Keurig Coffee Tasting Weak? Your Pods Might Be To Blame

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Getting a less-than-satisfactory cup of coffee from a Keurig isn't just disappointing — it can be a little confusing. These machines are designed to take all the thinking and chance for human error out of the coffee-making process, but a bad brew might have you questioning if you've been using it correctly. When it's a weak cup of coffee, the fault doesn't lie with you or the Keurig; it's more likely to be with the pod.

There are quite a few factors that go into how a cup of coffee tastes, but the strength of the brew is largely down to the ratio of coffee to water. A lot of K-cup coffee pods simply don't contain enough ground coffee to make a full-strength cup.

The generally accepted ratio for drip style coffee is between 16:1 and 18:1, meaning 16-18 parts water (in grams) for one part coffee. By this calculation, a balanced 8-ounce cup of coffee will require 13.9 grams of ground coffee. The average K-cup contains between 9 and 12 grams of coffee, meaning that the best-case scenario is a slightly weak coffee, but in the worst case, you will really notice the difference in strength.

The problem is exacerbated if you want a larger drink size from your Keurig. Depending on the model, you might have buttons for 10-ounce or 12-ounce drinks, but all this does is add more water to the cup. Because the amount of ground coffee in the pod remains the same, you're getting a higher ratio of water to coffee, resulting in a much weaker drink.

If weak coffee has been an issue for you, it's worth checking how much coffee is actually in your favorite pods. Once you start looking, you'll notice that there's significant variations between brands and even between flavors. This should be listed on the box, or it can be calculated by dividing the net weight by the number of K-cups in the package.

Taking a look at some of the best-selling Keurig pods, you'll see that some have as little as 8 grams of coffee per pod, like Folgers Classic Roast, while at the other end of the scale there is Starbucks French Roast with 12 grams of coffee and Peet's Major Dickason's with 12.4 grams. Another popular option, Original Donut Shop Regular, has 9.3 grams of coffee, and Green Mountain Breakfast Light Roast has just 8.4 grams. Swapping from a low-weight pod to one with more coffee should change your drinking experience significantly.

Alternatively, if you want to stick to your favorite pods, you can adjust the ratio more toward your tastes by using less water i.e. choosing the 6-ounce drink size on the machine. In fact, some brands of K-cup recommend brewing as a 6-ounce coffee for the best taste. For a larger size, simply brew two coffees (using two separate pods) and you'll have a 12-ounce, full-strength coffee.