Single cup brewers have taken the American and even Canadian coffee market by surprise in the last few years.

In the last two years, coffee shops have taken a hit to their bottom line because of the economy. Their business have been negatively affected. It appears as though the single cup coffee makers have provided a solution   for consumers to save money.  Single cup brewers  provide a fresh cup of coffee, whenever you want it, without a mess and without waste. They  offer an alternative to spending money  at the coffee shops.

If you have not jumped on the band wagon of single serve brewing systems yet, you want to know more about these ‘money saving’ coffee makers. You want to know if they genuinely provide a great cup of coffee. If you still haven’t decided upon a single cup coffee maker, you probably want to know more about the coffee makers and the coffee that they make.

There are several different types of Single cup coffee makers. We will discuss those that have been the most popular over the last 4 years. 

While an espresso machine does provide a single serving at a time, we will not include them in this discussion. because the drink it creates is different than a cup of coffee, but does create fabulous coffee drinks or simply espresso for the coffee connoisseur.

Keurig brewing systems  use K-Cups rather than coffee pods to brew coffee, tea and hot cocoa. The Keurig coffee maker is very convenient and has a relatively wide selection of coffee roasters to choose from.

There are a couple of concerns about  K-Cups coffee, however. First, the environmental concern  the plastic waste generated by these cups. The K-Cups are used once and discarded into our landfills.

Second,  the plastic cup is heated by the hot water. There has been much discussion about heating plastic and ingesting the carcinogens released. One has to wonder about the longterm effects of using a Keurig coffee maker with the K-Cups.

While Keurig does have a filter that lets you use your own ground coffee, but that takes away from the convenience and does create a need to empty this filter each time you want a cup of coffee.

The  Tassimo brewer  uses T-Discs to make coffee, tea and even specialty coffee drinks like cappuccinos and lattes. Starbucks, Gevalia, Suchard, Twinnings Tea products are available in Tassimo T-Discs Coffee .   The same machine that makes a real espresso and freshly brewed filter coffee from some of your favorite U.S. and European brands, also makes real milk-based latte & cappuccino, cafe crema, tea, hot chocolate – something for everyone. As opposed to the plastic that Keurig uses, Tassimo T-Discs are packaged in  aluminum.

The Flavia brewer  makes more than 30 gourmet hot or iced drinks, a single cup at a time. This drink station is a combination coffee maker, espresso machine and teapot all in one. Flavia is owned by the Mars candy company and is the only brand of drinks that work in the Flavia drink maker. Drinks range from coffee, tea and even healthy drinks. Given that the Mars chocolate company is involved in the creation of the Flavia drinks, you can well imagine the rich flavor of the mocha and cappuccinos. The Flavia single cup coffee maker’s revolutionary engineering brews direct from the pack to the cup, guaranteeing that every drink is completely pure and untarnished by previous brews. The Flavia drink pack is an aluminum envelope that inserts easily into the machine.

These are the three most popular single cup brewers , but there is another genre of them that use coffee pods to make coffee. What the consumer should be aware of is that good coffee comes from the temperature of the water and the length of time that it comes in contact to the grounds, unless pressure is applied to the delivery of the water.

Brewing a single cup of coffee is easy now with these coffee makers, but is a single cup coffee maker right for you? If you want a quick cup of delicious coffee and don’t have the time to make or consume a full pot, then you should consider one of these machines.

Here are some things for you to consider before you purchase} your own Single serve coffee system.

The selection of coffees is limited if you use their single serving coffees. If you want to use your own ground coffee, make sure that you select one that accepts coffee in other forms than their own.

Certainly, brewing a single cup at a time is more expensive than brewing an entire pot, but if you are accustomed to stopping at the coffee shop, you will save a tremendous amount of money with a single cup coffee maker.