I had my first cup up coffee made with a single cup brewing system at my sister’s house and I was amazed at the perfection of the cup of coffee. I am a long time coffee lover, and to have one cup after another be so well brewed and so consistent seemed marvelous to me. The selection of coffees seemed marvelous, too, as did not having to make an entire pot of coffee since I just cannot put it away the way that I used to. It all seemed marvelous until I found out just how much one of those single cup brewing systems cost.
So, it seemed that I would stick with my plain, old, coffeemaker for the foreseeable future until I moved into my new home and that same sister gave me my own single cup brewing machine as a house warming gift. She had one in her camper, which she was selling, so off it came to me. How cool is that? Then began the buying of the little doodads that you plug into the device to make that perfect coffee. At first, the novelty of the whole thing blinded me to the price that I was paying for those mini, plastic, containers worth of one cup of coffee to be brewed. It didn’t take me long to figure out that not only was there a huge expense, but what seemed like a lot of waste and garbage.
Being my frugal self, I tried using a one of the little coffee inserts twice and what I got with the second run was a cup of dishwater looking liquid. I bought a bag of coffee and tried to stuff it into an emptied store bought single cup coffee insert, but that was extremely messy, and I got grounds in my coffee. Sensing my frustration, that very same sister saved the day in the form of a little thing called a reusable filter, which was stuffed into my Christmas stocking. Again, how cool is that?
A reusable filter in a little gadget that allows you to easily use your own loose coffee in your single cup brewer without the mess of stuffing old, empty plastic coffee inserts, and no grounds in your coffee, either! What the reusable filter lacks in the ease of just popping in a single store bought coffee insert, it makes up for in the huge savings. The reusable filter does take a little getting used to at first, too. In the beginning I felt like a pipe smoker plugging his pipe with tobacco. You do have to pour your loose coffee into the filter, which is messy at first, but you get better with time. My advice is to do it over the sink. You do have to empty it and rinse it out between uses, but again, you will be saving huge amounts of money!
What are the savings? I was buying 12 count boxes of single cup coffee inserts at $9 bucks a pop. I was going through two boxes a week. One 12 count box weight 4.87 ounces, so subtract the packaging, and you are getting roughly 4 ounces of coffee and I am being generous here. I like Green Mountain Dark Magic. A 12 ounce bag of that also costs me $9, and I can buy it whole bean and grind it fresh at the store. One 12 ounce bag is three times as much coffee as in a 12 count box of single cup coffee inserts, and lasts me about two weeks, so that 4 ounce estimate really is quite generous! Since I am terrible at math in my head, the calculator on my computer tells me that comes out to a savings of $45 per month, or $540 over a years time! That is a lot of money, honey!
You can buy a reusable filters online for single cup brewing system for anywhere from $10 to $25 dollars, sans shipping so shop around. Those of you who do not live in the middle of nowhere, as I do, may be able to find one locally. Even the extremely frugal need little luxuries in life, and a good cup of coffee is one of my little luxuries. Thanks to my reusable filter for my single cup coffee maker, I can now enjoy that cup of coffee guilt free.