What are coffee pods? What are the pros and cons of coffee pods vs ground coffee? We will explore all of it here in this article.
Coffee drinkers have an interesting and vast selection of products for their morning cup of happiness. The latest addition to the morning wake-up call is coffee pods. They, too, come in an eye-widening array of flavors.
Let’s dive in!
Coffee Pods
Coffee pods are small plastic cups with foil tops. Inside is just enough ground for a tiny cup of coffee. Motel and hotel rooms, for instance, feature the original coffee pods or the round, flat packages placed in the filter holder. The water drips through it, filling a single-serve cup with coffee.
Pod machines work the same way. You place the pod in a unique device, where it drips the water through the pod. The coffee comes out the bottom of the pod into the cup you placed beneath the spout.
The machine and pods more familiar to a lot of people are Keurig.
Pros Of Coffee Pods
In a world geared more and more toward convenience, it’s not surprising that coffee pods have gone viral. One of the pros of coffee pods is their single-serve capacity. Not everyone drinks a whole pot of coffee in less than an hour (who, me?).
Not everyone likes coffee enough for more than one cup; they just need it to wake up. Coffee pods answer the need.
The pros of coffee pods are impressive. They save time – no measuring out coffee grounds. It’s already done.
They make sure the coffee isn’t too strong or too weak. Coffee pods don’t go stale; they stay fresh. The machines are easy to use, easy to clean, and they can make either one cup of joe or a whole carafe, depending on the machine.
Cons Of Coffee Pods
The cons aren’t many, but they’re equally important. Perhaps the most important, at least for many people, is that pods aren’t recyclable. Pods and their machines are expensive.
Many machines aren’t interchangeable, meaning you can’t use the pod of one brand of a machine in another brand of machine.
Ground Coffee
Almost everyone on the planet is familiar with ground coffee. We’ve seen cowboys in movies pour into their tin cups coffee from a percolator sitting on a hot rock by the fire.
We’ve seen our own grandmothers pour coffee from the percolator seated on the back eye of the stove. We watched as drip coffee makers came into fashion, and now we can’t live without them.
What about the ground coffee that goes into these pots? We have the choice of grinding our own beans or taking Folgers’ word for it that it’s good to the last drop.
We can adjust the grounds to our preferences (strong enough to curl your hair or just enough color to qualify as coffee.) We have a range of flavors from which to choose. We can get regular, unleaded, or half-and-half.
Ground coffee comes from coffee beans. No beans, no coffee. Coffee lovers have a choice between whole beans and pre-ground coffee.
Beans can be customized however the buyer prefers, from finely ground with its delicate flavor to coarsely ground with its more robust flavor. With pre-ground coffee, you get what the manufacturer produces.
Pros Of Ground Coffee
Grinders are expensive. Their blades will dull eventually, and the motor will go out. Ground coffee doesn’t require grinders, so you save a lot of money.
Ground coffee is more convenient. Just walk into a store, grab a can of coffee, and you’re off. It’s cheaper, too.
Cons Of Ground Coffee
The only con to ground coffee is that it isn’t customizable. Ground coffee comes in the grind that their machinery produces.
Ground coffee is made in huge machines, so they can only make one style of ground coffee. For more robust grinds, as mentioned above, the end-users must grind their own joe.
When consumers consider coffee pods vs ground coffee, they must weigh against each other freshness, coarse or fine grind, and the interchangeability of the pod or grounds.
Buyers should also remember that coffee grounds can be used in different ways; for example, they can be used to give your potted plants some acidity as well as a few nutrients. Pods can’t do that.
