revbob wrote: ↑09 Jan 2017, 5:13pm
Who wouldn't want "home brewed" Bud and Corona.
I don't know who is coming up with these ideas at Keurig but they keep laying eggs. One of the problems with their Keurig Kold was that you could only do like 8 Oz and then it would take 30 min before it could do another.
Their claim to fame is basically developing a fast, cheap mass-market pressurized water heater kitchen appliance. Before them the only place you saw pressurized water makers was the office instant-coffee vending machine that required a service contract. Keurig didn't break through because the K-Cups were anything worth buying; they're the biggest ripoff around. They didn't break through because they were first; proprietary coffee singles makers have been tried--with failure--for generations and landfills are full of past machines that went obsolete the second their one-of-a-kind singles thingies went off the market. No...they got it because their water heater takes less than 2 minutes from cold start to ready-to-work, less than 1 minute between cups, pours a cup in 30 seconds, and only takes pushing 1 fucking brainless button. It's the basest instant gratification impatient consumers can get in their own kitchen, and they're so cheap they're practically disposable. Machine on the fritz?...just wait till next Xmas when some relative with a shitload of bonus points on their department store credit card buys you a new one! The fact that they were able to make the K-Cups the main selling point, push that weak-ass Green Mountain swill on America at obscene markup, and achieve total vendor lock-in with the royalties from licensing the single-serve container was just pure lightning-strikes marketing brilliance.
Their mistake was convincing themselves that the K-Cups were such hot shit unto themselves that they could corner the market on every single-serve liquid or semi-liquid we pour down our gullets. When really it was because their machine was so stupid-fast, stupid-easy, and stupid-disposable that they climbed out to an early--but still long-term temporary--market lead. First they overreached with the DRM on the Keurig 2.0 to freeze out anyone who tried to reverse-engineer the K-Cup container, all the off-brand coffee cheaper than Green Mountain, and the make-your-own audience who use reusable filters. Then they started licensing some dodgy stuff like K-Cup soups (
) like it was an every-device that could make a four-course meal. That Campbell's-brand chicken noodle terror-in-a- K-Cup is now marked-down 75% at the Stop & Shop because they can't get rid of their inventory and it never expires. And then they went completely off the cliff with that slow-ass and way overcomplicated Kold...forgetting that their whole claim to fame was lizard-brain instant gratification. After basically wrecking the company with that, appears they've learned nothing and now think there's a latent market of anti-beer beersnobs.
FWIW...I have a Sodastream I got from some relative a few years ago. Took me about 2 years to even take it out of the box and try it out, but once I did give a shot it's pretty hard to improve on. It's just a piece of plastic with a CO2 cannister and a half-liter bottle. Fill bottle with water, screw it upright into the plastic stand for air seal, press button. Boom...fizz. Press button again for more fizz. Take a bottle of soda mix, measure out portion in the cap, pour the syrup into fizzy water. Put the cap on and gently spin bottle around so it mixes. Ready to drink after like 3 spins. Stupid-stupid easy. And you can mix all the booze in it you want, just like at that fast food job you had where the whole night shift was chugging rum-and-coke!!!
The soda mixes cost like $4.99 at Staples and (if you don't drink a whole lot like me) last a long time, the CO2 cannisters cost like $18 and last a long time, and the facsimile flavors they have are actually pretty close to what they're supposed to be miming (I'm working on a bottle of "Dr. Pete" mix, and damn if that doesn't taste just like it's a brother from a different mother). And the thing still works even if you drop it on the floor and completely shatter the plastic...because it's just an injection-molded plastic stand with a nozzle. Not that the proprietary half-liter bottles are expensive or anything, but I bet you could even jury-rig a different nozzle that lets you use the empty liter of Coke you threw in the recycling with this.
That's literally how every automated soda fountain in a 7-Eleven works: pipe one line of CO2 with one line of syrup into chilled water...instant, and no moving parts. That's all it is in self-contained form shrunk small enough to put in your kitchen cabinet. You could literally steal a wholesale refill of Diet Coke fountain syrup from a McDonalds while the night cashier is out for a piss break and use it in your Sodastream. How arrogant does a company have to be to overcomplicate this with expensive machinery? The only good thing about Keurig Kold is that all the borderline-illegal deals they cut with department stores to freeze Sodastream off their shelves and replace with KK meant that Sodastream slashed its prices dirt cheap when it retrenched to lower-rent office supplies stores. Apparently they're pretty popular with desk jockeys who abuse the company office supply budget buying them and need something to hide their alcohol in during meetings, because Staples sells mind-boggling array of mix flavors.
Wolter wrote:I fucking despise the concept of the Keurig. A fucking wasteful way to get mediocre coffee. Ali and I caved and got one on our wedding registry, against my better judgment, because we could supposedly get an optional filter attachment and use our own ground beans. What they don't tell you is that it is really easy for stray grinds not in their wasteful assed K-Cups to clog the feed lines. The fucking thing was worthless within months. I went back to using either my 15 year old drip machine or a French press and never looked back.
Other than some cheap-ass dollar store flavor-medley coffee for that once a week I'm in the mood for faux- butter toffee, I don't think I've ever actually
bought K-Cups. I just do my store-bought Chock Full o' Nuts or bag of ground Dunkies coffee-like stimul-crank in the machine with a bunch of reusable plastic filters sold six-for-$6 that go right in the dishwasher. Must've lucked out because those filters have lasted me 2 years of daily use without clogging at all. And haven't had any issues with my "1.0"-era machine...though my parents, who have hard water at their house, pretty much burn through a new one every 18 months because of all the mineral crap in their tap water.
But...seriously, it's just a fucking pressurized water heater. I use it just as effectively and pushbutton instant-gratification to pour hot water for making instant oatmeal out of a packet...or Jello shots
. Shorn of all its marketing hooey it's a fairly useful generic kitchen appliance. But I live alone, so I'm not brewing up a pot for two or doing hoity-toity things with my day like "meal prep" or "bathing regularly". Passable pushbutton caffeine foodproduct is good enough for my needs. I just can't understand the people who bought the marketing so hook-line-sinker that they've completely forgotten how to make coffee that's not in a K-Cup. (<--- my family
)