Cafe Flow Stainless Steel Reusable K Cup, 2-Pk by Perfect Pod - Refillable Capsule Cup Metal Coffee Filter for Keurig 1.0, Keurig 2.0, K-Duo, K-Mini and Select Models (See Full Compatibility Chart)

EDIT: One year review! We bought six of these a year ago, when they were one of the first on the market. I thought I’d update my original review after a year of heavy use! One year review: They’ve performed flawlessly… no failures whatsoever on six of these. We are getting amazing results using a fine grind. Here are some tips: – first off, if you like a medium-light roast and have an Aldi store nearby (Aldi is a German-based company that provides a scaled down Costco-type store with amazing products and prices), you should try their whole bean coffee – it’s amazing and only $6.49 for 12 oz). Fair trade, single origin, organic… an astonishing bargain (I have no affiliation with Aldi). – these are easy to clean if you clean them while the grounds are still wet. We just turn them upside down and tap them down in the sink… the result is a little pyramid of coffee. Then we use the sprayer of the sink to flush the grounds out – just stick it in the cup and pull the trigger. If a grain is stuck, shoot it from the outside. Super fast to flush and clean… we don’t even wash them in the dishwasher any more, but they do fine on the top rack. – you have to fill the cup all the way above the top holes. I fill the cup, tap it down vigorously to compress the grounds (this is important) and then top it off and tap it again. Compressing the grounds this way slows the pour and is a key to getting rich, strong coffee (read the old review below to see what I do that further slows the pour). – a year of tapping to fill and knocking them in the sink to clean, and they are like new… no damage whatsoever. These have been such a great purchase, and the fresh ground coffee we are enjoying is far, far better than any commercial k-cup you can buy. You probably won’t save money, but you’ll have great coffee and will avoid the plastic waste (read my edited original review below for the reasoning here). – all in all, a great purchase that we use daily! Original (edited) review 1/6/21… at the time, these were one of the very first stainless steel cups on the market. Here's my initial review from a year ago: Just received our order and tried them out. Here are my my initial impressions (I’ll update this as I tinker with them): - they seem to be well made, but will report if they fail in any way. I don’t see them as cheap or flimsy. Delicate perhaps, but I expect they’ll last with a little care. I inspected the build quality — particularly the rather intricate inner, small box piece (that makes way for the bottom-piercing part... K-cups are pierced both top and bottom when you close the lid). To my amazement, all seams are soldered tightly and beautifully. I made my way through grad school as a hand-crafted jeweler, and this work impresses me. - they fit perfectly in our machine (don’t remember the model, but it’s the one that does lattés). The cups doesn’t move around… the hinge keeps them from rotating. - it takes a little self-training to pull up on the non-hinged side for filling and cleaning, and to insert them properly. But there is a different shape to the “wings” of the top – the non-hinged side has angles. Even so, I found myself trying to open them from the other side, so I have to train myself to be mindful of those angles (after a year I still pull on the wrong side so the problem clearly ISN'T these cups... maybe my wife is right and I’m an idiot :). The angles also help to put it in correctly – always keep the angled side to the right (there’s an arrow, but as other mentioned it’s really hard to see). - water flows through more quickly than a k-cup (I used coffee from existing pods to test as we wait for our grinder to arrive). The coffee is weaker because of this, but still drinkable [note: we are now enjoying freshly ground strong coffee]. K-cups have a filter inside which keeps residue from your cup and slows down the pour. A fresh grind should help the strength (and taste) of the coffee, but I’ll have to find a way to slow the pour. As I watch it, I see the water run clear fairly quickly. Filters are available, but I’d like to keep it simple and avoid more waste, so I’m going to see if I can find another solution. - a small bit of fine residue is left in the mug… again because of the lack of filter material. This doesn’t bother me but it does my wife, so I’ll have to find a solution for this as well. - as others have mentioned, the large hole in the top allows grounds to spill easily if the pod is shaken or falls sideways. It will also likely allow the coffee to go stale faster if you load several up ahead of time. We are hurried in the morning, which is why we use a Keurig in the first place, and I'll be loading some the night before so I’ll be thinking about a solution here as well. - the lid has a tiny o-ring that seals the top. Not sure why, since the large hole will allow leaks if that is going to happen (it didn’t at all in our first tests). The o-ring does keep the lid closed, so maybe that’s the main purpose. All in all, these seem like a good solution and a quality product – with the modifications described below, we are getting very good coffee with fresh-ground beans. I like stainless steel rather than plastic, and it makes them easier to clean than the screens found in plastic versions. The actual coffee cost per year is slightly lower for ground beans [edit: wrong – see below], but more importantly we avoid throwing 1440 used plastic k-cups in the garbage each year. We are committed to reducing our plastic usage, and k-cups are a problem. EDITS: Six of these fit snugly into a square 1.8ltr/5 cup Snap Ware container, and that should keep them upright and avoid excess drying of the grounds overnight (see pic). I grind the coffee and set up the cups every night, in preparation for the next day (I do my oatmeal at the same time). Freshness and spilling problem solved with a decent airtight container. Our grinder arrived, and after experimentation, the finest espresso grind seems to give the best results. That also seemed to be the grind I found when I “dissected” a k-cup. One nice surprise is that almost no grounds or sediment was left in the cup with my fresh grind, even without filters. The k-cup coffee I initially used must have had a fair amount of grinding dust in it, because quite a bit of sediment was found in those test cups. I found that tapping these stainless pods down as you fill them helps keep the coffee well packed, which is important for slowing the pour. I fill the pods to just above the holes on the sides – packing and filling the pod above the top holes is vital for strong coffee! SLOWING THE POUR! This is a bit of a challenge… even with fresh espresso-ground coffee, the coffee is a tad weak because the flow is too fast. I’ve found that there are actually far too many holes in this stainless steel pod… I eventually got perfect results by blocking off ALL the holes on the sides! This slows the pour and makes the coffee much stronger and far better tasting (a bit of crema actually develops in your cup). After blocking all the holes on the sides, there’s no spillover of water on top – the bottom holes alone are enough to allow the water through at a safe rate. If you think about it, all the water in a regular K-cup has to flow out of the small hole that is punctured in the bottom when you close the lid – these stainless pods simply allow water to flow through too quickly. So how to fix this? I used shipping tape to experiment, but this clearly isn’t a permanent solution. The answer finally came to me: I can slip the stainless pod inside a plastic pod with the bottom cut off. We happened to have some plastic Melitta JavaJig pods from earlier tests – the JavaJig pods are plastic and use a paper filter and have an open bottom. After cutting out the fins in the bottom of the plastic cup (I used a Dremel), they slip over the stainless pods to block the side water, and are easily removed for cleaning everything. See the pic. Some notes on cleaning: I’ve found it best to set the used pod on the sink to let it cool a bit, but then tapping the grounds out and cleaning the pod before the grounds dry – if you let them dry then they’re harder to remove. Something that came with our coffee grinder has been very valuable in cleaning these – a brush (see pic). It allows you to brush stubborn grains out of the corners in the bottom, and the chisel tip helps get grounds out if you’ve left the used pod in the coffee Keurig overnight. Hopefully you have something like this or can find one to buy – a stiff artist’s brush would work fine. But it's best to clean the pods while still wet and warm if you can. - - - - - - - - - - - - Plastic waste: doing the math, comparing the costs, and cutting down on plastic: There’s been a lot written online about the cost of buying K-cups and the plastic waste involved. It’s easy enough to do the math yourself, so I did and discovered that most journalists must not be good at math, and/or are far too willing to accept anything someone tells them – the numbers being repeated and spread online are way off. A popular notion that I have seen in several articles online is that k-cups cost up to 40x the cost of traditional coffee. My simple math below shows that the price of k-cups compared to an equivalent amount of decent coffee is roughly equal, but I imagine most coffee enthusiasts use more coffee than what’s found in a k-cup, so they’re spending more… possibly much more. (EDIT: we are spending more... almost 50% more... because this system requires more coffee to yield a potent cup, even with the green side shields pictured. But the return is MUCH BETTER COFFEE EVERY MORNING. And of course, no plastic waste.) In regard to plastic waste, there are similar “facts” found repeatedly online. One states that the number of k-cups thrown out annually in American homes could circle the globe 12 times, while another "expert" says “I think it’s closer to 14 times.” Well how about 190 times? That’s the number I get from easily obtained statistics, a little math, and two big (but reasonable) assumptions/estimates: that 25% of American households use a Keurig machine (not my estimate... mine would be higher) and that the average number of cups brewed per day in these households is 4 (my estimate). Let's put that aside and look at cost first: The following is a rough comparison of the cost for pods vs. grinding your own (I’m using 360 days in a year for simplicity): My wife and I use an average of 4 k-cups per day, or 1440 per year. The amount of coffee in a k-cup is .4 oz by weight (I weighed it on our incredibly accurate kitchen scale). That means you can get approximately 40 home-ground k-cups (I’ll call the home-made version "pods" hereafter) out of a pound of coffee. At the time of this original post, a box of 120 Kirkland k-cups from Costco cost about $38 (Kirkland coffee is reportedly supplied by Starbucks). 1440 cups a year requires 12 of these boxes, or $456. 12 ounces of Pete’s Cafe Domingo whole beans from Walmart cost about $9 (way back in 2021) and provides coffee for 30 home-prepared pods (“pods” to differentiate from k-cups). 1440 cups a year requires 48 of these bags, or $432. Costco K-cups for a year: $456 Walmart-derived theoretical pods for a year: $432 EDIT: But that’s based on theoretically putting .4oz of coffee in these stainless “pods.” In reality, I use .6oz of fresh-ground coffee for each pod (measured by my incredibly accurate scale with tare ability). So my annual coffee cost is 50% higher than the theoretical amount: K-cups for a year: $456 Actual pods for a year: $648 It clearly doesn’t make economic sense, so why bother grinding your own? Taste is a primary reason – fresh-ground coffee is FAR more satisfying than pre-ground coffee. Who knows how long that Costco or Walmart coffee has been sitting on the shelf (answer: way, way longer than the beans you will grind as needed). Variety is another reason – grinding your own allows you to choose locally roasted beans or a huge global offering of beans that aren’t available as k-cups. However, I’d argue that the biggest reason is the environment. My wife and I throw (threw) away at least 1440 k-cups a year, but it’s estimated that 32.5 million American households use Keurig machines (25% of 130 million households). If even remotely accurate, and assuming 4 cups average per day, that’s 47,450,000,000, or over 47 billion k-cups thrown away each year by American homes alone… corporate usage only adds to this number (the US is likely the greatest user of Keurig machines – despite the foreign-sounding name, Keurig was a US startup). It has been estimated that the number of k-cups used yearly in American homes alone could circle the globe 14 times, but the numbers above would indicate more like 190 times. An even more staggering mental image is that this string of discarded k-cups would reach from New York to Australia *every day* and would circle the globe every two days! (do the math... a k-cup is 2" in diameter… I’ll leave you to find the diameter of the Earth :) Keurig claims their cups are recyclable, but that is misleading. Recycling a k-cup requires the foil lid to be removed and the plastic to be reclaimed with industrial equipment. There is very little financial incentive in gathering, cleaning and processing the myriad tiny containers for recycling, so it simply doesn’t happen at any meaningful scale. A better solution is to make them compostable (as some have), and I agree, but the compostable products so far still require processing to remove plastic and foil, and again that’s just not gonna happen. So the honest reality is that the word “compostable” is mostly a marketing gimmick at this point. It is much better to just avoid the waste altogether by grinding your own coffee and reusing metal pods like the ones offered here. Better taste, choice of beans, zero plastic waste, very little time to prepare and clean afterward. Seems like a no-brainer to me. [EDIT 10/6/23] We have had two cups out of ten that have had the tiny hinge pin fall out – they are still completely functional, so it's not a big deal. You can replace the pin if you find it (it was easy for me to find both of our missing pins), and crimp the hinge with needle-nose pliers – that seems to work well, and the lid still functions perfectly. If the pin is lost, the cup is still functional – you just have to fit the top on by lining up the hinge – not a big deal.

We recently purchased a Keurig but have resisted for years because we do not want to increase plastic use or plastic in the landfills, or ingest microplastics, so we try to avoid this whenever possible. When I contacted Keurig, they recommended their fully plastic reusable cup (yuk). However, this reusable stainless steel cup works great for the Keurig K Cafe special edition we bought. Much healthier. We've used a French press for two decades. What I didn't like with it was how much water it takes to clean it each time. So with the reusable K cup we minimize plastic use and ingestion, minimize water needed for cleaning, and we get to purchase whatever type of beans/ground that we want. Unless you are a strict one cup a day person, I recommend purchasing two reusable cups per person. We tried one each but it's much nicer to have two cups in the morning, clean the cups, and be done with it for the day.

Great for my Keurig K-Mini Mate single serve coffee maker. A perfect fit. Works well easy to rinse and reuse. Fast and secure shipping. Great value for price paid.

I have purchased two sets of these now. I am happy with them. Saves money on the K-cups. Plus, I like the metal vs plastic. The first one I purchased over a year ago did wear out from use. The pin in the hinge just fell out. But with daily use and over a year's time, I still think this is a good product! I have purchased a second pair and have three GOOD working cups now. Would recommend

I don’t often do reviews, but these reusable stainless steel K cup/pods warrant some mention. Sorry for the lengthiness of this review. I’ve been using plastic reusable ones for years, needless to say the plastic covers always break off. That hasn’t been much of a big deal because you can still use them … until you accidentally lose the covers in the garbage lol; so it was time to buy new ones. I decided on these stainless due to the plastic content in the old ones, and hopefully a more secure cover attachment. I have a Hamilton Beach FlexBrew and it’s always been difficult to buy reusable pods that fit. My machine requires that there is at least one DEEP bottom notch on at least one side, 2-4 deep side bottom notches work fine, but one deep notch is mandatory or the pod won’t fit. These stainless ones are perfect and also handle my fine ground coffee without leaving debris in my coffee cup. I’m laughing at myself because something I did not think about, is that the stainless ones are A LOT HOTTER after immediate use than plastic. They are too hot to handle with my tender fingers to empty them before the grounds solidify and are even more difficult to remove. For both the plastic ones and these stainless ones, we all know it’s difficult to remove the grounds from a reusable pod short of hitting them on the side of the trash bin to get the grounds out, then rinse the rest of the grounds out, not good for the sink drain, plus now they’re wet so you have to dry them before reuse, these are all things I don’t want to deal with first thing in the morning! But now with these new stainless ones I just use a little silicone thingy or my shirt sleeve to handle the pods (again cuz they’re really really hot), AND I also finally bought some paper disposable k cup/pod filters from Perfect Pod on Amazon which until recently I didn’t know even existed! Using the paper filters makes emptying the grounds out much quicker and easier for any type of reusable pod. These stainless pods with the filters are perfect for me, great coffee, no burnt fingers, quick emptying WITHOUT ANY MESS. Perfect match for my needs and my morning crabbiness.

These reusable cups work perfectly with my Keurig machine. I have order 3 sets of these over time and find that they work better than previous ordered cups. They are sturdy, allow very good flow and clean up easy. Not one complaint with this product.

functional, perfect to contribute to the environment and not waste money

Always makes a good cup

A bit pricey, remains to be seen how long the plastic lid lasts. Easy clean, fits Keurig Duo works well

These work great in our iCoffee machine. Sturdy and easy to use. Lid is a bit tighter to close but not to make them unusable.

We tried other stainless steel pods but they got stuck in the Keurig. These ones are perfect and with the hinge they are super easy to fill with coffee.