New household gizmo: Keurig one-cup coffeemaker

I drink coffee every morning. Just a cup or two, but I really enjoy those cups and the little jolt they provide in getting me up and out the door. I'm not a snob about coffee, generally -- I don't grind my own super fancy organic beans or anything -- but I do like it hot, predictably tasty and reliably delivered.

It's a humble quest, but a quest nonetheless. I go through about a coffee maker every 18 months, either through malfunction or dissatisfaction. The ones with thermal carafes generally don't keep the coffee hot long enough. The ones with little hot plates leave the coffee tasting burnt after a while. In either case, I only drink a couple of cups a day, and it's hard to make just a couple of cups in a standard coffee maker, so I wind up wasting coffee grounds and pouring extra coffee down the drain.

So when my last coffee maker began producing lukewarm coffee on a regular basis and needed to be replaced, I decided to make a change. Instead of buying just another drip coffee maker, I went with a completely different option -- the Keurig B66 single serve coffee and tea brewer.

This isn't like those old pod coffee makers except in that it makes a cup at a time. Even just looking at it, you can see the differences: metal components instead of plastic, a large water tank so making multiple cups is easier, a timer so the machine can be heated up and ready to go in the morning, and (perhaps best of all) the ability to make three different sizes of beverage ranging from teensy proper cups of tea to large commuter mugs of joe.

Today was my Keurig's maiden voyage. First, you open the front to access the chamber where the wee little coffee holder goes in:


This morning's choice was Green Mountain something or the other. I got 96 coffee and drink pods free with the machine, so I'm trying things out:


They're pretty small.


You don't just have to use prepackaged cups, though. The machine comes with a little thingy that can you can fill yourself with coffee or whatever you want to brew. I'll do this once I'm out of the free pods -- less waste and cheaper.


I decided to have a medium sized cup of coffee this morning, so I pressed the middle button to start the brewing process.


The machine pokes holes in the bottom and top of the pod and forces super-heated water through it to brew. Seconds after pressing the button, here comes coffee:


Less than 30 seconds later, it's ready.


And -- after adding cream and sugar, coffee! Hurrah! The perfect temperature and great taste.


I'm pretty happy so far, though this has been an admittedly small sample size. It'll be interesting to try the various teas and cocoa that came along with the machine.