Whatever your thoughts are on how the perfect cup should be made, for nearly 50 million homes in the US (and not counting the many more in offices), Keurig is coffee. For almost 30 years, we’ve been trained to ditch the old drip-coffee maker for disposable single-serve pods. But now, Keurig wants us to leave (eventually) the K-Cup and embrace the AltaRounds pod, a compostable, compressed coffee round that works the same: Drop it into the machine, press a button or two, and out comes joe.
During a presentation in New York City, Phil Drapeau, Keurig’s senior vice president of Future Coffee Systems, said customers wanted more than brewed coffee. They wanted to make fancy espresso drinks, from simple cappuccinos to salted caramel concoctions I sampled at the event (PSL fans, rejoice). But to do so, Keurig needed to invent an entirely new system.
“We wouldn’t be able to do any of that with K-Cup,” Drapeau says. “It will fail. You have to brew it at the right temperature and extract. You can’t be constrained by the K-Cup system.”
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Robot Barista
If the K-Cup was about bringing Dunkin’ home, then the Alta is about mimicking brewing third-wave coffee in the kitchen. Keurig looked at how coffeehouse baristas brew espresso, and how it can simplify the process by applying the K-Cup experience.
With the AltaRound, you don’t need to measure and grind beans, tamp, or adjust pressure and temperature. The round is covered with a plant-based seaweed wrap that ensures the coffee stays compressed and fresh. After you insert it, pick a drink via the touchscreen, and the machine punctures the AltaRound and applies 10 bars of pressure to extract the liquid. Spent AltaRounds are dumped into a container.