Umm.....There's Some Freedom in my Coffee!

First off, I know.....two posts in as many days. Well, don't get your knickers in a knot, I just had something worth posting about.

Last Christmas the Mrs. wanted a Keurig coffee maker. We aren't that big on coffee, or even tea for that matter, but every once in a while....

I bought what I thought was a reasonable machine...not a Keurig, but something I thought would work reasonably well. It could easily brew into travel mug, didn't take up too much space, and didn't come with the dreaded Keurig 2.0 DRM...or at least I didn't think it did.

I never got to find out because my wife wanted to return it and get an "actual" Keurig. Didn't hurt my feelings any....that's the nature of gifts. Luckily there was a pretty good deal going on at Fred Meyer and by the time everything was said and done, the Keurig only costs about 2x what I had spent on the "lesser" machine (my emphasis, not hers). She had the money for the "upgrade", and the coffee, so go for it!

My only real problem at that point was that some of the other gifts I had gotten her, namely some coffee and some reusable cups wouldn't work with the new machine because of that pesky DRM. Now I know it isn't hard to get the Keurigs to recognize the "ordinary" cups, hardly even considered a hack, but my tinkering with the machine was verboten......

.....but not for long!

I found online a nifty little giveaway from a company called Gourmet-Coffee called the "Freedom Clip". Essentially a beautiful little piece of plastic with a bit of the "special ink" that essentially tells the Keurig to go ahead and work regardless of what it in the K-Cup holder. I sent away for a clip a couple months ago and it finally came today!

All free! (two more sample packs not shown)

This thing went in so quick and easy....I actually took a picture but it was too hard to even tell it wasn't part of the Keurig to begin with! I wasn't expecting a trio of coffee samples, so that was a huge bonus. Now I'm not a coffee aficionado, but I did like SF Bay Fog Chaser. Too bad my opinion there means jack squat.

There are two things I love about this device. 1st is I can finally use the generic reusable K-cups to make whatever brand coffee I want at a considerable savings, but I (this is #2) get to not use those "official" K-Cups!

This might seem like two sides of the same coin, but I hate how big of a PITA it is to try and recycle those fricken K-Cups. I pretty much have to use a knife and I'm really afraid I'll cut myself trying to screw around with the little fiddly plastic cups. I have no idea why they have to be made that way. The coffee samples I got where listed as something like 97% biodegradable packaging. I don't think that counted the individual sample packaging, but the cups themselves. Basically it was a plastic ring with the foil cover and the body was something akin to coffee filter material. It was super easy to rip that thing apart with my fingers and clean it out for recycling. A bit messy, but nothing significant and I bet if I waited for it to dry out it'd be even easier.

Getting this Freedom Clip was a complete "no-brainer". It is still available and honestly I'd have paid for this thing, so getting it for free is fricken awesome. Looking at their website now, they have some great prices on coffee and free shipping for orders over $35?!