The Keurig K-Brew + Chill can handle both hot and iced coffee. It has two tanks—a main water pitcher that it’ll automatically pull from for hot coffee and as needed, and a chill tank that constantly runs to keep the water supply cold. The fan starts and stops on its own, and I didn’t find the noise disruptive—it reminded me of a fridge running. It does have a quiet mode that significantly reduces the noise, but note that the water takes longer to get cold if you use that setting. I filled mine with cold tap water, and it took about an hour to get fully chilled, though Keurig says room temperature water takes about six hours. In any case, this machine is great if you prefer iced coffee. Keurig has had iced coffee pods on the market for a while, but usually they’re brewed with less-hot water. You still have to add ice, and it isn’t immediately chilled like what you get with this brewer. There are a few different buttons—you can choose between hot or cold, choose your coffee size, and choose to make it stronger.
I compared hot and cold coffees using the same K-Cups, and they were both equally strong. This brewer uses MultiStream technology, which basically means it saturates the grounds in the K-Cup evenly to ensure full flavor extraction. The machine can brew cold and hot cups back to back, but the cold brews will get less and less cold unless you give the tank time to cool down again. Indicator lights will let you know how charged the chill tank is. Cold brews came out at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit and rose up to around 65 degrees after five back-to-back brews.
This machine does have some quirks. One minor detail that irked me is that the chilled-water tank can only be filled from the back side of the brewer, which means depending on your kitchen cabinet configurations, you might have to pull it away from the wall to refill it easily. It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it is something to note. This brewer would take up a lot of room if you’ve got limited counter space. And it runs a rinse cycle after every cold brew, which takes about a minute and a half and is quite noisy. The rinsewater drains into the drip tray and it takes five cold brews to fill the tray up. The tray has a little floating indicator to let you know when it’s time to dump it out.
This machine isn’t going to be ideal for everyone, especially if you don’t really love iced coffee. But if you like cold coffee that isn’t diluted, it’s definitely worth checking out.