I'm currently at a location for the next few months with only Keurig for coffee options. The coffee is not pleasant, and I'll just leave it at that. I get k-cups are somewhat counter-specialty but are there any specialty-focused k-cups/brands on the market that can deliver more than musty/earthy, smoky/burnt dark roast I'm getting from it seems whatever I put in the Keurig?

You can't buy a cheap grinder and use something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Brewers ... B00LGEKOMS ?

I've had more k-cups than I would care to admit, and while I found the Illy ones the best...I'd still be perfectly happy to never drink one again

I have a good hand grinder and some manual brew options plus that refillable k-cup (or one like it at least), that part is not a problem. the problem is a good source of coffee. locally that source of coffee is grocery store coffee. I've ordered from some local roasteries but they don't have a specialty focus and the coffee is oily and black plus doesn't have roast dates but "best before dates" which seems to be 6-12 months past roast date. I'm in a remote area and getting things beyond local is possible but I was just looking for some options with the tools I got in front of me. If I see some illy I'll pick it up.

Andrew, I assume you're too remote to have Cometeer shipped out to you? Anyway, it's been a while since I visited k-cup land. The best k-cup I ever had was a Cerro Azul Geisha about 9 years ago, but that's long gone. Which ones did you already try?

Dragonfly is coming out with K-cups.

https://dragonflycoffeeroasters.com/

I think I've had my last k-cup for a while, I've been drinking a lot of tea in its place. I've ended up finding a local roaster that I'm hopeful with and ordered half a kilo. I think even if it disappoints it will be better than a k-cup.

EDIT: I just placed the order. the roastery is 160 km away (100 mi) and it's going to take 10 days to ship it to me. this is on a shipping service that claims a 1 business day turnaround. It turns out my location is too remote. it's a good thing it's roast to order so the roast date won't be too old

Well the Keurig is the absolute worst coffee you could possibly ever get, maybe even worse than a percolator.

That said I've made quite a bit in the past using the ez carafe cup with my own coffee. It holds enough coffee to make decent 16 oz cup. But you got to have a Keurig that is carafe capable to use that big one. The smaller size ones just don't hold enough coffee for a decent size cup

But any kind of user cup made with fresh coffee will be better than the old crap and Keurig cups