Black Powder now has single serve pods that have 35% more coffee per pod and 100% recyclable. Works in all k-cup brewers including the Keurig 2.0 with the clever clip included FREE.
Black Powder was struggling for the past year to make a great cup o’joe out of a Keurig machine. We tried many refillable cups, every brand of coffee pods on the market, and many tricks to get a powerful cup. Couldn’t get anything that was less than BROWN WATER. The technology for standard k-cup only allows 9.2 grams of coffee to be loaded. Most people don’t realize that the k-cup was designed for a 6 oz cup of coffee so all these coffee machine tricks with “strong” settings is all an attempt to get more leaching (of the bad oils) from coffee grinds. We evaluated a few co-packers (send our coffee to them and they send us k-cups), but the pricing was challenging, large lot sizes would challenge coffee aging, and most importantly, the taste was BROWN WATER. Additionally, the standard k-cups are not recyclable nor biodegradable thus going against Black Powder’s brand values of eco-friendly.
Coffee is supposed to be brewed at 200 F and the Keurig machine falls way short of that with 186 F on the best run. One trick to get the water hotter was to waste an initial 4 oz run of hot water after waking up the machine from sitting for more than an hour. That provides an additional 15 F in temperature in the cup using a 10 oz flow setting. The other problem is many k-cups are manufactured from a material with a melting point of 195 F.
Black Powder has chosen to use iFill Cup technology for it’s single serve pods that are k-cup compatible. Compatible with the Keurig 2.0 with use of the free CLEVER clip included in each package. Keurig 2.0 is another stroke of marketing genius to reduce the market share loss of Green Mountain in the k-cup space. A photo eye looks at the lid which has patented ink to only brew with Green Mountain packaged (or the company pays to use the ink on the lids) k-cups. American ingenuity is already at work with many big k-cup manufactures breaking the code but that still leaves us local and small companies to find a solution. Rogers Coffee Company has created a FREEDOM CLIP that is easy to install in your 2.0 Keurig brewers to allow you the FREEDOM to use any k-cup. We have been able to find a source to be able to include a clip in each package of single serve pods. Install it and forget it…..works with ALL k-cups.
Black Powder would prefer to compete with product quality and taste to earn customer loyalty, not trying to lock out the competition.
iFill technology uses 100% recyclable polypropylene #5 plastic. But, the real TASTE advantage comes from the ability to load 12.5 grams of coffee, 35.6% more than a standard k-cup, in each pod. This is done by using polypro mesh plastic instead of paper for the filter medium in the pod which is not pierced by the needle in the bottom. K-cups have an air gap at the bottom so the needle doesn’t rip the paper bag pushing grounds in the cup. The other thing that air gap does is allow channeling of the hot water through the cup resulting in many grounds are not equally leached of the valuable coffee. Black Powder has some issues with the original ifill cups with breakage of the thick bottom and overflowing due to lack of glue. This upgraded design that we started using December 1 solves both of those issues so we have launched with branded box of Dynamite and lids on the single serve pods.
SUMMARY:
- More coffee allows lower brew temperatures to still produce a great cup.
- Water turbulence with the physics of cup design uses all the ground to make the cup
- Bonus: 100% recyclable.
Black Powder has fresh roasted coffee in 4 varieties as standard.
- Dark roast – One-Eyed Jack Organic (Sumatra and African coffees)
- Medium roast – Peaberry Blend (Brazil and Tanzania Peaberry Beans)
- Decaffeinated Peru Organic Swisswater Processed
- Italian Blend
Black Powder will load the iFill with ANY of our single origin beans, blends, or flavored coffees at customer request. Minimum order of two boxes which is 24 units.
We have dialed in the machine right now for grind level and other process challenges including the addition of nitrogen. The current cup should be really great for 60 days with nitrogen and maybe up to 90 days. Sorry, no plans to compete with the 2 yr shelf life advertised on mass production k-cups…..we could label it that way like others but the cup quality degrades in all technology long before that.
Black Power Roasting = Balance of art and science to provide a Dynamite Cup!!