Brew Stronger. Brew Bigger. Brew Hotter.™The revolutionary Keurig Vue™ Brewer works together with the new Vue™ packs to deliver the ultimate brewing experience.
Green Mountain will begin selling the new Keurig Vue brewers in “coming weeks” for $249.99–more than double the price of its basic Keurig machine. But the machines can brew fancier beverages, with options for cappuccino-like frothy drinks, stronger iced coffee and hotter temperatures.
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Green Mountain expects the Vue to draw in a higher-end crowd of coffee-drinkers, those who want more options for how their coffee is brewed. But Vue is not trying to be an espresso machine, like Nestle’s pricier Nespresso line, nor does it intend to replace the original Keurig line, Stacy added.
Jtjdt sent this to me because I wrote this post a while back about Keurig machine and the issues with them. I posed a lot of reasons why K-Cups and Keurig are destroying the coffee industry. I’m too busy to really respond to this new machine but I’d like to preface that I’m not a coffee expert. I’m some guy from Florida with a couple of coffee making tools in my house and a passion for taking the time on each cup because I enjoy the taste of well made coffee. That’s really it and I see the threat of K-Cups in many ways.
This machine does a few things
- Brew stronger coffee
- Brew different types of coffee-based drinks
- Brew more coffee per pod but I assume this means the strength isn’t less if you had brewed a smaller cup
- You also brew the coffee hotter
- Vue packs are reusable or something of that sort so you’re not just throwing away plastic cups, you’re actually able to reuse them.
Good.
There are still fundamental problems with this system BUT, the arguments I made are mostly moot and I see one things happening that I didn’t write in the last post. That’s the fact that Keurig isn’t truly threatening independent roasters or cafes. Keurig is threatening Mr. Coffee, Folgers and Maxwell House. I believe, after spending a few months heavily entrenched in the beer community, converting someone from Budweiser to Trappist Belgian Ales is a feat that takes place over a few years. However, getting someone to switch from Budweiser to Miller is millions of dollars and a few ads that have girls dancing around in cheerleader outfits.
This argument applies to coffee. Keurig with their Vue system may produce a better cup than Folgers via your Mr. Coffee system and switching to Keurig when Mr. Coffee finally dies and is out of warranty is something a lot of people will do. Those consumers were never going to order $50 worth of fresh beens from Blue Bottle and learn how to make coffee with a Chemex.
Getting angry because someone eats Velveeta cheese, prefers veggies from a can and drinks Bud Lights for that “great taste” is a waste of time. It’s also not class warfare. If I made a third of what I do now, I’d simply drink less beer in order to have better beer. I’d drink less coffee but higher quality and I’d just give up cheese instead of eating the fake stuff. I don’t vote for products with my dollar, I vote for moderation of my products with my dollar. However, the people drinking Mr. Coffee or Keurig could be rich or poor but asking them to stand over a stove and spend 8 minutes pouring a cup of coffee is something they’ll never do and I’m glad Keurig is stepping up to give them more choice and perhaps a better cup of coffee than the 1st gen K-Cup systems.
Technology will ALWAYS be able to catch up to what we can do with our own two hands. Choosing to use our hands when technology has made them obsolete is an individual decision and I won’t ridicule anyone anymore for choosing push-button over manual work.
Thanks Joe for the link.