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My friends have a Keurig and it makes wonderful coffee. Just place your cup and you have a brewed cup in seconds. They have a huge selection of coffees. I prefer the bold tasting ones, as does the husband. The wife prefers milder coffee. Everyone can easily make their own (just pop in the little cup) in seconds and there is nothing to clean or turn off. They want to buy me one when I get my own place again. I'd love it!

A coffee press. The Bodun is the best. You can use your favorite brew. Works good for lose tea as well.

I would recommend a french press. It's cheaper, you can use any coffee(or loose tea) you want and it'll last forever(unless you drop the carafe in the sink ala my husband). The taste is pretty amazing as well.

We like our french press too, but boiling water at the office is not an option. And if you are serving several people, it sure is nice to be able to quickly make a tea, a decaf, and regular.

I agree with the french press crowd. However, while everyone seems to love the Bodums (a brand), both my brother and I have had two carafes break by simple hand washing. They're fragile. I refuse to buy bodum or any other glass press because of this. I now use a Frieling stainless steel one and it is amazing. It travels well (from business trips to camping trips) and can take abuses glass won't.

Get a glass one first though, they're MUCH cheaper and if you wind up not using it often, you're not out a lot of money. If you buy glass and it breaks but you decide that you really liked it, buy stainless or you'll just be buying glass over and over and over again.

@Cary - I just picked up a Rival hot pot electric kettle for $10 the other day. I'm using it for tea at work (I make my coffee at home when I want coffee), and I love it so far. It boils water pretty fast - just dump the water in and plug it in.

Okay, let's talk tea and coffee in the same containers. This all has to do with OIL. If you smell the coffee-makers in most hotels/motels, they smell like - ah, wait for it - coffee! What that means is that they haven't been washed with soap and water. The plastic holder for filters in most coffee makers smells the same way, most of the time. (I use a baby-bottle brush on mine.) That oil gets rancid eventually. A lack of scouring is the usual reason for that nasty sour coffee you can get in restaurants, too. (I have stories about that....) Glass and stainless are easy to scrub. Plastic is porous, so you can't get everything out.

So a French press is a good idea. But are they still making small Chemexes? (Or any Chemex?) Before I re-married, I had a 3-cup oneand a hot plate to keep it warm and it made fabulous coffee. No question of experimenting with how long to let things steep before plunging down, no escaping grounds.

Bunn has an affordable pod coffee brewer. One of the girls in my office has one & she absolutely loves it.

It's easy to clean & always produces a tasty cup!

I am considering the Keurig but want to know if I can get as strong/rich cup of coffee as I do in my french press. I would not buy pods as I can't control the strength of the coffee. So, even if I grind my own beans is it worth it?

Also, I must admit that despite the hassle, nothing tastes as good as a cup of coffee from a french press. The newer ones are stainless steel and keep the coffee very hot. I've tried Frieling, but after 18 months, and changing the filters regularly, the press pot will not plunge properly. This happened with four Frieling pots. Now I'm using the Bodum Columbia model. It's superb!! The mesh screen is made better and won't snag on your fingernail. I'm a coffee snob and want the best quality pot and coffee I can get my hands on. By the way, if you read the article on the chain coffee: my 4 stars goes to Peet's Coffee and Tea. IMHO--- it's the best!!!!

@wricat: yes you can control the strength....it gives you several choices of cup size to brew, so you can make it stronger or lighter that way

I love my moka. It makes super strong, super hot coffee. It uses no pods. It was inexpensive. It does not need electricity. It is easy and has zero bells and whistles.
Moka!

Please note that a 6 cup moka makes 6 2-oz cups of espresso, or 1 12 ounce cup of coffee.

@joyy - my post to you must have been lost in cyperspace. Thank you for your tip. I looked up the ingenuiTEA link you posted and it looks like it is just what I want. It holds up to 32 oz. and is dishwasher safe. Unfortunately, amazon.com does not ship it to Canada, so I will have to get busy and search out where one can be purchased.

Another vote for the coffee press. I have currently have one that is a stainless steel coffee press/travel mug that I keep at work. I prefer it over those pod things, I like extremely STRONG coffee and I find that since the pods are pre-measured I can't get it strong enough for my liking. I also like to through extras into my coffee ground mix, cinnamon, orange peel, whole cloves etc. which I am unable to do with a pod. The only drawback I have found to coffee presses are the clean up since the coffee grounds are loose instead of contained in filter of some sort. It's a pain and I haven't really come up with a easy, streamlined process to cleaning it. But what a great pot of coffee they make!

@NYCEater - your "make your own pod" thingamajig sounds interesting and also like it would solve my issues with pods. I'll have to look into that, thanks for the link!

@Mich23-now that you've been sent in about 16 different directions, just buy thatever will satisfy YOU.

@Martini - no problem - it really is great, and if you like adding cinnamon, nutmeg, etc into coffee, you can still do it. For me, the reason I went with a one-cup coffee maker (even though I had a perfectly good Cuisinart coffee maker) was that it saves SO much time in the morning. Most of them have water reserves, so you don't need to fill it every morning, and you just pop the pod in, walk away, get ready for work, and throw the used pod away - no cleaning out a carafe or filter or anything.

I actually did a fair amount of research before getting my coffee maker (because they aren't cheap!) so let me know if you want more info.