Coffee: Part Three

      This morning I went to make a coffee. I have been brewing myself a coffee in the morning for about...well...a hundred years now, non-stop.
   In the olden days, I used to throw a coffee filter into the basket of my coffee maker, add as much of my favourite coffee as I wanted, a cup of tap water, turn on the coffeemaker and I was done.
   These days, I brew my coffee in a Keurig. You take a k-cup, throw it in the machine, press a button and in about thirty seconds you have a cup of coffee. And that's about as simple as it gets and, seemingly, way simpler than it used to be, with my coffee maker.
   Here are the catches, though.

My Keurig, in action.

  With a Keurig, you end up with a garbage can full of non-recyclable k-cups. The reservoir runs out about once a day and you have to either haul it to a water source or haul the water source to the reservoir. I use water from a Brita filter and filling the reservoir with Brita water completely empties the Brita pitcher. You cannot fill a Brita pitcher all at once--you need to wait for the first batch of water to drain through before you can put in the last batch. With a Keurig, you get one cup of coffee, which then immediately begins to cool. So that I can save a little money, we purchased re-usable k-cups which I then can fill with my favourite coffee  but I can only do this after I've emptied it out from the last time I used it and then rinsed it thoroughly.
   Okay. You tell me. Which system seems easier to you?
   If, by any chance, you replied "coffeemaker" then you might have something there.

In storage---at least temporarily.

   The other drawback to a Keurig is that it's a one-cup-at-a-time kind of a system. If there is only you and you only want one cup, then I guess this is okay. If, however, you have friends over or you're pulling an all-niter and anticipating needing several cups of coffee, then a Keurig becomes problematic.
   There is something both inviting and soothing about a brewed pot of coffee---the aroma tends to fill the house and even the sound of it brewing acts as a savoury precursor to the actual act of consuming the coffee. There is some comfort, as you drink, in knowing that more is waiting there for you, warmly, in the pot.
   So I am at a crossroads, coffee-drinking-wise. In the social scheme of things, it seems like a step backwards to return to the coffeemaker. Pretty well everywhere you go, there is a Keurig on a counter, sitting there, glistening. At the same time, I occasionally miss the "good ole days". Is there room for compromise---Keurigs and coffeemakers, side by side, on the same kitchen counter...?