Well, that didn't take long!
Last year, after Coke took 10% stake in the company, Keurig started shipping a new version of their instant coffee machines. The primary 'improvement' was the addition of DRM designed to exclude any coffee not approved by Keurig. It is a scheme very much like the ink cartridge DRM of IBM/Lexmark.
One coffee maker has decided to crack that Keurig's DRM and are now shipping a device you insert into the maker that lets you spoof it into thinking any coffee is 'authorized.' They are capitalizing on their new Freedom Clip by giving it away along with free samples of their coffee.
(Score: 2, Informative) by tizan on Monday February 02 2015, @03:14PM
I really do not see the good thing in Keurig cups...grinding fresh coffee is so much better tasting.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @03:45PM
Sounds like you haven't actually had k-cup coffee. The entire point of the system is that the coffee is ground at the best possible point in terms of ripeness and then vacuum sealed so that what you get is effectively fresh ground coffee.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday February 02 2015, @06:11PM
I've had it at my dentist's office. It was nothing special at all and there are several other preparation methods I prefer, all of which use no DRM. Now, if you like K-Cup coffee the best, then have at it. Taste is a highly subjective matter.
So, _my_ subjective sense is that if you really want the best quality, you have to find a skilled local roaster and buy small quantities of whole beans. As for the vacuum sealing thing, Folgers is vacuum sealed, it's just the can sizes are different. Yuban *shudder* is vacuum sealed too. Vacuum sealing is basically for mass produced industrial coffee because without it, the coffee would be even worse. It is only clever marketing that makes people think it is a sign of taste quality rather than a sign of manufacturing quality.
Also, I would note that "ripeness" is not the right term because coffee is roasted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @07:41PM
> As for the vacuum sealing thing, Folgers is vacuum sealed, it's just the can sizes are different.
That's like saying a bicycle and a cat 797 [landofmachines.com] are basically the same, it's just the tire sizes are different.
> Also, I would note that "ripeness" is not the right term because coffee is roasted.
I grew up in a coffee growing region and I can assure you that roasting immature beans makes for shit coffee.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday February 02 2015, @11:30PM
I should have said this: Folgers must be vaccum sealed because it is produced on an industrial scale, and without the technique, it would be even worse. The fact that K-cups are vacuum sealed is a sign not of subjective quality, but of manufacturing standards employed to offset the quality damage caused by the mass manufacturing process. In this context vacuum sealing is a positive thing, but that doesn't mean the coffee is good. For example, chicken nuggets are processed, stored, and cooked in ways to minimize spoilage. That doesn't mean chicken nuggets taste as good as a fresh roasted chicken made at home even though the fresh chicken is not pumped full of various things, flash frozen, nor stored at 0C.
As for unripe beans, I have no doubt you are right, but I would be surprised if unripe beans are intentionally exported to the US. Unripe beans if used in coffee in America, are most probably to found in industrial coffee production because of the massive amount of coffee processed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @03:42AM
> The fact that K-cups are vacuum sealed is a sign not of subjective quality
I never said vacuum sealing was an indicator of quality, merely that it was a means of preserving the quality of beans that have been ground at the most optimal time for the intended desired taste. Similar to the way vegetables are picked at the most optimal time for nutritional content and then flash frozen to preserve that state. K-cups are a significant increase in both taste and convenience compared to all prior technologies. If you want even better taste than a good k-cup then you have to put in a lot more effort, a lot. See the guy who got +5 touche upthread.
> I would be surprised if unripe beans are intentionally exported to the US.
Geeze what is it with geeks and binary thinking? There are varying degrees of ripeness, in fact you can select for different tastes by choosing to roast beans at different levels of ripeness. Franky I don't give a fuck about your ignorance anymore. say whatever you want in return, arguing with someone who is deliberately obtuse is just too draining
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday February 03 2015, @09:23AM
I'm skeptical. Tomatoes for instance are picked green -- they are much easier to handle being much harder to bruise, easier to store, easier to ship. Of course they end up tasting like cardboard compared to the ones picked from your own garden. I would suspect that many vegetables aren't actually picked at the peak of anything except ease of processing. Food is an industrial process.
As for the ripeness, I can see that for artisan coffees, like the type where the beans are processed inside a bird's digestive system and then collected once the bird ... expels ... them ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak [wikipedia.org] ) -- it is said the bird, a civet, only picks the perfectly ripe cherries -- but I would be totally shocked if Keurig was sending reps to coffee producers and telling them "we want a blend of 50% a day before ripe, 25% a day after, and 25% close to rotten." At that scale, they're just looking for coffee that is made from mostly ripe beans.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday February 03 2015, @09:58AM
sorry, not a bird, a mammal. I need some coffee or maybe to just go to bed.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @05:08PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @06:55PM
I feed my coffee beans to my pet weasel and harvest them out of his litter box when I want a cup. Beats those poor suckers who are always running down to the local roasters to buy theirs by the serving.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02 2015, @10:18PM
The little bugger has saved me a decent amount of money.
I do not drink coffee however my wife does. So she would make about 4-6 cups of fresh ground coffee. She would drink one and the rest would go to waste as by the time she was done the rest was cold or tasted odd.
Per cup it is more expensive. But she was making 4-6 per brew. She still gets her fresh ground (you can get single reusable cups). And she can do whatever spice blends she likes.
At that point the thing is faster with less waste and you get the same effect.
I still have no need for the thing...