"Keurig K-cup alternative" brought up 4,220,000 hits. This one looks very promising: http://www.my-kap.com/MYK/

Amazon alone has dozens of alternatives at http://www.amazon.com/Keurig-Alternative-Reusable-Coffee-Filter/dp/B005UP9KXS

Well done!
I have no answers for you on the cups, but it looks like Warpy's links may be useful. And I always check Amazon when I am looking for stuff!

I wait until I find K-cups on sale and buy a lot of them when they are cheap. Cheap means 50 cents each or less and it's usually not hard to get them for less than 50 cents. Staples is usually where I wind up getting them.

Here's my favorite K-cup:
http://www.staples.com/Keurig-K-Cup-Coffee-People-Original-Donut-Shop-Coffee-Regular-24-Pack/product_325417

Notice if you buy 3 packs, they are $11.99 each. Notice also that if your order is over $45, you get free shipping.

So here's what you do:

1) Buy a $25 off $75 Staples coupon from either e-junkie or ebay. Expect to pay $1.50 to $2 for it. Make sure the coupon works online.

2) Order 7 packs of 24 @ $11.99 each online from the link provided for a total of $83.93

3) Apply the $25 off coupon which brings the total down to $58.93

Your total price with be $58.93 (plus tax), plus the $2 or so for your coupon. That works out to about 36 cents each for 168 K-cups (not counting taxes).

It's made by a company called Ekobrew. But there are a couple out there. I use my own coffee for it. I've found that a medium espresso grind works for me. The filter was $20, but it was worth it.

Bed Bath and Beyond has a great selection of the cups, and I'm sure they'd have a reusable filter as well. They're always sending out $5 coupons, and that takes a whack out of a couple of boxes of K-cups.

Costco has good prices on the K cups. They come in boxes of 80 for 37 ish for Tully's Brand which is good.

I also buy regularly directly from Keurig. If you join their "club" which is free you have access to all of the flavors of coffees and teas at decent prices. If you spend over 45 bucks they give you free shipping

http://www.keurig.com/shop/k-cups/all-k-cups?cm_mmc=Google-_-Trademark-_-UND_Trademark%20K-Cup%20-%20Exact-_-keurig%20k%20cups&gclid=CODlot6t7q4CFYQFRQodsm4eKg

I also use one of those fill your own from Amazon. This is the one I use. It works fine but I don't like the mess of grinding and filling

http://www.amazon.com/Solofill-Refillable-Keurig-K-Cup-Brewers/dp/B005QOLSJ2/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1332002175&sr=8-5

If you are an Amazon Prime member. Amazon has great prices especially when you don't pay shipping

If you just want to run in somewhere and buy then Bed Bath and Beyond has the best prices and has a good selection of Teas

I am very sad this week as the Lemon Lift is being discontinued and it is my very favorite

I grind my own coffee each morning, fine espresso setting, put two little scoops into the filter, screw the top on and pot it into the machine. I compost the used grinds when I am done. No waste and still pretty convenient if you live in a household that only drinks a cup or two a day. I keep a few of the decaf k-cups around since I only drink that occasionally and the cups stay fresher.

The problem I have with the resusable is it just doesn't do anything better than I could do without it. If you're buying pre-ground coffee, you're going to lose quality over disposable K-cups because the grounds are exposed to air and oxidation. There's not much, if any, financial advantage, because as my post upthread shows, you can get K-cups for about 36 cents each. Even if you're buying cheap Folgers at Costco, it's hard to come out ahead. If you're buying premium freshly roasted coffee and grinding it yourself, you can get a better quality cup by using an aeropress. Since you have to clean out the reusable as you do the aeropress, there's not much of a convienience gain either.

If you're sensitive about the amount of trash waste associated with regular K-cups, then there's definitely an advantage to the reusable, but that's the only real advantage I see with it.

I've also got a nice grinder, so I buy a decent brand whole bean (8 O'Clock right now) and grind enough for the week there. Here at the house, it's the French press and higher quality brands that I grind as I'm brewing.

The company provides K-cups, but they tend to disappear faster than they are replenished, and I figure they work better for the other folks without a grinder at home. So I let the others have the K-cups and I do my own.

And there are times when I want a nice cup of coffee and then times when I just want coffee. I inherited an old Tassimo from my uncle, so when I'm fumbling for caffeine, a pod goes in and I'm knocking it back in 90 seconds. I save the ritual for days off and just because.

I use the Keurig to make the brew water for the aeropress. I just flush it once with no K-cup in the machine, and use the next batch of water in the aeropress. As far as brewed coffee goes, I think the aeropress makes a superior cup compared to anything short of a $10,000 Clover machine. For convienience vs quality, it's hard to beat the K-cups, but when I have to time to make a better cup, I go for the aeropress at work. At home I have a pretty decent espresso machine and grinder which I use most of the time.

That is the best way I've seen yet. Everything that keeps me from getting out the french press is eliminated in that. And having one at work makes a lot of sense, too.

We've got a triple-osmosis water dispenser here at work. The Bunn is attached to the filter as well, but we have to fill the Keurig with water. But it has a hot water spigot I've used for tea and hot cocoa. I need to bring my themometer in to check the temp, and if it's around 175, which I suspect it is, then two aeropresses (areopressi? aeropressum?) are in my future.

The guy who invented it was not really a coffee aficionado. He is an engineer. He came up with the idea, designed, built, tested, and marketed the product. According to him, he tried different water temps and 175 was the temperature preferred by most people, so that's what the instructions say. It wasn't long before coffee geeks discovered the device and the similarities with a coffee making machine called a Clover was instantly recognized. The Clover is a commercial coffee machine that costs thousands of dollars and makes an excellent cup of brewed coffee. Now every true coffee geek knows that 175 degrees is not hot enough to properly extract coffee. So they started testing it in the more reasonable 195-205 degree range and found it performed beautifully. So you'll have to make up your own mind as far as brew temp. I use 200 degree water myself. The inventor still swears by 175 degrees.

If you have a commercial Bunn, I suspect the water will come out of the tap at closer to 200 degrees.

The hot water I'd be using would come from the dispenser. Although, the Bunn has a hot water spigot, too, of course. I'll be testing, you betcha. A new coffee toy!

ETA: I guess that after it's brewed, the water you'd add to make the Americano could be 175 either way. Or even cooler if you want to cool the cup down. It's the brewing temp that's important.

When you're brewing the brew water is a solvent which is extracting the disolveable solids from the coffee grinds, so temperature is important. When you're adding water later to thin it down to your liking, the temperature can be lower as most people will find 200 degree water a bit too hot to drink. Some of the high end commercial espresso machines even have a cold water mix to their hot water tap to adjust the temperature for americanos.

There's all sorts of information on the aeropress on the coffee boards. Many have devised their own methods for brewing which are considerably different than the included instructions. There's even an inverted method for the aeropress which seems to be popular, but I haven't tried it.

from a particular seller and invest a lot of cash flow in the production, even if the per unit cost is lower. I buy a decent whole bean coffee, then grind as needed. It is easier and faster from start to finish than either the aeropress or french press. The aeropress is slightly better coffee (I use it for camping and travel) but you still need to heat water, time it, manually press the coffee out and dispose of the grounds. The machine, just put the grounds in the filter and press a button, then clean. Way fewer steps.

And yes, I am sensitive about the amount of waste with the disposable K-cup. It is fine occasionally, but the cups are not recyclable and if they were you would still have to peel them apart and throw the coffee away separately, which negates much of the convenience factor.

80 or so for around $35.