Keurig K Supreme Review

Quick Answer: I wouldn’t recommend the Keurig K Supreme as this model is fraught with technical problems. Instead, I’d recommend the much more reliable Keurig K Elite.

The Keurig K Supreme is one of Keurig’s newest, priciest, and most feature-rich coffee makers.

You may have also seen that the K Supreme has a less-than-stellar reputation among Keurig users, especially on the Keurig Subreddit (check this out if you aren’t aware of this).

As someone who has owned the Keurig K Supreme Plus (the direct upgrade of the K Supreme) for just over a year, I’m going to go through:

• Whether the Keurig K Supreme can make better coffee and is more user-friendly than Keurig’s other coffee makers.

• Why the machine has such a poor reputation on the Keurig subreddit, and whether this is deserved.

• If it’s worth buying the Keurig K Supreme.

Let’s get started.

Should I Buy the Keurig K Supreme (Quick Answer)?

I wouldn’t recommend buying the Keurig K Supreme.

The Keurig K Supreme has far too many reliability issues for such an expensive coffee maker. The additional features that K Supreme offers compared to other similarly priced single-serve coffee makers do not make up for this lack of quality assurance.

If you’re looking for a larger Keurig machine that can handle making a lot of coffee then I’d recommend the Keurig K Elite instead of the Keurig K Supreme. You can find out more about the K Elite in my Keurig K Elite review.

The Keurig K Elite does not have the reliability issues that the K Supreme has. It also has almost all of the Keurig K Supreme’s features, including two strength settings and an iced coffee mode.

The only feature that the K Elite lacks compared to the K Supreme is “Multistream Technology”. For reasons that I’ll explain later, I don’t think that this is much of a loss for the K Elite compared to the K Supreme.

Overview of Keurig K Supreme

The Keurig K Supreme has Keurig’s latest design combining a slim brewing unit with a pitcher-style reservoir to its left. You can see a photo of my Keurig K Supreme Plus, which has the same design, below:

The K Supreme can do the following:

• It can brew coffee with K-cups and reusable pods in 6 oz, 8 oz, 10 oz, and 12 oz serving sizes.

• It has two strength settings which are toggled between with a “strong” button.

• It uses “Multistream Technology” meaning it pierces K-cups with five needles at the top rather than the usual single needle.

• It has an iced coffee setting.

• It can store water in its reservoir between brews (it can make nine 6 oz coffees before you have to change its water).

The table below shows the Keurig K Supreme’s specifications:

Keurig K Supreme Pros

Makes one of the best-tasting coffees of all Keurig coffee makers.

Its pitcher-style reservoir is easy to carry when full without spilling everywhere.

Keurig K Supreme Cons

The quality assurance on this model is poor so the machines frequently break down.

Its use of “Multistream Technology” often means that it spews coffee grounds into your drink.

It is expensive for such an unreliable machine.

Now that we’ve gone over the basics of the Keurig K Supreme, I am going to evaluate the machine against the following five criteria:

• Quality of coffee
• Functionalities
• Ease of use and cleaning
• Design and build quality
• Value for money

Quality of Coffee

The Keurig K Supreme can make very good coffee. Its coffee quality is better than other premium Keurigs like the K Elite, and second only to the K Supreme Plus

The Keurig K Supreme has three features that affect how well it brews coffee:

• Its available serving sizes
• Its strength settings (which determines brewing time)
• Its use of “Multistream Technology”

I’ll now run through how each of these features affects K Supreme’s coffee quality.

Six Ounce Serving Option

The Keurig K Supreme’s ability to make 6 oz servings of coffee means it makes better-tasting coffee than machines that start at 8 oz serving sizes.

K-cups hold 10.5 grams of ground coffee. This is only enough ground coffee to brew a maximum of 6.5 oz of coffee while still staying at the ideal 1:18 grounds-to-water ratio.

This means that a K-cup of coffee over 6 oz will always be watery.

The Keurig K Supreme, therefore, makes better coffee with standard, single-use K-cups than machines whose minimum serving size is 8 oz. These include:

• Keurig K Express
• Keurig K Slim

If you want to make an 8 oz or 10 oz coffee with a Keurig machine you should use a reusable K-cup as this holds 17 grams of ground coffee – enough to brew up to 10 oz at the 1:18 ground coffee to water ratio.

Strength Settings & Brewing Time

The Keurig K Supreme’s slow brewing time (controlled by its “strong” button) allows it to make better coffee than faster brewers like the Keurig K Elite.

The longer that a Keurig machine brews your coffee, the better its coffee will taste.

Longer contact time between your ground coffee and brewing water means that more of the soluble compounds in your coffee will extract into your water, resulting in a more complex final drink.

The table below shows the brewing times of the Keurig K Supreme, Keurig K Supreme Plus, and Keurig K Elite:

As we can see, the Keurig Supreme has much longer brewing times than the K Elite. K Supreme’s coffee tastes better than K Elite’s because of this.

The Keurig Supreme’s slow brewing means that it will make a very good 8 oz and 10 oz coffee with a reusable K-cup.

Multistream Technology

The K Supreme’s use of “Multistream Technology” doesn’t make a noticeable difference to how its coffee tastes.

The Keurig K Supreme uses “Multistream Technology” meaning that it pierces K-cups with five needles on the top. 

Keurig coffee makers that do not use Multistream Technology only pierce K-cups with one needle in the top.

While having five entry points for your brewing water is meant to result in the ground coffee in your K-cup extracting more evenly, I don’t think that Multistream Technology (hate this name by the way) actually does anything.

I taste tested a 6 oz coffee from my Keurig K Mini Plus with the “strong” button on (60-second brewing time, no Multistream Technology) against my Keurig K Supreme Plus on its lowest strength setting (60-second brewing time with Multistream Technology).

Both coffees tasted exactly the same.

Ultimately I think that a K-cup is so small that all the grounds within it get evenly soaked by one jet of water. Multistream Technology is little more than a marketing gimmick by Keurig.

Despite this redundant feature, the Keurig K Supreme’s 6 oz serving size and long brewing times mean that it makes some of the best coffee of all K-cup coffee makers.

Quality of Coffee Rating: 8/10

Functionalities

The Keurig K Supreme has one of the highest numbers of functionalities of any Keurig coffee maker. However several of these are executed poorly.

6 oz – 12 oz Serving Sizes

Like I said earlier I really like that the Keurig K Supreme offers a 6 oz serving size. This means it makes better-tasting coffee than all machines that start at 8 oz serving sizes.

While its 12 oz serving is redundant (this is far too large a serving for pod brewing), you can make a good 8 oz and 10 oz coffee if you use reusable K-cups and brew with the “strong” button on.

Two Strength Settings and Slow Brewing

The K Supreme’s two strength settings mean that its maximum brew time is similar to my fancy Breville Precision Brewer – a coffee maker considered to be best in class for the quality of drip coffee it produces.

In short, Keurig has done a very good job with the K Supreme’s strength settings and brewing times. This, combined with its 6 oz serving size is why it creates such good coffee.

Other Keurig coffee makers that have “strong” buttons, like the Keurig K Slim, Keurig K Express, and Keurig K Mini Plus still do not make an as good coffee as the Keurig Supreme because their baseline brewing time is much faster than the K Supreme.

Over Ice Mode

The Keurig Supreme has an over-ice mode which is designed for iced coffee.

This over-ice mode brews your coffee in the following ways:

• It always makes a 6.5 oz serving size.

• Your brewing water is heated to a lower temperature than with standard brewing.

• It lets your coffee brew for a bit longer before dispensing so your coffee has cooled a little bit before it hits the ice in your glass.

The over-ice mode on my Keurig K Supreme Plus (which does this in the exact same way as the K Supreme) is okay but far from great.

While the coffee does not melt your ice as much as it would if you brewed a standard 6 oz coffee, it is a bit on the watery side. 

I think it would benefit from even slower brewing, like how the Ninja’s iced coffee mode works (for more on this please see my comparison on Keurig vs Ninja).

Multistream Technology

As I said earlier, I don’t think that the Keurig Supreme’s use of Multistream Technology benefits the machine in any way.

In fact, the main consequence of Multistream Technology is that your K-cups are more likely to leak coffee grounds into your drink. This means that it actually makes Keurig machines worse, rather than better.

As we see, while the Keurig K Supreme has a lot of functionalities, it’s a mixed bag in terms of how well these are executed.

Functionalities Rating: 7/10

Ease of Use and Cleaning

The Keurig K Supreme’s pitcher-style reservoir makes it easier to make a coffee with than coffee makers with flatter reservoirs. The Keurig K Supreme’s five needles all require regular cleaning which makes the machine harder than most Keurigs to keep in working order.

Ease of Making Coffee

All Keurig machines are easy to use. That’s just the nature of K-cup brewing.

The Keurig K Supreme is easy to make coffee with, even by Keurig machine standards.

The main reason why the K Supreme is easier to use than most K-cup coffee makers is because of its “pitcher” style water reservoir.

This has a handle and a relatively small opening at the top (compared to flatter reservoirs). You can therefore hold it with one hand and carry it around when full without much risk of spilling water everywhere.

Once you have loaded the K Supreme with water and your K-cup, all you need to do to make a coffee is press the button corresponding to the serving size you want and then press brew.

Ease of Cleaning & Descaling

Daily cleaning of the Keurig K Supreme is easy. Almost all its parts that come into regular contact with coffee and water are removable and can therefore be cleaned straight in the sink. These include:

• Water reservoir
• Drip tray
• K-cup port

The machine needs to be descaled every 250 brews. A descale warning light will go off every 250 brews. Be warned that the machine has a dedicated descale mode and its descale warning light will not turn off unless you descale it in its descale mode.

You can find a video on how to descale the Keurig Supreme below:

By far the hardest part of the Keurig K Supreme is its five needles at the top of its brewing chamber.

Each of these needles has holes in the top that need to be cleaned out. The best way to do this is to get a straightened-out paperclip or toothpick and use that to scrape these holes.

Often if the Keurig K Supreme refuses to brew coffee it’s because its needles need to be cleaned.

Having to clean needles like this regularly is a pain, and the K Supreme’s five needles mean five times the amount of work to keep them clean compared to machines with just one needle in the top.

Ease of Use and Cleaning Rating: 7/10

Design and Build Quality

While the Keurig K Supreme is ergonomically designed, it has SERIOUS reliability issues. The huge number of people reporting technical issues with this machine is the main reason why I don’t recommend it.

External Build Quality

The Keurig K Supreme is well-designed, making it compact and easy to use, especially considering its wide range of functionalities.

Its pitcher-style reservoir is a particular design highlight and makes the machine significantly easier to fill with water than machines like the Keurig K Elite that use a flatter water tank.

The machine is a bit more weighty than cheaper Keurig machines, however, it does not feel as durable as the K Elite which is built like a tank.

Internal Build Quality and Known Issues

Here is where we see a lot of problems…

The Keurig Supreme range, which covers the K Supreme, K Supreme Plus, and K Supreme Plus SMART, is known to have quality assurance issues, which means that units in this range are more likely to succumb to technical issues than other Keurig machines.

You can find a lot of reports of the Keurig Supreme malfunctioning on the Keurig subreddit.

I trawled through these complaints and here are some common problems that I found.

Machine Won’t Turn On

By far the most common technical issue with the Keurig K Supreme is that it won’t turn on.

It seems that some of the K Supreme units have been poorly wired so tend to short-circuit and burn out. I found several reports of machines failing to turn on straight out of the box which is piss poor, especially for such an expensive coffee maker.

You can find Reddit threads talking about this problem here and here.

Serving Sizes are Too Small

I found several complaints that the Keurig K Supreme would not dispense enough coffee for each of its serving sizes. 

Often it dispenses the same (tiny) amount of coffee regardless of what serving size you select.

Admittedly, inaccurate and declining serving sizes are a problem that affects all Keurig machines (Keurig uses badly built pumps in their machines) however this deterioration usually occurs gradually.

The Keurig K Supreme is the only machine I found that has these pumping issues straight out of the box.

You can find a Reddit thread talking about this problem here.

Descaling Kills the Machine

I found several complaints of the Keurig K Supreme dying after descaling.

One touted culprit is that descaling the machine can cause it to overheat and trip a thermal switch. You need to open up the machine to fix this, which is annoying and can void any warranty you have on it.

You can find a Reddit thread talking about this here.

Machine Spews Coffee Grounds into Your Drink

This is a problem that affects all Keurig coffee makers that use Multistream Technology.

Often the side needles puncture the outer edge of the K-cups and this causes a lot of ground to fall out of the K-cup and into your drink.

You can find a thread talking about this here.

Although the majority of Keurig K Supreme units will not have any of these issues (I have not had any of these problems with my Keurig K Supreme Plus), there are just so many reports like this online that I do not trust Keurig’s quality assurance with this model.

Design and Build Quality Rating: 4/10

Value For Money

If the Keurig K Supreme doesn’t have any of these aforementioned technical faults, then it’s good value.

It’s one of the more expensive Keurig coffee makers, but it makes up for it with the standard of coffee that it can make.

I do however have to dock its marks for its lack of reliability, spending this amount of money for a machine that does not work out of the box is unacceptable.

Value for Money Rating: 5/10

Product Alternatives: Keurig K Elite and Keurig K Supreme Plus

Two coffee makers that I’d recommend as alternatives to the Keurig K Supreme are the Keurig K Elite and the Keurig K Supreme Plus.

Keurig K Elite – More Reliable than the K Supreme

The Keurig K Elite is similarly priced to the Keurig K Supreme and does not have anywhere near as many reported technical issues as the Supreme.

It is often recommended by Redditors as the reliable alternative to the K Supreme.

It still makes very good coffee thanks to its 6 oz serving size and strong button (although it does not brew for quite as long as the Supreme) and has the same “over ice” functionality as the Supreme.

It is a bit bigger than the Supreme, but I think that part of the reason for the Supreme’s lack of reliability is that Keurig tried to fit too many features in too little space.

You can find out more about how these machines compare in my comparison of Keurig K Supreme vs K Supreme Plus vs K Elite.

Keurig K Supreme Plus – Better Tasting Coffee than the K Supreme

The Keurig K Supreme Plus makes better-tasting coffee than the K Supreme because it allows you to make a 4 oz coffee and has an additional strength setting.

This means you can make a super strong coffee that cannot be matched by the K Supreme.

Unfortunately, the Keurig K Supreme Plus still shares many of the K Supreme’s quality assurance problems, but if you are willing to take your chances with this you can get excellent coffee from this machine.

You can find more about these two machines in my comparison of Keurig K Supreme vs K Supreme Plus vs K Supreme Plus SMART.

Final Verdict

I wouldn’t recommend you buy the Keurig K Supreme because of the number of technical issues that the machine seems to succumb to.

Instead, I’d recommend buying the much more reliable Keurig K Elite.