Capsule or Pod Systems
Intrigued by notion of brewing your coffee 'one cup at a time"? Here are our thoughts and recommendations.
If you are determined to have a capsule-based system, your best bet is definitely the KeurigTM system. With this machine you are free to purchase one of their My K-CupTM reusable coffee filters which will work perfectly in the brewer, and allow you to use Muskoka Roastery ground coffee for 'one cup at a time' brewing. No need to buy the overpriced capsules or to be restricted to brands of coffee you may not want. These reusable filters cost about $17 and are sold at many of the outlets that sell brewers. They look like this...
Other popular machines like TassimoTM or NespressoTM do not provide that flexibility to choose your own coffee. Why? Well, the goal of the big multi-national companies is to take an ‘open’ market, where you have complete freedom of choice about which coffee to put in your machine, and ‘close’ it by designing the brewer to only accept their brand of coffee. The benefits to the big multi-nationals are obvious; they get 100% of the household consumption, at a significantly higher price per cup.
The benefits to you are not so obvious to us: the breadth of brands available to you is restricted; cost per cup is very high; and the ability to customize serving size and brew strength is variable. Plus, the environmental waste associated with disposing non-recyclable pods after every single cup of coffee is enormous.
The price/cup premium usually gets figured out after a few weeks of use at home. You will pay at least 75¢ per serving after investing $100-$300 in the brewer. Our strong recommendation is to consider purchasing a fully automatic ‘bean to cup’ machine for $200-$900, allowing you to choose from a wide range of premium whole beans, including Muskoka Roastery coffees, which will cost no more than 29¢ per serving.
We believe that the second option is just as convenient, while providing far superior quality, more brand choice, a wider array of finished products and better economics, even with the higher initial cash outlay. If your household drinks four cups/day, the ‘bean to cup’ solution will payback in 1 year. Over the course of 3 years, the ‘bean to cup’ path will save your household more than $1000.
If you haven't yet purchased a system, congratulations! We urge you to look seriously into a 'bean to cup' solution.