Keurig Coffee Makers

Keurig coffee makers are one of those new single cup coffee brewing systems that are so popular these days. It makes brewing a good cup of coffee a child's play. Making coffee is so easy and foolproof that you cannot get it wrong. You simply insert a K-cup and press a button to start brewing. That's it, done - less than one minute later you can drink your coffee. The cleaning is just as easy - just take the used K-cup out and throw it away. Coffee making can't get more convenient than this.

So, what is this K-cup then? Well it looks a bit like the plastic cup for those tiny portions of milk that you get in the hotel rooms. Inside the plastic cup there is a specially designed paper filter that holds the coffee. The coffee is then brewed directly in the K-cup.

With the K-cup the coffee is sealed away from light, air and moisture so it keeps fresh. That is much better that some of the coffee pods that are not individually sealed. The cost of the K-cups varies but it is in general around $0.50. That's obviously more expensive than drip coffee - but still much cheaper than buying coffee from your local coffee shop.

The main advantage of Keurig coffee brewers over the other single cup coffee makers is the availability of a vast range of different coffees. You can get K-cups for many different gourmet coffees from reputable roasters like Green Mountain, Diedrich, Gloria Jean's, Timothy's, Van Houtte, Tully's or Coffee People. There is also a good selection of teas and you can get some hot chocolate too. You can even get cappuccino (from Gloria Jean's).

You have over 190 different K-cup varieties to choose from. But things get even better. If you like some of the coffee pods for other single serve makers, you can use them with the Keurig too. You just need to get the Perfect Pod Holster which allows you to use the vast majority of available coffee pods instead of the K-cup. And if that's not enough there is always My K-cup. With My K-cup you can use your own coffee.

To summarize, you can use nearly 200 K-cups, all the pods that Senseo and most of other single cup brewers can use and your own coffee. If you compare this with the limited selection available for other other single cup coffee makers such as Tassimo or Flavia you really start appreciating what you are getting with the Keurig. You simply don't get this many choices with any other single serve coffee maker.

The most popular models for home use are Keurig Elite B40, Keurig Special Edition B60 and Keurig Platinum B70. All of them have the following features:

Removable water reservoir on the side of the unit: refilling is really easy, you don't need to move the machine in order to refill the water tank.
Removable drip tray: when you remove the drip tray you can brew coffee directly into your travel mug.
The warm up time is 3 minutes: you can start making your first cup of coffee 3 minutes after you turn the machine on.
It takes less than 60 seconds to brew one cup of coffee. You will then have to wait about 15 seconds before brewing another cup.
Weight when empty is 12lb. The width is 10 inches and depth is 13.25 inches. The height is 13 inches when the unit is shut and 15.5 inches when it's open.
Auto-off feature: you can set the machine to turn itself off automatically 2 hours after the last cup of coffee was brewed (you have much finer control with B60 and B70).
Add water indicator: the machine will alert you when you need to re-fill the water reservoir.
Descale indicator: the machine will remind you when it's time to descale it.

Other features vary for different models. Here is a table that compares the different Keurig coffee makers.

	Keurig B40	Keurig B60	Keurig B70
Brew sizes	7.25 & 9.25 oz	5.25, 7.25 & 9.25 oz	5.25, 7.25, 9.25 & 11.25 oz
Water reservoir	48 oz	48 oz	60 oz
Drip tray	Plastic	Stainless steel	Stainless steel
Clock	No	Yes	Yes
Programmable on/off timer	No	Yes	Yes
Adjustable temperature control	No	Yes	Yes
Quiet Brew^TM Technology	No	No	Yes
Blue Backlit LCD	No	Yes	Yes
Blue Backlit Water Reservoir	No	Yes	Yes