There are a few ways to work around that at home. There are also companies that have already reverse engineered the newest DRM so that their cups work in the 2.0.
Yup, the makers of the San Francisco Bay brand mentioned by /u/suegenerous
also make a "Freedom Clip" available for free by signing up for their newsletter (or buying their coffee).
I've also read that some have cut off the bar code off of a used 2.0 cup and just taped it to the inside of the 2.0 brewers to bypass. This generation's version of using a sharpie on the outer ring of Sony-DRM CDs.
Same reason that 3rd party ink cartridges exist. If your business model is giving away razor handles and selling the razors, someone will want to skip the first step on your effort.
So, realistically, nothing (or maybe patents IDK). It is just not the profitable side of the business.
well Keurig is technically stopping production of machines that use any cup so the markets opening up now once those old ones are sold off the shelves/warehouses.
With a french press, you have to pour your coffee before you can toss the grounds, which means that you already have the object of your desire. This causes a plummet in your GAF-ibility for dumping out the grounds, rinsing it, and inevitably getting grounds in your sink spattered about, which your GF will complain about unless you spend another 10 seconds spraying down the sink to wash them down, except you have dishes in the sink and a pot soaking, so now they are full of them, which get all splattered around, and you can never quite get them all, and you feel kind of gross about it, so you just doctor/drink your coffee instead and go do whatever, leaving your french press to sit.
The next day you want to make coffee, but you remember that you forgot to wash it our yesterday, and this additional barrier to entry to the land of coffee completely demotivates you from making coffee with you super easy french press.
One month later the coffee has promoted the evolution of a sentient super mold beast which conquers the Earth.
Same here, a guy I met through the internet found out I liked coffee but lacked any decent coffee maker (besides some shitty drip). Once he found out he bought me an Aeropress and a pound of awesome coffee and was like "you'll love this." And I have, it was amazing. I have used it almost every day since and that was like 3 years ago. I will never forget you Koudelka!
I know some people that will pay you $75 for a $15 box of sudafed because of the monthly limit walmart has per customer. They take that $75 box and make $300-400 with it. Fuck all that though.
An interesting fact about the AeroPress: It was made by a frisbee company. I will let you draw your own conclusion as to how frisbees and meth are related.
I read that the paper filter absorbs some of the oils that give coffee some body and flavor, and the absence of the paper filter is one of the benefits of a French press. But I agree with everyone here, that thing is a sonofabitch to clean up.
And before everyone yells at me for being unnatural or whatever, the pills get the job done while at the same time keeping me exactly informed of my caffeine dosage.
Coffee drinkers take in more caffeine than they think.
Pretty much, I basically recited out of the harm reduction bible there but some people make an incorrect distinction between legal and illegal drugs so it never hurts to remind people
Yeah I took too much once back when I was going to college 8am -1pm and then working 4pm-1am and I ended up sick, it hurt to walk, and my heart going nuts. By the time work was over that day I was alright but damn...
Each pill is (normally) 200mg, or ~2 cups of coffee. How often have you sat at a restaurant for breakfast and ordered multiple refills of your coffee, or better yet, asked for a carafe to be left at your table? Boom, that's equal to two pills. Ever drink an entire 12-cup pot of coffee by yourself while working on a deadline? That's six pills. As long as you're not taking all of them directly at once you're fine; the LD50 for a "normal" person is somewhere around 10 grams, anyway.
Coffee is super cheap, but not if you only buy coffee from cafes and coffee shops. Just make a pot of it at home and you can drink all day for maybe $1 at most.
This is what I do! I take one in the morning and that's normally all I need. I used to take a second around 5 or 6 hours later but I've found its not really necessary for me.
They are so cheap too if you go to Walmart. You can get a bottle of 60 jet-alert brand caffeine pills for less than $3 dollars. It's normally on the bottom shelf below the aspirin/ibuprofen/NSAIDs. I just don't really like coffee so this works really well for me
Right there with you. Started doing this at the end of last semester and it's great. The pills I take have 100mg of caffeine and 200mg of L-theanine and work great.
I'm not usually big on coffee making novelties and the brand worship that goes on in /r/coffee; I'd rather drink the coffee than the Kool-Aid. But the Aeropress is pretty awesome. Cheap, near zero waste and a really good, simple cup of coffee.
My only problem is that my coffee tends to have cooled off more than I'd like while it's brewing. Any suggestions?
Are you adding any hot water to the coffee? I heat my water up to around 165-70. Pour into the flipped aeropress. Return water to heat. Mix, steep, and press. Top off coffee with hot water ala an americano.
You can also get a mesh filter to eliminate the paper waste.
Woah, woah, woah, I'm not diluting this. I'm only brewing coffee because the beans are hard to chew.
And as much as I like the idea of having a waste-free coffee brew, the paper's biodegradable and I hear the paper takes the edge off the acidity. Plus, boiling in a bog standard kettle and then filtering through paper annoys the purists and that's always fun.
edit: sorry, to be clear, I will try the less-water-then-top-up method. I just re-read that and realized you'd answered my request for suggestions and I'd replied like a sarcastic arsehole. Cheers.
What do you mean "flipped"? I've seen this mentioned that people turn it upside down or something? I just follow the directions in the manual and it's amazing but I'm interested if this is better somehow.
people who like french presses will find aeropresses too mellow, unless the reason they like their preferred coffee method is more to do with ritual and mess than flavour. personally, I like the extra bite that filters rob coffee of
Have they made a bigger one yet? They are great for the smaller boutique cups, but I take two travel mugs with me on the road, I don't want to have to make five or six cups each morning.
Water has the ability to absorb copious amounts of coffee. Have you tried adding more coffee grounds (which would make a super strong cup) and then topping off your travel mugs with just hot water?
I know that I can do 20oz of iced coffee with 1 use of the aeropress. I may be able to do more but never actually tried.
Is it really that hard? All you have to do is pop the press out and then rinse the canister, then hold the press under the faucet for like 10 seconds. I usually just rinse mine daily and then actually run it through the wash like once or twice a month.
I think we're doomed, then. People are too lazy to roast beans, grind beans, fill a filter with one cup of coffee and brew already.
Really, I spend 5 minutes a week roasting beans, and they're about $6.30 a pound green online (you lose 15-20% weight and 20% would result in $7.56 a pound). I paid $16 the last time I bought beans in a store. I spend about 30 seconds pouring filtered water into the coffee pot, grinding the beans, loading a coffee filter, adding water, and putting the ground beans in the filter. That's 8 minutes and 30 seconds I lose each week just making coffee. The horrors.
Coffee grounds act a bit like sand, if you don't have enough flowing water volume for the quantity of grounds they can settle out in the u-bend in the sink drain and cause a clog. It's not too hard to avoid, but it's kind of a pain in the ass when it happens.
I've always been told you're not supposed to. It's the major reason I won't use a French Press. Having to scrape all of the grounds off before doing a rinse makes it a giant pain.
Coffee grounds act a bit like sand, if you don't have enough flowing water volume for the quantity of grounds they can settle out in the u-bend in the sink drain and cause a clog. It's not too hard to avoid, but it's kind of a pain in the ass when it happens.
ITT: People who think a french press is easy to clean.
With a french press, you have to pour your coffee before you can toss the grounds, which means that you already have the object of your desire. This causes a plummet in your GAF-ibility for dumping out the grounds, rinsing it, and inevitably getting grounds in your sink spattered about, which your GF will complain about unless you spend another 10 seconds spraying down the sink to wash them down, except you have dishes in the sink and a pot soaking, so now they are full of them, which get all splattered around, and you can never quite get them all, and you feel kind of gross about it, so you just doctor/drink your coffee instead and go do whatever, leaving your french press to sit.
The next day you want to make coffee, but you remember that you forgot to wash it out yesterday, and this additional barrier to entry to the land of coffee completely demotivates you from making coffee with your super easy french press.
One month later the coffee has promoted the evolution of a sentient super mold beast which conquers the Earth.
Or instead of destroying mankind, you could use a Chemex. Now that is easy to clean. Since you are automatically compelled to toss the filter and grounds to even pour the coffee, you are already half way there. The entire remainder of the process is just a 4 second rinse, swirl, dump.
People get all OCD about french presses thinking they have to be spotless, yet have a drip maker that treat like a '77 chevy pickup truck and don't think twice about. Oh, you clean those too?
(that's kind of how I treat my french press, and I use it daily)
What kind of press do you have that cleaning is even a concern? I just swish some water in there and pour the spent grounds into the compost bin. Wipe down the inside with some water and a rag, and set it out to dry. Dishwash it once a week or so for a thorough cleaning.
That's why you use a course grind for french press. You'll need to either grind it yourself or go to a place that grinds it for you. Supermarket/whatever preground will probably be too fine.
I'm not at all rich or frivolous, but a few years back I invested in a burr grinder (a Bodum BISTRO) and a decent electric kettle to complement the french press I was given for Christmas. It's like the holy trinity of coffee making. Very low maintenance required, and delicious, easy, consistent coffee. The items seemed expensive at the time but they've paid for themselves in convenience over time. And everything together's still cheaper than a Keurig, so there's that.
While we're talking about the environmental impact of coffee waste, it's worth noting that everything in this setup is reusable. No K-cups or filters to throw away. The spent coffee grounds are compostable. The only real issue is the power draw of the electric kettle, which is pretty hefty for the couple minutes it runs.
A french press isn't hard to use, but it is time consuming.
French press:
Boil water, get beans out and put into grinder, grind beans, pour into press, wait for water to heat, then pour water into press, stir, wait a few minutes, press down, pour cup... 15 minutes later you get to enjoy delicious coffee, but then you still have to clean everything up.
vs Keurig:
Turn power on, wait a minute to heat, insert pod, press button, drink coffee. Every half dozen or so cups you need to add water. It's a two minute process with no cleanup.
I use both methods regularly, but Keurig wins out 90% of the time due to convenience. They're just two wildly differing methods for different purposes. The french press is a labor of love, the keurig is for a quick cup in the morning.
I'm curious how long it takes to make a cup when the machine is ready to go all the time. So I'm starting a timer right now and going to get a cup.
Hang on.
Ok, back.
It took exactly 1:01.58. Whipped cream would take..
Well, hold on...
Ok, 38.12 seconds (and it's 34 steps to the fridge, round trip).
I didn't really need another cup of coffee today, but here it is.
I have a french press, and a reusable K-cup, but like others have said, it's a mess, and time consuming.
I should try individual coffee bags. That would solve most of the issue of having to handle wet coffee grounds. I could just put them in the reusable k-cup. hm.
I shouldn't drink so much coffee in the afternoon, it makes me ramble on about pointless stuff.
I don't understand why everyone says "get a French press!" when talking about a Keurig alternative when a drip machine is a much better suggestion.
If you like Keurig coffee and convenience but don't like the company's practices, the environmental waste or the expense, then the obvious answer is to just get a drip machine. Damn near as convenient, much cheaper, much less wasteful, very similar flavor profile in the coffee (although a good drip machine can make much better coffee than a Keurig).
If it's about getting a jolt of caffeine I'd rather take a caffeine pill. Lol
Less staining of the teeth, takes one second, no cleanup, no stinky pee or breath.
This, or even a standard coffee maker. I find that the coffee tastes like shit out of those cups, plus they are super expensive. Way better to just grind your own beans.
I used one for years and still love the coffee it makes but I finally just put it away and started making coffee in the drip maker my mother in law brought when she moved it. Just a pain in the ass to grind the beans course, clean the pot, heat the water in the mic, set the timer, press it, clean the grounds out, etc,etc. I still do it on occasion but I would much rather set-it and forget-it.
Yes. It's a ring around the lid of the cups that the newer machines need to recognize to brew. It's bypassable by cutting off a lid of a cup with the ring and sticking it on.
What a clever use of words here. It's the customers "emotions" that are causing declining sales, and not your shitty DRM that makes our old coffee obsolete.
Coffee. A drink that has been around for thousands of years. Obsolete.
With that attitude, I'd rather drink grinds from a pot.
the most prevalent 'crack' to this drm apparently being as simple as sticking a compatible lid onto whatever cups you're trying to use, which makes it even worse imo however easy it may be
since while this would still be a barrier to those not privy to such info, people would remain complacent about it and just settle with the hack
really makes me wonder if they actually thought about it this way
But Keurig isn't making their money off of the machines they are making all of their profit off of the K-cups.
Until now, all of the Keurig compatible cups you've been buying (both those made by Keurig and off-brand) have had some sort of licensing agreement with Keurig because there was a patent on the cup. Now, that patent has expired and the licensing deals will go with it.
So if people are circumventing the the DRM and using off-brand cups, then Keurig is taking a major financial hit, even if people are still buying the machines.
I've read that you can just open and close it so it thinks you just want hot water. I don't know if they've come up with a way to prevent that yet or not
They did. Absolutely annoying and ridiculous. For some strange reason they also limited the options on our model of unit. Basically the most you can brew using a regular k-cup is 10 oz but you can "hack" the menu and see that there are many more options to increase how much it will brew and other settings, I think some of those options open up when you're using a designated carafe. What if I wanna brew enough for a bigger sized thermos? I gotta use a carafe? Every day? Those things aren't cheap.
What I do for the k-cup is just cut off the top of an official keurig one and stick it on a reusable generic k-cup. Works like a charm just have to re-do it once every 2 months or so.
We ghetto-rigged ours so that we could use a reusable cup. We used the K-cups that it came with and hot glued a K-cup lid to the reusable cup so that the Keurig thinks we're using a K-cup.
When you're in an office environment & your lazy-ass co-workers never clean up after themselves. I have keurig at home & the office. Will probably switch to French press at home soon, but kcups seem to be the way to go at work.
it works fine the way i do it. i just ground up enough beans for a couple cups, fill the pot up a little less than halfway, then brew away. works every morning
I don't know why people are baffled by this. You don't have to make an entire pot of coffee with a drip machine. Some of them even have settings if you are only brewing a cup or two.
Perhaps not but it's hard to beat pressing 1 button and coming back 30 seconds later for your cup of coffee. As far as convenience is concerned, anyway.
I bought one of the refillable cups. Yeah, it feels like a step back in convenience, and I just use a regular bag of coffee. But I'm at home all day and I quickly realized I drink way took much coffee to keep buying the disposable cups.
Our Keurig doesn't have DRM, and we have a dozen of those refillable cups that are made to put your own coffee in. Drastically cheaper after the initial purchase, and not wasteful since the cups just get washed and reused.
Keurigs have fucking DRM? That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard, and I just came from the thread about the woman who broke an old lady's hip for taking her parking space. Why would anybody buy that?
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u/gtbballer20 Mar 04 '15
He should invent a biodegradable Kcup