Erm ..I hate to break it to you J BR....

Sadly your view is subjective so in a debate about the quality of pod coffee vs other coffee it is of no merit. I'm happy that your lesser quality coffee is sufficient for your taste though.

There is a good article here that explains why pod coffee is vastly inferior to sourcing good coffee beans, with a proper "roasted on" date showing and grinding them yourself.

https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-why-...are-pure-evil/

Some snippets:

Freshness is key

"Like any edible ingredient or substance, coffee has a shelf life. Roasted coffee beans in particular become stale in short order when exposed to oxygen. Freshly-roasted coffee should ideally be consumed within two weeks, three max, of its roast date. That's why premium brands print the roast date of their beans right on the bag, and less forthright ones merely disclose a sell-by or best-by date.

The freshness of ground coffee is even more fleeting. Think hours, not days, where you're losing those tasty organic compounds. The situation worsens the finer you grind coffee beans due to the increased surface area and greater exposure to air. Experienced roasters and baristas have told me that the finely ground coffee used for espresso loses its potential for greatness in just 30 minutes.

Those are serious hurdles for pods to overcome and brew java with exceptional taste. Keurig, Starbucks and others do their best to offset these physical realities. Common tactics are to top off pods with Nitrogen gas to put a lid on oxidation, or sealing the container with an extra layer of foil. Despite those efforts, open Starbucks Verismo, Green Mountain K-Cups and even pods from prepackaged beverage company Touch, and you'll often finds grounds that look and smell anything but fresh."

Then there's the wider and more worrying issue of the environmental impact of throwing away billions of plastic and aluminium coffee pods every year.

This is a somewhat difficult thread to debate in because of the wide variation in posters understanding and education of coffee. If this were a discussion on fine wines we'd have people ranging from those who like a bit of Blue Nun, to those who think a basic Merlot is good to those who really do understand wine provenance, depth and flavour.

None of which is to disparage any poster here in the least, genuinely.

But coffee is no different. A "real" espresso shot requires a machine capable of at least 9 bar pressure which will extract the oils and other elements of the coffee bean to form the perfect coffee with crema.

When you buy coffee pods you are buying inferior coffee, there is absolutely no question. It is not fresh and certainly not the best coffee out there. Pod machines lock you into this "closed shop" situation forcing you to settle for inferior coffee at the expense of convenience and to pander to your own laziness.

If you don't care what date your beans were roasted, or how fresh the coffee actually is and are happy with the taste of such an inferior product then good for you and happy days.

There are people who think Tetley or Yorkshire tea bags are great tea too. They have no experience of "real" high quality tea.

I iterate again there is no snobbishness here, no coffee connoisseur stuff involved here, just plain and simple knowledge.

Freshness of the bean, the date it was roasted, the length of time it has been ground and the way it is processed by the machine are the main factors that separate crappy inferior coffee from high quality coffee.

I need a coffee!

Me, too!

Only if you add a tot of brandy to it first!!!

Or what about IRISH coffee? Yum!

Or what about IRISH coffee? Yum!

Yuk ...Too Sickly ..

Yes darlin' cream makes it far too sickly, I prefer my coffee black anyway.