Keurig machines offer instant gratification, but at a cost. Beyond their deserved infamy for environmental destruction—which we’ll discuss later—all Keurig machines make bad coffee. They also take up as much space on your countertop as a drip coffee maker, despite making one cup at a time instead of a whole pot. And they require more maintenance than you think. Here’s a rundown of all the downsides we found to owning a Keurig machine.
Bad coffee
Every Keurig machine we tested brewed watery, flavorless coffee that paled against every other kind of coffee we’ve made at home. At its best, Keurig coffee tastes like diner coffee. At its worst, it tastes like hot brown water. In our testing, we found that only the 6 ounce brew size made coffee that tasted okay. Though Keurig machines offer 10- or 12-ounce brewing options, that only adds water to the same amount of grounds, making a laughably diluted cup.
“Oh my god,” one tester exclaimed upon drinking. “This tastes like an ashtray.”
“This tastes like sucking on the paper filter of a coffee machine,” another tester said.
“This tastes exactly like water,” another tester said. “I’d drink it, but it tastes just like water. I don’t taste anything.”
A flurry of factors could explain what makes Keurig coffee so disappointing. Writing in Tech Insider, Julia Calderone consulted a wholesale manager at Café Grumpy who told her that the process involves stale grounds, inadequately hot water, and rushed brewing time.
Keurig’s lack of transparency around roast and grind dates means that you may get beans roasted years ago. The Green Mountain K-Cups we ordered on April 18, 2018, only included a “best by” date of January 17, 2020. As fresh-roasted coffee is usually best consumed within two weeks of its roast date, we’re not convinced Keurig’s air-tight, “nitrogen-flushed,” and vacuum-sealed K-Cup® pods keep grounds entirely fresh for two years.
Even if the grind were fresh, it’s likely that your Keurig brews with water too cool to properly extract flavor from coffee. The National Coffee Association recommends brewing temperatures between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit. According to the NCA, brewing coffee with water cooler than 195 degrees leaves you with flat, under-extracted coffee. By contrast, the Keurig site states that the optimal temperature for brewing coffee is 192 degrees Fahrenheit, also the temperature at which your Keurig brews coffee. We used an instant-read thermometer to measure the temperature of water coming out of the Keurig when no pod was installed, and confirmed that this was generally the case. Though the first cup got to only about 187 degrees, subsequent cups peaked precisely at 192.
A Keurig machine also takes less than a minute to brew, much shorter than the 4 minutes it takes to use a French press or a pour-over setup. According to the NCA, brewing coffee for too short a time will result in under-extracted, weak coffee. In normal drip systems, water should be in contact with the grounds for about 5 minutes.
Keurig also states that, after letting the machine sit idle for a while, the first cup you make will be, by default, a few degrees cooler. To remedy this, Keurig suggests first running a “cleansing brew” by making a 6-ounce cup without inserting a K-Cup. Cleansing brews can also help remove any flavor carryover from previous drinks. But all these extra steps defeat the cardinal purpose of a Keurig: to make a cup of coffee in a minute with the touch of a button.
Some more expensive Keurig machines, such as the K-Select, offer a button that makes your coffee stronger. The button brews your coffee for 1 minute, 15 seconds, which is about 30 seconds longer than normal Keurig brewing. This prolonged extraction increases the strength of your coffee, but a Keurig “strong” is still noticeably weaker than a regular cup of Starbucks. If you like strong coffee, you really shouldn’t buy a Keurig.
Expensive
Not only is it bad, Keurig coffee is also ridiculously expensive. Each K-Cup contains around 10 grams of ground coffee, and you can buy a 24-pack of K-Cups for about $16.50. This works out to around $30 for a pound of coffee, with pricier Starbucks K-Cup blends going for $50 a pound. A high-quality bag of beans from your local coffee shop probably costs about $16 for a pound, making a cup of Keurig coffee a raw deal.
Big footprint
Keurig machines are large and clunky. At 13.3 inches by 9.8 inches, the original K-Classic machine takes up almost as much space on your counter as a large drip coffee maker (like our top pick, the OXO On 9-Cup Coffee Maker). And the Keurig looks downright gargantuan next to other single-serve coffee apparati such as a pour-over setup, a French press, or even the Nespresso we recommend.
Questionable durability
Keurig offers a one-year limited warranty on all its machines, but many customer reviews say the machines don’t even last that long. Most Keurig machines available on Amazon have a worrying number of one-star reviews complaining that the machines failed in one way or another after just a few months. For example, dozens of reviews for the K-Select say that when you press the power button the machine begins to uncontrollably gush cold water, sort of like any scene in the second half of Titanic. This defect occurred generally within three weeks of purchase. Wirecutter staff writer Amy Roberts had her K-15 Mini break on her within a year of receiving it as a gift. Luckily this happened within warranty, so Keurig customer service agreed to replace her machine.
Splash zone
Each Keurig we tested splattered coffee across a 2-inch splash zone while brewing, creating a much more significant mess than a regular coffee maker. The brewed Keurig coffee spews out of a spout around three to four inches above the rim of a mug, resulting in droplets of coffee that spatter on the drip tray, machine, and counter. While the mess was easy to wipe down, it’s frustrating to have to clean the machine after each use. Also, Keurigs make a gross, sputtering noise while brewing. It’s a terrible sound to wake up to in the morning.
Bad for the environment
Keurig’s reliance on single-use plastic coffee pods produces enormous amounts of waste, even though Keurig claims its pods are recyclable. In fact, the SEC recently charged Keurig Dr Pepper with misleading consumers over its recyclability claims, as two of the largest recycling companies won’t accept the pods.
There are more environmentally-friendly options for single-serve, convenient brewing that don’t require plastics at all, like Nespresso with all-aluminum pods, pour overs with recyclable paper filters, and French presses with no disposable byproducts (we’ll talk more about alternatives below).
The advantages
There are certain situations where a Keurig could be helpful to have on hand. For example, single-serve coffee setups help make a rental or Airbnb feel more like home, and are easy for guests to use and clean up. They’re also useful in offices or waiting rooms, such as those in hospitals or your local auto dealership. Some people also just love the instant gratification of a Keurig, enjoy having a whole range of flavors to choose from, or like being able to effortlessly brew one cup of coffee at a time.
But we think there is a better brewing alternative for any and all of these situations. A Nespresso machine, which brews strong shots of espresso-like coffee, is as fast and easy to use as a Keurig; our upgrade pick can brew coffee-like Americanos, too. It also uses aluminum capsules, which are much easier to recycle than plastic coffee pods. A pour-over setup or French press are a bit more labor intensive, but they’re also much cheaper and more compact than a Keurig, and can make a single cup of coffee that tastes wildly better.
