I recently noticed that my Keurig® has been churning out mug after mug of bland or even gross coffee. I did the only logical thing, which was to spend days behind my computer screen looking for answers. In my search for Better K-Cups, I discovered several disturbing truths.
1. Clogged Needles
When I first started digging, I thought the issue was my Keurig®. I’d had it a few years; maybe it was just getting older. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to purchasing a whole new machine, so I hoped I could find some advice online.
I came across a really helpful blog that was like WebMD for coffee machines. They suggested a simple solution. Basically, a Keurig® has a needle that pierce the K-cups® so water can pass through the grounds and into your mug. But if that needle gets clogged with who knows what after a million uses, it gunks up the process! Only a small amount of water can actually pass through the K-cup®, and the rest sort of flows around it and back into your mug.
I thought, “Oh wow, that’s an easy fix,” almost as if I was trying to be ironic…
I followed the steps to unclog my needle, which was really disgusting by the way, then eagerly made a new mug of my favorite cappuccino.
The machine made less of a gurgle noise than it was doing, but the coffee still tasted awful. I pulled up my search results to see what else I could find. That’s when I really began to uncover the truth about most K-cups®.
2. Stale At Purchase
"K-cups® are usually stale before you even buy them?!"
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Apparently this is pretty well known among coffee industry insiders, but I had no idea!
It turns out that most K-cups® have coffee that was ground months and even years before you drink it! Now you might think that coffee doesn’t really go bad, but it does! As soon as it’s ground, the beans are exposed to oxygen, which makes it go stale. Just like any other food, stale coffee means the flavor and aroma disappear into the wind. And it just keeps getting more stale if the coffee is roasted!
And this isn’t just one brand selling you the stale stuff, it’s every brand you’d find at your local store. Yet here I am, spending $30 on stale pods every time I go shopping…
"It was starting to sound like the only solution is to buy fresh from a roastery. Too bad I don’t live anywhere near a coffee roastery, and I don’t have the resources to start my own even if I wanted to! Then I made an incredible discovery. You can actually buy fresh coffee online, and it’ll be delivered directly to you! That way the only shelf it sits on is the one in your kitchen cabinet."
I knew immediately that this was the only way I’d buy coffee from now on. But now that I knew that my regular brand was selling stale coffee, I couldn’t use them anymore.
3. Not Enough Variety
I’m the kind of person who likes to consider my options. I get anxiety ordering in bulk if I don’t know which flavor I’ll like best. That’s why I stuck with my old brand for so long, even though I could tell the taste was degrading. I just like familiarity.
So when I was forced to find a new coffee, it was really important to me that I could do some sampling. I opened a bunch of browser tabs to look at all my options side by side. I found a few that looked promising, until I realized they didn’t offer any variety packs. Some packaged a lot of flavors, but only one pod each, which meant I couldn’t have a second mug if I wanted to. That made me wonder if any of their flavors were worth seconds at all.
Another site had exactly the variety I was looking for, but the prices were outrageous. $1.53 per pod?! No thank you! I was ready to give up. I guess I’ll just stick with my stale stuff; maybe I’ll get used to it eventually…
"But as I was closing out the last of my tabs, a variety pack caught my eye: one from Angelino’s".
This variety pack is perfect for first-time users. It comes with 100 pods (at a fraction of the cost of my old regular) and a bunch of different flavors. It is clearly designed with people like me in mind. There are a dozen flavors to try, and just enough pods of each that if I fall in love with a flavor, I can have it several times.
I ordered that right away, along with a box of my all-time favorite, a delicious Cinnamon Vanilla Cappuccino. I was so happy when I saw that flavor, I actually cheered out loud!
"Angelino’s really made the whole experience worthwhile by adding on a 10% discount since it was my first order! For all 124 pods, which included my usual favorite and a bunch of new options, my grand total came out to $0.39 per cup. That’s about half as much as what I was paying in the store for stale coffee, a fraction of what some online stores are charging, and nothing compared to what I would have spent if I went with my gut and replaced my Keurig®!"
Try Angelino's for 10% off your first order here!
This was the solution I’d been looking for! If you’re like me and find yourself drinking bland K-cups® day after day, I highly recommend checking out Angelino's
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UPDATE!
OK, you need to know how good these are. I’ve had my Angelino’s pods for a couple of weeks now, and I’m in love. I’ve recommended Angelino’s to all my friends (even the one who insists on using Nespresso®).
As expected, the Cinnamon Vanilla Cappuccino is an instant favorite, but it’s got some competition. French Vanilla, Caramel Creme, and Chocolate Mocha are top contenders for me. My husband has already finished all of the dark blends, and my teenage daughter just discovered the Decaf Colombian.
We agreed to order more before we guzzle it all away, and we all had fun choosing our next boxes. I even signed us up for recurring delivery so that we get our coffee sent to us without having to remember it. Now we’re set!
I cannot recommend this coffee any more strongly!
Angelino's and its products are not affiliated, sponsored, endorsed, approved nor licensed by Keurig Green Mountain, Inc. or Nespresso USA Inc. K-Cup® is a registered trademark of Keurig Green Mountain Inc. Nespresso® is a registered trademark of Societe des Produits Nestle S.A. Angelino’s single-serve cups are compatible with Keurig® machines. Angelino’s espresso aluminum capsules are compatible with Nespresso® Original machines and will not work with Nespresso® Vertuo.
