cup. Blech!

Both machines can accommodate a travel mug up to nearly 7.5 inches inches tall. The cup rest on The Scoop, however, can be flipped upside-down so that a coffee mug is elevated close to the stream of coffee (right), preventing splashes and premature coffee cooling.

The Keurig has small advantages on only two fronts. The Keurig drip tray holds 8 ounces, for those who completely forget to put a mug on the machine. The Scoop’s drip tray is really just for drips. And The Scoop’s power cord is ridiculously short at 24 inches. Okay if it’s on a kitchen counter, but impractical if you want to put it on a table and have the cord reach a standard wall outlet. At work, I have to put The Scoop on the floor under a desk. Note to Hamilton Beach: If you want to compete with Keurig for office coffee, make The Scoop with a longer cord!

Making coffee

As noted above, the reservoir accepts between 8 and 14 oz of water. Whatever you put in, comes out. This is true whether or not you use the “regular” or “bold” brew setting. The difference between the two settings is the pace of water flow, with brew time slightly slower on the bold setting.

The brewhead/showerhead has five holes that cover the whole bed of coffee, which is placed in brew basket, which can be used as a coffee scoop. The bottom of this basket is a fine stainless mesh filter. It is larger and has more surface area than Keurig’s own My K-Cup reusable coffee filter basket (shown here side by side). I found I could put up to about 16-18 grams of coffee in The Scoop’s brew basket, but only around 14-15 grams in the My K-Cup (pre-fab K-Cups themselves hold between 9 and 14 grams, depending on variety). For comparison, typical maximum amounts held in K-Cup alternatives are 10 for EZ-Cup, 14 for Ekobrew, and 11.5 for Solofill. More on coffee volume shortly.

The Scoop basket sits in a filter holder that also has a fine mesh bottom. This serves to remove even more fines, shown in the photo. Still too much for you? It turns out that the round filter papers used in Aeropress brewers fit nicely in the second filter and can act as a third filter if you desire. Use a little less coffee in this case, and/or a slightly courser grind, or it will slow the brew down enough to create overflow.

To use, pour your water, scoop your coffee, shut the brewhead and push either the regular or bold brew buttons. The Scoop does not brew under pressure — this is a quick drip method. On the regular setting, The Scoop brews 8 ounces in about 90 seconds, and 14 ounces in 2 minutes 15 seconds (plus 15 seconds to warm up from a cold start; subsequent consecutive cups are faster). The “bold” setting is only slightly slower, adding 15 seconds to an 8 ounce cup and 1 minute to a 14 ounce cup. Note that on “bold,” the brewer pauses and resumes brewing.

This machine comes with two scoops, so you can make a second cup directly after the first without having to clean out the first scoop.

Best practices for good-tasting coffee

Weak and/or stale coffee are probably the most frequent complaints about cup quality from a single-cup brewer. With The Scoop, if you use your own freshly ground coffee, staleness isn’t an issue.

The Scoop allows the use of more ground coffee, which helps overcome the weakness issue.* The 16-17 grams of coffee I use (two tablespoons is about 15 grams) is more than recommended by Hamilton Beach for a 14-ounce cup, and I make an 8-ounce cup with it. One caveat — this amount of coffee, especially if it is freshly roasted and blooms a lot, will leave grounds on the brewhead. Be sure to check the head and wipe the grounds off if needed. The rubber gasket on the head also comes right off to be rinsed and goes back on easily. Or use slightly less coffee ground a bit finer. I’ve had decent results with around 14 grams, made it too strong with 17 grams, and fit up to 19 grams. Don’t throw up your hands after a couple tries — experiment with different amounts and (if you grind your own coffee) various grind levels; these may need to be adjusted depending on the coffee variety as well.

I don’t know how inclined the typical single-cup user will be to tinker further (especially if it adds time to the process), but here are my further suggestions:

  • I’ve found, since I use a finer-than-drip grind, that the first 10-20 seconds of liquid is often clear. A little of this may be water left in the machine innards, but I think what is happening is that the water is flowing off the top of the dry grinds until they become saturated. The simple solution is to start the brewer, and as soon as the first drops come out, hit the brew button again, which stops the flow of water. Lift the brew head and wait until the water sinks into and wets the grinds (you can stir a bit if you’re in a hurry). Then re-close the head and resume brewing. This 1) improves extraction, 2) prevents dilution by eliminating plain water going into the cup, 3) helps prevent blooming coffee from depositing grinds on the brewhead, and 4) reduces the chance of overflow. It only adds 20 seconds or so to the process, unless you want to do it more than once, which would probably improve extraction even more.
  • Preheat the brewer by running a cup of plain water through the machine first. This can serve to pre-warm your mug and clean off any residue on the brewhead and filters, if you are not a meticulous housekeeper. It might even add a degree to the water temperature.
  • Use the bold setting.  An extra 15 seconds probably doesn’t make a lot of difference, but every little bit helps.

Brew time and water temperature are two other variables that factor into the strength/proper extraction of coffee. The brew time is still a little abbreviated with The Scoop. Brew time can be lengthened a bit by grind, volume, and the addition of an Aeropress filter.  Of course, it would be simple for manufacturers to make a machine that brews four minutes. However, people who buy these machines complain that two minutes is too long. What can I say? If you are that impatient, don’t complain about your coffee. You don’t expect to roast a turkey in an hour, so don’t expect great coffee in under four minutes.

Coffee should be brewed at 195 – 200 degree F, or just off a boil. Most home coffee makers fail at this. According to the Hamilton Beach blurb, The Scoop “Brews hotter than the leading competitors per SCAA standards,” which suggests it brews at 195+. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the thermometer I used to measure the coffee in the cup, but it read 180-185 degrees F from The Scoop (1300 watts) and 170 from a Keurig (1500 watts for the B60) using a My K-Cup. I assume that pre-heating The Scoop by running a cup of water through before brewing, and then using warmer water might also bump up the temperature a few degrees.

Concluding thoughts, including cost and convenience

After a few weeks of testing, I found that coffee produced by The Scoop lacked some body and fullness, but was superior to any cup I’ve made in a Keurig with a pre-fab K-Cup or any alternative device, and comparable to many cups I have made with a standard pourover cone. It’s never going to be as good as a carefully made manual cup. But I’ve read hundreds of comments and reviews from aficionados of single-cup brewers, and price and convenience often seem to trump flavor and quality. Further, the taste profile preferred by these consumers is generally that of grocery store or Dunkin/Starbucks caliber. This is achievable and exceedable with The Scoop.

A few words about cost. Obviously, The Scoop is cheaper up front than a Keurig. Others have done elaborate price comparisons of K-Cups versus very high quality coffee, a burr grinder, etc. and found them to be equal. Frankly, I don’t see most people that are attracted to Keurig brewers making that particular leap. Thus, the typical single-cup consumer will pay less per cup using The Scoop than a Keurig with K-Cups (about $0.33/cup using $9/lb coffee, versus $0.50 to 0.65/cup for K-Cups), in addition to the savings from the original machine purchase.

As for convenience, you will have to dispose of a scoop of grounds. I’m always flabbergasted when I read comments from people who tried various K-Cup alternatives and cannot cope with the “mess” and “hassle” of two tablespoons of grounds. I wonder how they manage orange peels, candy wrappers, or dirty dishes.

The Scoop is replacing the Keurig brewer at our office.  That tells you what I think.

*Many consumers confuse roast level with “strength” of coffee, where a dark roast equals strong coffee and a light roast equals weak coffee, a misconception perpetuated by roasters that label dark roasts as “bold.” Really, weak coffee is primarily under-extracted and lacking body because it is less concentrated with fewer solubles.  I drink light roasted coffees and used them in my tests of The Scoop.

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

K-Cups are now recyclable! Not really.

Update: In early 2016, the New York Times reported on Keurig’s announcement that they would finally be coming out with a K-Cup made of plastic recyclable by typical municipal facilities. But it also pointed out the continued environmentally-negative aspects of K-Cups outlined below, including high energy costs to produce and potentially low consumer cooperation. It did not address problems with the size of the cups jamming sorting machines at recycling facilities, or potential contamination if consumers don’t remove the lids. 

Green Mountain Coffee Roaster’s Keurig division has announced a “recovery” program for their naughty little K-Cups (already incorrectly being referred to in the media as a recycling program). I’ve talked about the waste issue surrounding these single-serve coffee portion packs specifically, as well as posted two ways to re-use them, and three different products that allow you to use the Keurig brewers and avoid the K-Cup dilemma altogether.

In response to the environmental impact of K-Cups, Keurig has launched the Grounds to Grow On program. This sounds like a great idea, but it has some limitations.

  • It is only available in some (22) states. This program is in a testing phase with an intention to go national next year.
  • It is only available for business locations. Only about 10-11% of Keurig brewer sales are to “away-from-home” locations, based on 2006-2008 data.
  • It costs $59.75  for five small “recovery bins” which hold 175 K-Cups each, or $114.75 for larger bins which hold 450 K-Cups.  Shipping to and fro is included in the cost.
  • The K-Cups aren’t recycled. The grounds are composted, while the K-Cups themselves are burned to produce steam energy by partner Covanta Energy. This is referred to as “renewable energy” a few times. I have a hard time seeing how waste-to-energy could be considered renewable, and I’m not the only one.  The irony, of course, is that recycling is the enemy of the never-ending stream of garbage needed to feed waste-to-energy facilities. Covanta is one of the companies pushing to have waste-to-energy defined as renewable, as it would make the company eligible for subsidies. Keurig’s choice of Covanta as a partner in the Grounds to Grow On venture is unfortunate. Multiple Covanta incinerator facilities have been fined in several states for emissions violations, including Connecticut (twice), New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Further, they have a history of labor relations problems.

I certainly love the idea of all the coffee grounds being made into compost. As for the K-Cups, perhaps burning them is better than having them end up in a landfill, providing you believe waste-to-energy is clean and safe. Even if this aspect weren’t a topic of debate, the success of Grounds to Grow On depends on participation. This program was rolled out after a pilot test in 2010, but I have seen no figures on the participation rate for the pilot.

Purchasing the bins is pretty expensive, and adds 5 to 7 cents, or about 10%, to the cost of each K-Cup. Once a supply of bins has been returned, more will have to be purchased. How many businesses and consumers will make this investment?

Even in a bin is available, it is not a sure bet that everyone will drop in their K-Cups.  An EPA study of found that participation in voluntary residential curbside recycling without incentives averaged around 68%.  With the disincentive of having to purchase the bins, I’m not sure how many K-Cups will be actually be removed from the traditional waste stream with this program.

Finally, some of the patents on K-Cup technology are due to expire next year.  This may mean others will manufacture K-Cups with different materials that cannot enter the Grounds to Grow on recovery program.

It looks like a lot of effort went into this program, and I don’t want to seem like too much of a curmudgeon. As my mom would have said, it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye, but perhaps not quite as rosy as first meets the unpoked eye.

In an upcoming post, I’ll be looking at the recycling of Nespresso coffee capsules. Due to a stunning bit of greenwashing, not nearly as many capsules are being recycled as Nespresso/Nestle would have you believe.

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

ekobrew: another alternative to K-Cups

I have mixed feelings about writing about Keurig single-cup brewers and K-Cups. Yet single-cup brewers are wildly popular, and Keurig owns 80% of the North American market share. If I’m going to talk about consumer coffee choices and how they impact the environment, I feel I should talk about Keurig and K-Cups.

Over the years, I have written about how to minimize or eliminate the waste in the disposable K-Cups themselves:

In the past I’ve stated that I believed that K-Cups are the most environmentally-friendly product in the single-use arena because of the strong corporate responsibility and environmental record of Keurig parent Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. However, now that Folgers, Millstone, and Dunkin Donuts coffees are available in K-Cups and GMCR seems willing to license to anybody, no matter how bad or mysterious the sourcing, I no longer have this view. Ergo, it’s even more important to emphasize ways to use your own carefully chosen sustainably-grown coffee if you have a Keurig brewer.

A new contender

This brings us to the latest generation of reusable coffee filters/brew baskets to use in (most) Keurig brewers: the ekobrew Cup. [Note – product is now discontinued, but company still survives and makes ancillary products]. I’ve not yet tried this product, as it was just released, but it is receiving very favorable reviews and has a number of benefits over competitors which are obvious to those of us who have fiddled with the various alternatives:

  • It has a larger capacity than the others. It can hold up to 14 grams of coffee (versus 9 grams of a regular K-Cup, and around 11 for Solofill). You may not want to jam the max in there, though, but take advantage of the fact that the extra room will provide for more complete infusion of the coffee and get you a stronger brew, especially for < 8-ounce cup settings. Weak coffee is a major complaint with many of the K-Cup alternatives (and K-Cups themselves).
  • It has a flat bottom, and is easy to fill. The Solofill has a big “nipple” on the bottom and won’t stand up by itself. Also, that depression can hold wet grounds and make the Solofill harder to clean than the smooth interior of the ekobrew.
  • It is BPA-free. So is the Solofill. The My-Kap is not.
  • You don’t have to remove the holster in the brewer to use the ekobrew (or Solofill) as you do with the Keurig My K-Cup.

Other reviewers have commented on the overall positive design aspects and durability of the ekobrew, including details of the brew basket, hinge, and stay-cool handles. There have been a few other products in the interim between the Solofill debut and the ekobrew, but the ekobrew seems to be the most significant recent step forward in this product arena, having improved on the few shortcomings of the well-liked Solofill.

This product could lure me into plugging in my Keurig at the office once again.

The future

I have been a fan of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and their effort to source coffee sustainably, their support of farmer communities, and other green initiatives.  But Keurig brewers and K-Cups are now making up 88% of the company’s revenues, and most of this is from the K-Cups. Their willingness to license to big corporate coffee roasters is seemingly profit-driven; they receive $0.064 for every K-Cup sold. In my eyes, and to others I’ve talked to, this seems like a contradiction of Green Mountain’s values.

Further, when I first wrote about K-Cups in 2007, Keurig was working on sustainable (recyclable/renewable/biodegradable) packaging. There has been no meaningful progress on this front (I don’t consider the release of one flavor of one brand of tea in a paper K-Cup truly significant). Currently, three billion K-Cups head to the landfill a year.

The patent on the K-Cup runs out in 2012, ushering in the era of even more crappy, cheap coffee being available in these dreadful little cups. Will there be any incentive for other manufacturers of K-Cup clones to develop sustainable packaging? Of course not. They’ll all be competing for a slice of the market, and cheap will win out. This cheapifying of coffee has broader implications, and I can do no better than to refer you to Jim Pellegrini’s excellent blog post on the topic, Why the Keurig K-Cup is the beginning of the end for great coffee.

My final recommendation is at least use your own coffee if you already own a Keurig brewer. Use a good product in place of K-Cups, like the ekobrew. Even better — go for the dead-easy way to craft excellent single cups of coffee tweaked to your individual taste with your own beautiful, sustainably-grown beans: try a Clever Coffee Dripper. Low initial investment, low tech, great coffee.

Used K-Cup photo adapted from a Creative Commons photo by Randy Read.

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

Solofill Reusable coffee filter for Keurig K-Cup brewers

I’ve written about less-wasteful alternatives to the single use K-Cups used in Keurig K-Cup brewers. Each allows you to use your own coffee with the Keurig brewers. There are two routes.

One is to reuse a used K-Cup. I described step-by-step how you can refill used K-Cups, which is rather labor intensive. I also wrote a detailed review of the the My-Kap Kaps for Keurig K-Cup Brewers, a lid that fits on a used K-Cup. This does cut down on the labor of refilling a bit, but either way, you can only reuse a used K-Cup a limited number of times, and eventually it ends up in a landfill.

The other route is to use a device that takes the place of the K-Cup. Up until recently, the only option was Keurig’s own refillable filter basket, the My K-Cup reusable coffee filter. You can read my review of it here. Then along came the EZ-Cup By Perfect Pod. I have not tried this particular product, as some reviews indicated it could be a bit fiddly, and it also requires the use of proprietary paper filters, which did not appeal to me. Given that most other brands of pods are made from cheap coffee by the big corporate coffee roasters (Senseo = Sara Lee, Tassimo = Kraft), that isn’t even an option in my book.

Now we have another K-Cup replacement. The Solofill Cup, Reusable coffee filter cup. This invention appears to have resolved a number of the shortcomings of other methods.

  • The Solofill drops right into the Keurig brewer’s holder, just like a K-Cup, so there is no need to remove the filter holder assembly, as required by the My K-Cup (which is an inconvenient step).
  • The lid is attached and the stainless steel basket is integrated. With this one-piece design, no parts should go missing.
  • The whole she-bang is dishwasher safe.
  • The plastic is recyclable.  It’s made from BPA-free plastic, which the My-Kap is apparently not.
  • It’s “self-tamping” and water is dispersed through the coffee, versus just being shot through a single hole, as in most other alternatives.

The Solofill holds roughly 11 grams of coffee. This is about the same amount of coffee that is in an “extra bold” K-Cup, and so may also satisfy people who find regular K-Cups produce weak coffee. Or, to look at it another way, the Specialty Coffee Association of America, recommends 10 grams of coffee per 6 oz cup. Obviously, how the coffee turns out also depends on the brew size setting of the Keurig brewer — for the Solofill’s 11 grams the brewer should be set to brew a 7.25 oz cup, or even 5.25 oz (brewers vary in their brew size settings). For the sake of comparison, I found that the My K-Cup holds right around 14.5 to 16 grams of coffee.

The Solofill is compatible with 11 Keurig brewer models, two Brevilles, and one Mr. Coffee.  However, an enterprising user has provided a simple modification for the Solofill that allows it to be used with Keurig models that would otherwise result in leakage.

I’ve not had a chance to test the Solofill yet, but it is getting excellent reviews on the Single Serve Coffee forums.  If you have a Keurig brewer and give this product a try, please remember to fill it with sustainably-grown coffee, and feel free to leave your impressions in the comments.