"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"

I love coffee. I've always loved it. My parents drink it black with no sugar all day, and I pretty much adapted that too. I feel about coffee the way I feel about baked goods in that the freshness of it is very important. There should not be very much time elapsed at all between the time it was roasted and delivered to you, and definitely not much time elapsed between when it was ground and brewed. That is why Uncommon Grounds is so good - they have a roaster right in the store. I really love Caribou Coffee, whose stores I basically lived in as an undergraduate (with comfy leather chairs and thick, heavy duty wooden tables that are great for studying). I still make sure to pick up their beans when I am in MI or at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport on a layover. Their coffee is never, ever burnt, and always bright tasting and delicious. Zoka Coffee from WA is amazing. Scott bought the Ethiopian brand when he was in Seattle at a conference, and it is complex, fresh, and has such nice, deep flavors. Every time I make a cup I can't believe how good it is, really - what a treasure.

Which brings me to coffee I don't really enjoy - Keurig's K Cup brewer. We have one at the office. Of course it makes sense at the office because multiple people can have different kinds and there is no mess to clean up. But I will argue the coffee does not taste good. We're low on the K Cups around here, and I started brewing my own coffee at home and just waking up a little earlier. It made me realize how much more delicious the coffee I make at home is compared to the coffee brewed in this thing. Apparently, there is a refillable cup you can buy so you can use your own ground coffee, but I have read negative reviews of this accessory online.  I just feel that these K cups seem expensive compared to regular coffee (I guess it depends what kind of coffee you normally buy), and it never tastes good. Creating all these little plastic cups for every single cup of coffee someone drinks seems also very bad for the environment (paper coffee filters are biodegradable, and can even be recycled). The taste must be affected by the fact that you have no idea how long those coffee grounds have been in the little plastic cup.You don't know how long they were being shipped all around the country while en route to wholesale big box stores. Then, they sit in the cabinet in the main office for weeks, before even getting to the point where someone might think about using them. It has been great waking up a half an hour earlier to leisurely enjoy my freshly ground coffee at the kitchen table while reading the newspaper, and that turns out to be much, much more satisfying. In this way, it becomes a moment, and more than just a means to an end. If I wanted to go really crazy I could add some frothed milk. So even though I will admit to the convenience of the K cups, I say the taste is not good, and the whole experience is unsatisfying, even though many of my coworkers love the thing. Since going without it, I've realized I'd rather go without than bother with something I don't even really like.