Feb 04 2009
Keurig Platinum Brewing System in Golden Globe Goodie Bag
The Keurig Platinum Brewing System is definitely a pretty machine - pretty enough to get included in the swag that went home with Golden Globe celebrity presenters and award winners. See, when you go to conventions or present at a conference or - well, get nominated for a Golden Globe Award, you get to take home a goodie bag full of neat stuf put together by the sponsors of the convention or conference or award program. Most people who go to conventions and conferences will tell you that the swag bag is one of the best reasons to go to a convention - sponsors pay big bucks to put their flagship products or nifty goodies into the hands of the people at the conventions in the hopes that those people will go home and tell all their friends about the neat and nifty giftie. This year’s Golden Globe swag bag included Keurig’s top of the line brewer for the home kitchen - the Platinum Brewing System.
Keurig, paired with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (yeah, you KNOW how I feel about GCMR, right? Love me some Green Mountains), has been eating up the single serve coffee brewer market at a fast clip. According to their latest figures - the first quarter figures for FY2009 - they grew their sales by 121% over last year at this time. Single serve coffee brewers are definitely an up-and-coming gadget in the home coffee market. I’m a home roast, home brew coffee kinda gal, but even I’ve been tempted. The biggest thing that’s been holding me back so far is the fact that most single serve home brewers just don’t make a big enough or strong enough cup of coffee for me. Green Mountain and Keurig have changed that with the Platinum Brewing System.
The Keurig B70, aka the Platinum Brewing System, is the most customizable of all the Keurig single cup brewers. You can brew in five sizes - from 5 ounces up to 12 ounces - though if you want a strong cup of coffee, most users recommend that you brew two cups of coffee into your big mug rather than setting the brewer to make one 12 ounce mug. Your other option is to buy Green Mountain Robust coffee cups, which contain 30% more coffee - and of course, cost a little more.
Of course, one of the biggest reasons to choose a Keurig single cup brewer over the competition is the huge selection of gourmet coffees that come in k-cups. Green Mountain packages more than half of its line in k-cups, but a number of other companies also package their coffee for the Keurig single cup brewers. Those include Newman’s Own (also roasted and distributed by Green Mountain), Tim Horton’s, Gloria Jean’s and Tully’s. You can also make gourmet teas and hot chocolate in the Platinum Brewing System - in fact, the top-selling k-cup variety this week is the Hot Cocoa K-cups from Green Mountain.
My own personal favorite is the Nantucket Blend - it’s got the Ethiopian fruitiness and dark roast smokiness that I love in a coffee. I probably won’t be brewing it in a Platinum Brewing System, though, unless someone wants to gift me the machine that retails between $169 and $229. If you’re looking for a gourmet brewing system, though, this very sleek, very pretty machine may just be the right one for you.
This is a great machine! We have them in the break room at work - the coffee is always on at work!
@mpaulin - the coffee used to always be on at the office where I worked before I got laid off, too - but that wasn’t a good thing till I came along. I started dumping out the pot if it was more than an hour old, washed out the coffee pot whenever I made a fresh pot and descaled the machine. Once I got the machine clean and brought in decent coffee - I never had to dump out a pot again! Everyone would line up with their cups when they smelled it brewing.
I’ve gotta admit that I fell in love with this machine on a job interview, and the fact that the company cared enough to have the Keurig in their break room - with free coffee - would have been enough for me to take the job if they’d offered it to me!