Perfect K-Cup Coffee without the K-Cup (Green-Cup)

The Keurig 5048 My K-Cup Reusable Coffee Filter is a great gadget and will help prevent our oceans and landfills from filling up with empty K-cups. However, it has a huge problem, it makes a lousy cup of coffee (weak). The problem is water flows through the coffee too quickly. But here is the fix. We’ll use an old K-Cup to set the proper flow rate. There may be other ways to control the flow and use no K-Cup into the trash each time. This is just one way.

• Take a used K-Cup and remove the foil top and filter.
• Using a nail clipper, snip off the plastic flap inside the K-Cup
• Using a 1/8” drill bit (BY HAND) push it into the bottom and round out the hole. If this hole is too small, water or grounds may kick back and go around the sides into cup and make it weak or gritty. If it’s too big the coffee will be weak because flow is too fast through coffee.
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• Stacking the K-Cup around the 5048 strainer is too thick to fit the cover, so we need to remove the lip on the 5048 holder to make a little more room.
• I used 3M 9089NA Drywall Sanding Screen set on a cutting board to sand it flush. This takes like 5 minutes. Keep it spinning and slide around in circles so you take off an even amount all the way around.
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• This is what it looks like with lip removed
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• Now clean everything.
• Slide the 5048 strainer into the used K-Cup (with the hole you reamed out)
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• Put 5048 strainer and K-Cup into 5048 holder
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• (Optional Step) Add a Perfect Pod EZ-Cup filter. This makes a slightly better cup and cleanup is very easy. With out it, it is very hard to clean the coffee grounds off the screen of the 5048 strainer.
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• Rip off the top part of the filter. If you don’t rip off the top, water splashes back and goes around the sides.
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• To test, empty the contents of 1 K-Cup into the 5048 Strainer. You can use any coffee you want of course, but we want to compare it to making it with a real K-Cup coffee. It also gives you a good idea of how much coffee to use.
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• Attach 5048 cover and try to keep the filter paper as flat on top as you can.
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• Make a cup with this setup. Make a normal K-Cup and compare. It comes out exactly the same.
• To clean, just dump the 5048 strainer with the filter holding grounds. Rinse and repeat.
• Occasionally the Perfect Pod filter will break, but it won’t spoil the coffee. Just messier to clean up.
• Enjoy