Robin is a long-time friend of MakeGoodCoffee.com, and recently asked about the very popular single-serve pod coffee makers. It’s no wonder. In the US alone for the 12 months ending in September 2010, single-pod coffee makers and the pods themselves have become the fastest-growing segment of the coffee market, growing 155% to over $200 million in sales.



Keurig probably has the best-known product with their pods sold as “K-Cups”. This month, Mr. Coffee announced that it would step into the ring with a more economical version of the same type of coffee maker. You’ve likely seen the pod coffee maker in people’s homes and in some offices.

But if you love great coffee, is this machine a better option to drip-brewing or the coffee press? I was surprised at how little has been written on this. My best conclusion is that people who love as fresh a cup of coffee as they can get are shying away from the single-serve, while the invention itself has attracted a new slew of coffee drinkers that are attracted to the machine’s convenience and who are still getting a decent cup of coffee. What’s it boil down to?

1. Convenience

There’s no denying that you will have a hot cup of relatively fresh coffee in your hand with much less work and in a shorter time period if one cup is all you’re making.  You grab a pod, load it into the machine, hit a button, and within 1-2 minutes, you’re good to go.Compared to the separate water-boiling step and saturating the grounds in a French Press, the pod coffee drinker is done his first cup before you’re pouring yours.  Even to make one cup in a drip brewer means measuring the right amount of water and loading grounds into a filter.  Not to mention that the right amount of coffee has already been measured and ground by the pod maker for your convenience.

Quite simply, it’s more convenient to use a pod maker, so it’s no wonder that people that want to make good coffee at home but do it in the shortest possible time are buying this coffee maker in droves.

2. Freshness

Here’s what will spark a debate with pod coffee drinkers: it can’t be as fresh as coffee that was ground from fresh whole beans immediately before it was brewed in a quality coffee maker.  I’ve had many pod coffees and I thought they were all good. But it did strike me off the bat that the coffee in the pod is already ground and ground coffee goes stale at a faster rate than whole bean coffee, even though the pod is sealed airtight.  I’ll leave it to personal taste whether you notice the difference in freshness. At some point in the process of filling pods with ground coffee, the ground coffee was exposed to air.

3. Environmental impact

If you grind your coffee and use a mesh filter, you’re not producing much waste when making coffee. Compare that to the number of pod packages that get thrown out, one for each cup of coffee you make.In a world that’s both greener than ever but where people want everything available faster, there’s a conflict. The pod coffee makes coffee faster, and produces more waste.

There you have it, Robin. If you know anybody with a pod coffee maker, try their coffee and compare it to the freshly-brewed coffee that you make at home. If you notice a difference in freshness and don’t mind the few extra minutes that it takes you to use a drip-brewer or French Press, I’d suggest sticking to the freshest and less wasteful way you’re already using.

Question: Marc, Golden Rule # 3 in part is to have water in the fridge in the Brita but does the water HAVE to be chilled? Will the water temp make that much of a difference in a cup of coffee? - Robin



Answer: Robin, that is a great question for a couple reasons.  First, because it comes up all the time.  And second, because I can think of at least three reasons I’ve heard in my life of why you’re supposed to use cold water when making standard drip-brewed coffee.

The reason for cold water that I hear most often is because there is a “perfect” amount of water-extraction of flavor from coffee.  If you don’t extract enough from the coffee, it’s too weak.  But if you like strong coffee, be warned there’s something called overextraction where TOO MUCH solid is extracted from the coffee, making it sludge and not too enjoyable.  It comes down to the brewing cycle and the water’s exposure to the coffee while at the perfect temperature.  The only way to time an electronic drip brewer’s process to do it right is to “set a standard” on the starting temperature of the water.  The machine will run the same heating process no matter what temperature of water so everybody should get a consistent cup as long as everybody starts out with the same starting temperature…cold.  Otherwise, coffees made with water at different starting temperatures would all taste a little differently.  The machine assumes you’re using cold water.

Another reason that I’ve not heard cited as much but that makes sense to me is that the reference to water temperature is under the assumption that most people are using tap water.  And cold tap water is fresher than hot tap water because it hasn’t been sitting in a water heater waiting to be dispensed from the tap.  Better water makes better coffee so this is also very believable.  If this were true and you were using filtered water, it wouldn’t matter what temperature you use.

And finally, I’ve heard that hot tap water has a higher concentration of minerals (unrelated to the water heater) than does cold tap water which absorbs less from the plumbing itself than the hot.  Is that true?  I’m not sure but if it was, it seems the least plausible for affecting the quality of coffee in your cup.

And I hope in not directly answering your question that I have answered your question, Robin!  I personally use cold water, whether tap or filtered because the machine was designed under that assumption.  But I use a filtered water as often as possible.  If that filtered water was not completely chilled, I would use it anyway.