Monsters & Critics / Counting Sheep Coffee

Oops! Keurig 2.Doh: Consumers Outsmart Unusable K-Cup Situation

December 16, 2014

k cups

Coffee manufacturer Keurig has unleashed their latest and greatest 2.0, but don’t get too excited, as the widely distributed coffeemaker is equipped to only “read” licensed K-Cups, rendering many coffee producers’ K-Cups who refuse to be part of the Green Mountain cabal useless.

The older Keurig machines take coffee pods from many different brands, not just Keurig. They also have an option for using your own coffee beans, while the newer version does not.

One of our latest finds we loved, Counting Sheep Coffee, is featured in the CNN report as one variety of unlicensed K-Cup that makes the Keurig 2.0 go “Oops!”

Consumers are flooding YouTube with amazing hacks to circumvent this dilemma, and eveniCoffee, a new upstart in single brew coffeemaker race, is zooming ahead grabbing market-share with their new machine that reads any cup and has a different method of steam brewing that reduces bitterness, even Popular Science and Ohio State ran independent tests that quantified the superiority of this over the Keurig models.

CNN reports that one Keurig coffee machine owner found a simple hack to get around Keurig Green Mountain’s (GMCR) notorious K-cup restrictions.

Keurig mandates that its licensed K-cups come equipped with tiny radio frequency emitters. Without the correct signal, Keurig 2.0 machines won’t brew coffee.

CNN shows a video on how KeurigHack.com bypasses this problem with “MacGyver-ing” a licensed K-Cup on top of the lid of an unlicensed cup will fool a Keurig 2.0 machine into brewing your off-brand coffee.

Another posted YouTube video shows a clever (but time consuming) way to circumvent Green Mountain’s bedeviling technology by taping a portion of a licensed lid to the machine’s reader. With that crafty maneuver, you can make your Keurig 2.0 brew any K-cup every time you use it.

CNN reports that last month, Keurig Green Mountain hiked their prices by 9% for the K-Cup packets used in their Keurig brewing system, as well as other single serve packets, bulk coffee and other products.

Counting Sheep Coffee

Original Article