You Might Be Watering Down Your Keurig Coffee Without Realizing It

Some days, the only thing better than coffee is stronger coffee. If you use a Keurig, you might be depriving yourself of a full-strength beverage without even realizing it. Keurig coffee machines give you different settings for cup sizes, ranging from 4 or 6 ounces up to 12 ounces (that's a "tall" in Starbucks cup sizes). If you select a 12-ounce cup rather than, say, a 6-ounce cup, the machine pumps twice the amount of water through the K-Cup pod, but it doesn't magically make the coffee grounds more potent. In other words, the more water the machine uses for your cup, the weaker the resulting beverage is, with a noticeably muted flavor and a more watery mouthfeel. This is one of the biggest mistakes to avoid with your Keurig machine.

If you like that diluted-but-bigger cup, great. If you're looking for stronger coffee, changing the amount of water in your K-cup brew is easy, though the exact method can vary between models. For a Keurig K-Supreme, for example, simply turn on your unit, put your new pod inside, press the control panel button indicating your desired ounces, then hit the brew button. On other machines, such as the K-Select or K-Elite, brew sizes are indicated by cup images. The underlying idea is the same: those buttons exist to fine-tune your brew.

While it's vital to know how the brew buttons on your Keurig machine dictate your coffee's strength, other choices and settings can refine your brew as well. Before you even push a button on your Keurig, make sure you've chosen the best coffee pods for your palate. If you like a robust flavor, seek out pods labeled "intense," "extra-strong," or "extra-bold." Dark roast Keurig pods (which we've ranked) are also great contenders for their deeper, more caramelized tasting notes.

Temperature also plays a key role in brewed coffee's flavor; preheating your machine and running a blank water cycle before inserting a pod ups your chances of a strong-tasting cup afterward. Then, for the strongest cup possible within your brew size, look for a "Bold" or "Strong" button on your unit; this setting increases the extraction time of your coffee by slowing down the brewing process. Coffee extraction is a whole topic unto itself (essentially, over-extracted coffee is too bitter, and under-extracted coffee can be sharp and sour), but the "Strong" button mostly ensures you get all the good flavor compounds and caffeine possible out of that pod. So, with the right K-cup pods in hand, and a savvy manipulation of your Keurig's settings, watered-down coffee should be a thing of your past.