Keurig Alta First-Look: No More Plastic K-Cups

Opinions on Keurig’s K-Cup System fall into two camps: fans who value the convenience of a quick java hit and coffee purists who sideline it as flavored water. I land somewhere in the middle: I grind my own beans and brew them through a reusable filter, but I let the machine do the rest. So, perhaps, I’m the customer that Keurig has in mind with its new Alta system.

The Alta is Keurig’s first single-serve coffee maker that uses plastic- and aluminum-free coffee pods—finally launching after years of development. If Alta takes off, we are likely seeing the beginning of the end for the disposable K-Cup, which launched in 1998.

Whatever your thoughts are on how the perfect cup should be made, for nearly 50 million homes in the US (and not counting the many more in offices), Keurig is coffee. For almost 30 years, we’ve been trained to ditch the old drip-coffee maker for disposable single-serve pods. But now, Keurig wants us to leave (eventually) the K-Cup and embrace the AltaRounds pod, a compostable, compressed coffee round that works the same: Drop it into the machine, press a button or two, and out comes joe.

During a presentation in New York City, Phil Drapeau, Keurig’s senior vice president of Future Coffee Systems, said customers wanted more than brewed coffee. They wanted to make fancy espresso drinks, from simple cappuccinos to salted caramel concoctions I sampled at the event (PSL fans, rejoice). But to do so, Keurig needed to invent an entirely new system.

“We wouldn’t be able to do any of that with K-Cup,” Drapeau says. “It will fail. You have to brew it at the right temperature and extract. You can’t be constrained by the K-Cup system.”

Robot Barista

If the K-Cup was about bringing Dunkin’ home, then the Alta is about mimicking brewing third-wave coffee in the kitchen. Keurig looked at how coffeehouse baristas brew espresso, and how it can simplify the process by applying the K-Cup experience.

With the AltaRound, you don’t need to measure and grind beans, tamp, or adjust pressure and temperature. The round is covered with a plant-based seaweed wrap that ensures the coffee stays compressed and fresh. After you insert it, pick a drink via the touchscreen, and the machine punctures the AltaRound and applies 10 bars of pressure to extract the liquid. Spent AltaRounds are dumped into a container.

The first-gen Alta coffee machine is sleek but enormous. It would take the space of my existing Keurig, coffee grinder, and Breville Bambino, and then some more. On the plus side, it has a built-in milk frother for drinks like lattes—it’s a separate process (a Keurig rep told me someone successfully made latte art with it)—and a built-in K-Cup brewer too. Keurig says this lets users keep brewing coffee styles not yet available in the Alta or if they want something quick. (At launch, AltaRounds come in single espresso, double espresso, and regular coffee.)

The machine is wonderfully easy to use, but the process from inserting the AltaRound to drinking takes some time. It’s still faster than using a traditional espresso maker, and you do get flavorful coffee with that must-have crema on the surface. A fellow journalist/coffee enthusiast didn’t find it special, but for a K-Cup drinker like me, it’s a game changer.

Courtesy of Keurig

Keurig is offering a bundle in the US that includes the Alta brewer (in four color choices), four boxes of AltaRounds, and Flur glasses for $500. The preorder has already sold out, which suggests strong interest. There’s no announcement on when the Alta will be on sale en masse and exactly how much (likely also $500, but without the bundled extras), but a pack of eight AltaRounds will cost $10 to $11. (Stay tuned for our full review.) With that high price, it will be some time before the K-Cup dies (well, plastic never dies) and the Alta takes its place.

It’s no secret that Keurig has been exploring a revolution in coffee pods to replace the K-Cup, and has already been beta-testing a prototype in homes. Customers have also been asking for something environmentally friendly that’s compostable and free of plastics and aluminum. (Foil wrappers and cardboard are still used in AltaRounds packaging.)

The K-Cup has been exhausted in terms of innovation. Specialty coffee for the Keurig doesn’t taste great (Nespresso does it better), and Keurig hasn’t been able to innovate beyond the K-Cup’s original intention: basic brewed coffee.

Photograph: Les Shu

Beyond sustainability, the Alta’s technology echoes issues that plagued the K-Cup. To tell the machine which pod you inserted and to adjust the right settings, each AltaRound has a QR code that the brewer scans. In the past, Keurig ran afoul with consumers and advocates when it tried to implement a printer-toner-style DRM that would have shut out third-party pod makers. For now, Alta users can choose AltaRounds flavors from Keurig and Peet’s, both owned by the same parent company. Will Keurig allow other makers into the Alta system down the road, as it eventually did with the K-Cup? Time will tell if this is the pod revolution we’ve been waiting for.