Starbucks single serve K-Cup portions give coffee lovers who have the Keurig Brewer the option of having their favorite beverage right at home or the office without setting foot outside the door. able in K-Cups for the Keurig brewer. Currently available through retailers, the Starbucks K-cups will be offered on the Green Mountain Coffee website early in the 2012. Varieties include: House Blend. French Roast, Breakfast Blend and Sumatra, to list a few.
An advantage of the Keurig single serve brewer is that you can buy an insert that enables you to, in effect, make your own reusable K-Cups.
Perhaps by now you have been convinced of the fabulousness of single serve coffee brewers. There are a several different makes and each one brings something different to the cup. One of the benefits of the Keurig single serve brewer is the impressive selection of different beverages that its parent company, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, has available. Some of the newer offerings include the Emeril’s Vanilla Bean BAM, an infusion of lush Vanilla in a coffee that is bold enough to start with. There are other flavored coffees that are bold as well as flavored. And if you drink decaf, there are quite a few decaf brews to choose from, including a few that are strong enough to almost make you forget you are drinking decaf. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters recently acquired Timothy’s Coffee, so now, in addition to their own GreenMountain line, GMCR now includes Tully’s Coffee, Newman’s Own, Caribou Coffee and Timothy’s, which brings us the very strong Emeril’s coffees
GMCR also brings out seasonal blends to match the mood of a specific time of year. For summer, there is Green Mountain Coffee’s Summer Safari Blend ( a spirited blend of South American and East African coffee) and The Perfect Peach in K-Cups. These flavors may be fleeting but a new season will bring a new blend. There are five seasons of Limited Edition Fair Trade coffees at GMC, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Holidays, which offer special coffees (usually, one regular and one flavored) created to represent the feeling of that time of year.
Holiday: Gingerbread, Spicy Eggnog, Holiday Blend (November through December)
Winter: Golden French Toast and Wicked Winter Blend (January through the middle of March)
Spring: Island Coconut, Spring Revival Blend (End of March, through May)
Summer: The Perfect Peach, Summer Safari Blend (June through August)
Fall: Pumpkin Spice, Autumn Harvest Blend (September through the beginning of November)
GMCR also released their Limited Edition Fair Trade Spring Revival Blend featuring, for the first time, Rwandan Fair Trade coffee to support the revitalization of Rwanda. They also recently announced their intention to convert two of their most popular coffees – The GMC Blend and the Vermont Country Blend® - to Fair Trade by Fair Trade Month in October.
By signing up for regular deliveries—you can change the time frame and the selection any time—you reap even more special benefits.To find out more, visit
There is nothing like always having the freshest coffee possible every time you fill your cup. Single serve coffee makers are a dream come true for anyone who loves coffee (and tea and hot chocolate) and enjoys drinking fresh cups throughout the day or night. Making a pot of coffee may make sense sometimes but the reality is a good portion of what’s in the carafe becomes undrinkable in a short time and has to be (or should be) dumped.
Keurig’s new Platinum Single Serve Brewer is quiet and quick (under one minute) and with five cup size options (including one for iced beverages) it brews a fresh streaming beverage equally ready for travel mug or delicate porcelain cup.
There are other helpful features including Auto On/Off, Digital Clock, easily removable drip tray, Adjustable Temperature Control and the "Set Your Favorite Cup Size" option. The removable water reservoir holds up to 60 oz, enough for ten cups.
So yes, the machine is great but how about what you make in it? There are about 200 different varieties of K-cups and enough brands, Timothy’s, Green Mountain Coffee (Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is Keurig’s parent company), Van Houtte, Gloria Jean’s,Coffee People, Newman’s Own, Caribou,Emeril and more with enough types (dark, bold, mild, medium, flavored, decaffeinated--good selection of dark and bold decaf types--we may not want the caffeine but some of us still want rich flavor--, half-caff, Kona, Seasonal, Fair Trade, Organic, etc) to please anyone. Brewing tea in the Keurig is also a pleasure. The tea comes out delicious and there are teas from Celestial Seasonings, Bigelow,Twining’s, and hot chocolates in white, milk or dark.
Another option we especially like is the My K-Cup. Sold separately, you can spoon your favorite loose coffee into the My K-Cup and brew just like you would the disposable K-Cups, only you can wash it and re-use it.
The Keurig Platinum lives up to expectations and more.
Suggested retail price: $169.95
If you are short on space you might consider the mini-Keurig—right at home in vacation homes, cabins, college dorms, boats, RVs, or home office desktops. This machine is simpler than the larger models but the principle is the same. The mini-Keurig heats and brews an 8 ounce cup in under 3 minutes. (You add fresh water for every cup.) This very portable brewer is available in black, white and red.
What is the best way to prepare coffee? It may depend on how many servings you need at a time. If two or more people are going to be having a cup or mug or two at the same time, then it make sense t make a full or partial pot with a counter-top coffee maker or other full-pot at a time appliance.
But if you find you are wasting more coffee because only a cup at a time is consumed, (reheating cold coffee is okay once in a while and saving the excess to make iced coffee is fine up to a point) then perhaps a single cup coffee maker makes sense for you.
Yes, the trade-off is that you will have to buy one kind of single serving coffee pod –the one that matches your brewing machine. Keurig, Tassimo and Senseo all have specific coffee pods that go with their appliance.
But once you make the commitment there will be no regret.
There is little else like that first waft of fresh coffee in the morning. There are many excellent coffee brands to choose from and many methods of preparation—drip, cone filter (Melitta) single-cup servers (Tassimo, Keurig, Senseo).
We will discuss the different methods of preparation later but first, there recently was some slightly jarring news from Colombia: Coffee consumption is starting to outpace coffee production.
"There are two markets for coffee: the cash market and the futures market. The cash market is the market today. It is the price you would pay for coffee today if you could receive it today. The futures market is used to help determine the price for future deliveries. It is used to purchase a contract today to guarantee a future shipment of coffee. More importantly, however, the futures market for commodities like coffee is used to help protect against the wild variations that occur due to coffee market speculation."
"Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The world coffee market will swing to a deficit of as much as 10 million bags next year from a surplus as demand growth outstrips production, said a growers group in Colombia, the third-biggest producer. Global coffee output will exceed demand by 6-7 million bags this year as Brazil, the largest producer, is in the more productive phase of a two-year cycle, said Juan Lucas Restrepo, commercial manager at the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia. Lower Brazilian output and demand growth of 2 percent next year will cause the shortfall, he added. A bag weighs 60 kilograms (132 pounds). 'Overall consumption is growing faster than production, and global inventories will decrease further next year,'' Restrepo said in an interview in Tokyo Oct. 17. ``Growth is not coming from mature markets but from emerging markets.'
When Colombia completes a tree replanting program, the amount of coffee hopefully will increase.
