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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Megan Giller

Plant-Based Food Was Red Hot In 2016

I live in Brooklyn, which means I come across vegan food trucks pretty often. They almost always have something called “faux gras” on the menu: a vegan version of foie gras. Why any vegan wants to pretend she’s eating fatty duck liver is beyond me, but it seems to be a staple of their diet.

It turns out this trend is pretty widespread, and not just among dreadlocked hipsters in Bushwick. Eating sustainably is top of many people’s minds these days, and tech companies are jumping on the opportunity.

Take Impossible Foods, the Silicon Valley sweetheart that has raised more than $150 million to make its veggie burgers that “bleed.” Biochemist and founder Patrick Brown spent around five years and $80 million to develop textured wheat protein, coconut oil, and other plant-based ingredients into the meat patty, and the result is a patty that uses 74 percent water and 95 percent less land, and emits 87 percent less greenhouse gas than its beefy counterpart. In July 2016 celebrity chef and New York City sweetheart David Chang started offering the veggie burger on his menu at Momofuku Nishi, on a first come, first serve basis, of course.

NotCo’s plant-based Mayo, gif via GIPHY

Now there’s news that another company is coming onto the scene. Chilean startup NotCo uses artificial intelligence to help it recreate the flavors and textures of animal-based foods with plants. Its Not Mayo (made with potatoes, peas, basil, and canola oil rather than vegetable oil and eggs) is already available at a major supermarket in Chile, and the company is working on plant-based cheese, yogurt, milk, and (you guessed it) pate. NotCo has also spoken with Coca-Cola, Hershey, and Mars about recreating both soda and milk chocolate with solely plant-based ingredients.

Just think: In a few years you may be able to grab a “bleeding veggie” burger to go, then eat it at home with a plant-based “chocolate milkshake,” illuminated by a lamp made out of mushrooms.

Pets Are Using the Smart Kitchen Too

For better or worse, I’m obsessed with my shih tzu, Echo. He pretty much rules the house, as well as the photo stream on my iPhone and my conversations with my husband (who, though he’ll deny it, is similarly obsessed). So it only follows that I’m way more excited about a smart feeder with a camera than a new state-of-the-art refrigerator with a camera inside.

It turns out that other people are interested as well — well, not in my dog, but in their own pets. That means there are way, way too many connected pet feeders out there, all designed to solve the “problems” I’ve experienced too. Here are a few, and some solutions.

My Pet Needs to Lose Some Weight

A few months ago my vet added insult to injury by telling me that not only is Echo “geriatric” but that he needs to shed one whole pound — 5 percent of his entire weight! If only there were a dog option on CatFi. The device and app feed your cat dry food and use cat-facial-recognition technology to track your cat’s weight, food, and water intake, as well as let you watch your cat even when you’re not around. It works for up to three cats.

Meanwhile SureFlap uses microchip technology to make sure pets only eat their own food. When the right pet approaches the device, the lid opens and reveals their personal stash. This one works for cats and dogs, and anything else you can supposedly train to put their head in an enclosed space.

I Wish I Could Chat With My Pet

Sometimes when Echo is whining by his food bowl and he has both food and water and has just gone on a two-mile walk, I have no idea what he’s thinking. I wish I could just ask him. The icPooch and PetChatz don’t exactly solve that problem, but they do make it possible to talk to your dog and give him a treat when you’re not physically in the kitchen. The Wifi treat dispenser allows you to video chat with your tablet or smartphone, which is somewhat remarkable given that I’ve never seen my dog “chat.”

I Want to Teach Him a Lesson

Echo tends to get into stuff when I’m not around: He’s never dumped over the trash can, but he’s definitely strung toilet paper all over the house and eaten things off the coffee table. In other words, he’s bored. CleverPet solves the problem by keeping your dog occupied with learning games. Set up the iPhone app, fill the hub with food, leave the house (or go watch TV), and the CleverPet will play a series of games and puzzles with your dog with the food as reward. Bonus: This kind of “work” really tires dogs out, almost as much as a long walk or a visit to the dog park. Now they just need to invent some of these types of games for children — and adults.

The Takeaway

So what’s the point? Mainly that smart companies are innovating in every part of the smart kitchen, not just the sous vide machine or the oven. Niche spaces like the pet market are virtually unexplored, which means there’s room for growth and creativity. Who knows, maybe someday with the push of an iPhone button you’ll be able to remotely fill up your pet’s empty bowl, talk to them while they eat, and then give them a treat, as well as order food and treats automatically to be delivered to your door. Owning a pet has never been so easy.

6 Food Science Books That Will Change the Way You Look at Food

In Austin, where I’m from, barbecue pitmasters debate the Maillard reaction as often as they tuck into a plate of brisket and ribs. In other words, the best chefs have long known that science is the secret to their success, but over the past few years, science has become sexy to regular folks too.

Now you don’t have to go to the Institute of Culinary Education or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to understand all of those chemical reactions that make food taste a certain way, or to learn how to make it taste even better. There are cookbooks for that. Here are a few of my favorites.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee

Written back in 1984, this is a serious food science bible. Every professional chef has a dog-eared copy and can probably recite word for word sections about her favorite ingredient, cooking technique, and science behind why it works. Get ready for an intense discussion at the molecular level, including a chemistry primer.

The Science of Good Cooking, by Cook’s Illustrated

Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen pioneered the idea of cooking with the scientific method in order to develop foolproof recipes (they totally changed the way I make baked potatoes, for example). This easy-to-read book walks you through 50 experiments and more than 400 recipes that will soon become your new favorites.

The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

Harold McGee has some competition, as J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s new book might just be the bible for a new generation, especially the home cook. His accessible tone, funny anecdotes, and step-by-step photos are the icing on the cake of delicious recipes, developed with the exhaustive scientific method seen in The Science of Good Cooking. I pretty much made all of his Thanksgiving meal suggestions and couldn’t have been happier.

Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters, by Gordon M. Shepherd

If you want to know not only how to make that stuffing for Thanksgiving but also why it tastes so good, this is your jam. Be prepared for a super nerdy analysis of the mechanics of smell as well as how the brain processes flavor in terms of emotion, food preferences, cravings, and memory.

Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson, by IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education

In the 21st century, cooking isn’t limited to humans. A few years ago, IBM teamed up with the Institute of Culinary Education to create a cognitive cooking technology called Chef Watson that could discover new ingredient combinations and recipes that humans would never think of. This book details those recipes (think Hoof-and-Honey Ale), as well as how they did it.

Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail, by Dave Arnold

And where would the best meal be without a good drink to go with it? Dave Arnold has put together more than 120 cocktail recipes using the most cutting-edge techniques and hard-core science, guaranteeing you the knowledge you need to make the most amazing milk-washed vodka cocktail of your life.

Dave Arnold’s Centrifuge, The Spinzall, Is Now For Sale

Recently we caught up with Dave Arnold, the energetic, food-obsessed author of Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail and the director of the Museum of Food & Drink. He told us all about the new centrifuge he’s making for home and restaurant use.

And now it’s officially for sale! Called the Spinzall, it’s available now for a promotional price of $699 (it will eventually cost $999.99, so hurry and buy one now), exclusively on Modernist Pantry. The sale is part of a crowdfunding campaign where he is looking to hit a goal of just under $700 thousand. He’s off to a good start, with $155 thousand in sales with 30 days to go.

So why would you want one? Well, you can use it to clarify any liquid you could ever want, for starters, especially fruit juices or even coffee. But where the centrifuge really “blows everything else out of the water,” Arnold told us, is with flavored and infused oils. “I don’t anticipate there being any other tool on the market that will touch it,” Arnold said. “Throw [the spices] in a centrifuge and the flavor is just like, ‘Sploooosh!’” Same for other recipes that don’t yield high amounts, like the famous pea butter from Modernist Cuisine, which he said is better made at home for a small family than in a restaurant with lots of hungry patrons. It also apparently makes delicious baby food, is dishwasher-safe, and comes with a guide and recipes.

Now, this might seem like a pretty unlikely appliance, but considering that the rest of the centrifuges on the market cost around $5,000, the Spinzall is a huge steal. It’s also only Arnold’s first attempt at a centrifuge, and he has promised to keep innovating until he finds something with “mass market appeal.” With the success of his first product, the Searzall, we believe him. Because it’s clear that consumers want more and more specific kitchen tools, with the power of science behind them.

Watch the video below to hear Dave talk about the Searzall:

How the Spinzall Works

Is Solar-Powered Cooking the Next Big Thing?

In his new book The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, J. Kenji López-Alt wants you to use a beer cooler, water, an instant-read thermometer, some Ziploc bags, and a few towels to make a super DIY sous vide. Put it in a sunny spot in your kitchen, he advises, and cook everything from brats and beer to olive oil–poached salmon and rib-eyes with shallots, garlic and thyme. That sure beats spending a couple hundred bucks on a fancy sous vide machine.

It’s clear that Kenji has laboriously tested every recipe and idea in the book, with positive results, so this isn’t a cockamamie hypothesis from a novice but a practiced prescription from a professional. But I still can’t quite get behind the idea of putting raw meat in a cooler with some lukewarm water, setting the whole thing in a warm spot on the kitchen floor, and letting nature take its course.

But it turns out he’s not the only one. While some companies are making super high-tech kitchen devices, others are turning to the lowest-tech possibilities around. For example, GoSun’s line of solar ovens use compound parabolic reflectors and a tubular design to convert almost 80 percent of sunlight that enters the device into useable heat. There’s also a vacuum tube oven involved, and it doesn’t require electricity, gas, or any other man-made fuel to work.

Meanwhile BjornQorn makes solar-popped popcorn using a device they invented themselves: massive mirrored reflectors that collect and focus the sun’s rays, similar to how little kids fry ants with a magnifying glass. The $6 bags are available at hipster-centric specialty stores in the Northeast, and the popcorn has become so popular that Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams even made an ice cream flavor out of it.

And just recently, KinoSol’s solar-powered food dehydrators were fully funded on Kickstarter. The devices use a convection system and zero electricity. The company wants to make domestic dehydrators that will help individual households decrease their food waste by finding another use for those brown bananas or slightly mealy apples: The thought is that once they’re dehydrated, they’ll make a tasty snack.

The idea of an environmentally responsible, low-power way to cook is intriguing and on-trend, as people want to be connected to making their food in every way possible. Also, both KinoSol and BjornQorn have used their devices in third-world countries to bring an easy way of cooking to places that do not have electricity or access to other fuels, and for that reason, they’re invaluable. We believe that over time more and more companies will move into this space. But to be successful with the mainstream tech user, the products themselves need to feel more expensive and offer more than just a low-energy way to cook — they need to prove that cooking this way makes better-tasting or more nutritious food.

 

Are These Crowdfunding Projects the Next George Foreman Grill?

We talk a lot about the high-tech kitchen here at the Spoon, but we’re also fascinated by low-tech kitchen sensations, and no low-tech kitchen gadget has been more successful than the George Foreman Grill.

A few weeks ago we interviewed the inventor of the George Foreman Grill, Michael Boehm, who told us the story behind the infomercial sensation. But that was back in the ’90s. These days blossoming startups don’t take to TV but rather connect on crowdfunding sites to make their fortune.

Here are seven low-tech projects that might just be the next George Foreman Grill:

Empanada Maker

Simplify the process of making empanadas by using this tortillas-press-like device that would make Boehm proud. No muss, no fuss, no electricity. It’s even got a snappy name: the margariteña. The company wants to make the device lighter, which is why they’re raising funds.

Portable Keg

Unless you’re in college, it’s absolutely unacceptable to keep your keg cold by floating it in a trash can full of ice. DraftPak has a cooler solution: Put the DraftPak (which looks suspiciously like a cooler/trash can) on top of the keg and add ice! On the positive side, it uses CO2, so you don’t need to pump the keg.

Hipster Ice Cubes

You know how when you go to a fancy cocktail bar these days, it takes the mixologist about 30 minutes to make your drink? Well, part of that is the bespoke ice cubes. Skip the line and make your own ice and cocktails at home with the Ice Ball Press, which makes a 2.5-inch sphere. (Note: It would also make a killer snow ball to throw at that neighbor you hate.)

Edible Non-Drip Ice Cream Cones

No more melted ice cream dripping down your arm! More importantly, no more melted ice cream dripping down your kids’ arms! Halo Cone stops that in its tracks, with a weird plastic device that catches the liquid. We’re not exactly sure how it’s edible, but we believe in the future.

Water Purifier

This one is essentially a plastic bag that harnesses UV light to kill bacteria in water, making it safe to drink. The company is aiming to help during and after natural disasters like the hurricane in Haiti, and they’re raising funds to scale production of the bags.

Manual Espresso Makers

There are actually two crowdfunding projects right now that do the same thing: help you make espresso the “old-fashioned” way. With both the PREXO and the Flair makers, you tamp the coffee grounds yourself; in the PREXO a piston extracts the espresso, and in the Flair you push down on a lever with your hand. It seems like a fair amount of work, but both are small devices that can easily be stored, not like the massive La Marzocco machine.

So what’s the takeaway here? There’s much innovation in the kitchen that doesn’t necessarily have to do with technology. In particular with the espresso makers, it’s clear that people are interested in returning to making food “by hand.” Does that mean it will taste better? Not necessarily. It’s about both accessibility and the desire to be involved in the food-making process. Even if that means ridiculous sphere-shaped ice for your craft cocktail.

Kick Charting: 7 Crowdfunding Food-Delivery Services

Delivery services aren’t just for David Chang and Martha Stewart. While food delivery investment has cooled this year (see chart) as venture capitalists question the economics of these capital intensive businesses, that hasn’t stopped enterprising startups from heading to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter to fund a unique take on food delivery.

Here are seven companies trying to become the next Blue Apron via crowdfunding campaigns:

Beer-Making Kit

Every three months Bierbox sends you the ingredients you need for a new recipe: think liquid or dry malt extract, hops, and yeast, as well as detailed instructions to make these homebrew-lab-tested recipes. Pair it with the Zymatic and you’re a 21st century kind of home brewer.

Meat

Forget your local butcher or meat CSA. Grass Cow wants to deliver grass-fed beef, grass-fed bison, and wild hog to your doorstep. Right now it looks like these are onetime deliveries, which on the surface seems like they are using the same business model as Omaha Steaks. However, the quality is much better, and for people in areas without access to grass-fed meats, this could be a game changer.

Supper Club

Are you an “aspiring entertainer” (read: millennial) who wants to throw a fancy hipster supper club (read: dinner party) but hates planning (read: is lazy)? The Caramelized Supper Club might be for you. Every other month it delivers décor and nonperishable items along with recipes, grocery lists, and wine pairings. No one will ever suspect your dinner party came out of a box.

Fresh Herbs

Don’t worry about growing basil or rosemary on your porch anymore, because Herbly will deliver whatever you need. The startup partners with small-scale farmers to deliver those herbs on a monthly basis. Choose from everything from basil to stevia to chocolate mint “and indulge” with (non-medical) herbs, as their Kickstarter page says.

Mini Cocktails

Let’s be clear. SaloonBox is basically a box of mixers, delivered to your door. You have to add the alcohol. That said, they provide crafted recipes for fun drinks like mulled cider and even the ubiquitous Moscow Mule. The new mini line includes enough for four to six servings of one cocktail, so to get through the holidays, you might need, oh, about 10 of these.

Craft Beer

If you live in the U.K., Black Market Beer will send you a case of beer from a craft microbrewery each month. We’re talking seriously small microbreweries too: The goal seems to be as much to help those folks stay in business as expose you to the great beers they’re making.

Dogs

No, unfortunately, this is not a service that delivers adorable dogs to your door. But it is a service that delivers treats for your dog to your door. Each kit includes three to four types of healthy treats with real meat, chews, toys, and functional accessories. For my super anxious shih tzu, that functional accessory would probably be a Thunder Shirt.

Clearly not all of these projects will make it to the funded stage, but the high level of interest in delivery services confirms that it’s an area poised for growth. Over the next few years the space will become more and more crowded, until the few who have mastered their business model win out over the weaker offerings and the rest move on to the newest trend.

Alton Brown Makes A Good Point: Is There Room For All These New Kitchen Gadgets?

The strawberry slicer. The veggetti. The Rollie. We totally feel Alton Brown’s pain about the poor design and general uselessness of some of these gadgets. Good thing that only applies to gadgets, not tech, right?

Well, not exactly. Here at The Spoon we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the line between gadget and technology. Is it the use of electricity? Batteries? The implementation of higher-level concepts? We’re still sorting all of this out, and we’d love to hear what you think in the comments below.

But here’s a bigger problem that Alton raises so clearly: “unitaskers,” as he calls them, or anything that can only do one job. They take up space in the kitchen and usually only solve one fairly minor problem. Unfortunately most connected kitchen tech falls into this category at the moment: connected coffee makers, pancakebots, sous vide machines, the list goes on. Will that change, or, as we become more acquainted with technology in the kitchen, will we simply build more counters and storage space?

Here’s Why the Keurig Model Is So Successful

Lately it seems like every time a new kitchen-related appliance appears on the scene, it’s deemed the new “Keurig for X” model: beer, wine, juice, smoothies, cocktails, and now even cookies. What is it about the idea of a plug-and-play model that appeals to both customers and budding businesses?

On the consumer side, people want something easy and intuitive to use (call it the Apple-ification of our world). Further, calling a new device the “Keurig for X” boils down the high-level technology to a digestible sound bite, reinforcing how easy the tech will be to use.

On the business side, these devices feel like they’re tailored for each individual’s tastes but in fact are pretty standardized and right out of the box. Even though they differ in vital ways, each has mastered the idea of recurring revenue, so important for Keurig’s success. For example, in 2010 it made $330 million by selling brewers but $800 million in K-Cup capsules. That makes this model less like a hardware company and more like a tech company (with constant software upgrades and the associated fees).
chipcookieoven

But in order to master success, companies need to keep the customers’ attention beyond replacement packs. “You have to understand, we’re a one-trick pony,” Keurig’s Dick Sweeney told Boston.com a few years go. “We have a brewer and a K-Cup. We don’t have a cellphone or a flat-screen TV or a microwave to fall back on if the brewer doesn’t make it.” In other words, there’s more opportunity when the devices are connected to smartphones and other tech, but in the long run, to stay ahead of the game, companies need to continue to innovate.

They also need to figure out how to get costs down. A $700 juicer works in a Silicon Valley office environment and is a great initial business model, but to expand that success and customer base to the home market, prices need to drop. An entry-level Keurig model will only set you back about $100, which means every home could have one.

Or maybe, just maybe, we need to stop creating gadgets that resemble the Keurig in any way and instead focus on involving people in the everyday process of growing and making food and drinks so that it’s fun and exciting rather than a chore to be simplified.

Dispatches From The Smart Kitchen: Brewing Beer With the Pico

This series explores how new technology is used in real-life people’s home kitchens. It’s one thing to watch a demo on a company website or at the store, but it’s quite another to use them in your own house. These are stories of people who use technology to make delicious food (or beer) for themselves, their families, and their friends.

Name: Luke Murphy

Preferred Technology: Pico and Zymatic from PicoBrew

Other Kitchen Technology: None!

What It Is: The Zymatic is the first fully automatic all-grain beer brewing appliance. You can make your own recipe or brew one from the library. The just-released Pico (from the same company) is the Keurig of home brewing systems: It uses ready-to-brew PicoPak ingredient kits, and it can brew five liters of craft beer in about two hours.

picobrew2Why: Luke started home-brewing about six years ago, but when his roommate moved out and his girlfriend (now wife) moved in, he stopped his beer-making ways. Needless to say, he missed the process. He bought the Zymatic and got brewin’, and when the Pico came up on Kickstarter, he helped fund it immediately. “I’m an engineer by trade, focused on process and design, so I really appreciated the blend of creativity, science, and process control,” he said. “Not only could I control my process consistently when honing in a recipe but it gave me the time to brew where I wouldn’t otherwise have it.” Beyond that, he liked the idea that the device “allows a smaller brewery an opportunity to broaden their distribution network and get exposure to where they wouldn’t otherwise be able to” (aka your kitchen counter).picobrew3

How He Discovered It: He met Pico co-founder Avi Geiger through a mutual friend while hanging out at a store dedicated to craft brewing. When he heard what Avi was up to with both devices, he was immediately interested. “The science of understanding contributing variations in the process of brewing and trying to minimize them for consistency is awesome,” he explained. He even convinced his neighbor (who was not a home brewer) to buy a Pico and says it’s fun to watch someone become interested in the science behind beer.

“Not only could I control my process consistently when honing in a recipe but it gave me the time to brew where I wouldn’t otherwise have it.”

Which Is Better: “I liken them to a PC vs. an iPad,” he said. “I can tweak and customize a lot more on a PC/Zymatic, but the iPad/Pico are just simple and easy.  Not to mention the Pico shortened the brewing process in half, which is nice.

“Something that was always tricky for me with a traditional homebrew was fermentation. PicoBrew simplifies this greatly by a really clever modification that allows you to ferment under pressure, like a lot of professional brewers. This helps take temperature variation out of the equation when fermenting, making the beer a lot more consistent.” In other words, he can now brew PicoBrew’s adaptation of Deschutes’ Fresh Squeezed IPA and Great Divide’s Yeti Stout with the push of a button. He says he would buy both devices again “without a doubt.”

picobrewbuffalobar

Favorite Beer to Make: A session IPA that he says he can drink all day while playing cornhole. He’s made it around five times using the Zymatic, all while hanging out in his garage bar, which he’s named the Buffalo in honor of the video of “Guy on a Buffalo” (see above for actual photo and below for infinite amusement, preferably while drinking a beer brewed with the Pico).

Guy On A Buffalo - Episode 1 (Bears, Indians & Such)

 

How One Savvy Inventor Created the George Foreman Grill and Jump-Started an Industry

George Foreman’s name may grace the label of a certain type of grill we all have in our cabinets, but he didn’t actually invent the machine. No, that honor belongs to a man named Michael Boehm. Back in the early 1990s, Boehm realized that “small kitchen appliances were a sleeping giant,” and decided to capitalize on that slumber. Since then the category has pretty much exploded.

We consider the George Foreman Grill an early precursor to the more electronically advanced products we write about on this site and want to pay homage to where it all started. So we caught up with Boehm to interview him firsthand and hear what he’s up to now. Here’s his story.

The Spark

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Working for a Chinese home electronics manufacturer called Tsann Kuen USA, Boehm created something called the Steam Grill: You poured the water, broth, or wine in a well in the center of the grill, put the meat on, and closed the lid. Voila: tender, succulent meat.

He quickly sold three different versions to three different companies. One of them decided to make an infomercial with a regional chef in California. “The product sold well but only in the West,” Boehm said. “I said they’ve got the wrong idea here.”

The Voice

So when he invented his next product, the Short Order Grill, which used a slanted surface to help fat slide off the grill, he knew he needed a spokesperson to make it sing. His first choice? George Foreman.

“He’s kind of a quirky guy but very charismatic,” Boehm said. He’d heard Foreman had five sons named George and that they loved burgers, as well as that Foreman had burgers before each fight. So in December 1993 he sent a prototype to the Foreman camp and waited. After many months, Foreman’s wife, Mary, started using the grill, and eventually George came calling.

The Money

Since that fateful day more than 100 million grills have been sold and George Foreman has made around $200 million from the deal.

mwb1

Of course, Boehm created the grill as part of his job at Tsann Kuen, and the company sold the plans for the product outright to Salton, who worked with Foreman to brand it. So Boehm didn’t make a single penny beyond his salary.

To this day he carries around the patent in his pocket, to prove to people that he did in fact invent the grill.

But despite that habit, he doesn’t seem too concerned about the patent. “I chose to develop another product, and then another, rather than play legal games with people,” he said. Other inventions have included a quesadilla maker and a fusion grill that “looked like a volcano.” And it’s not just kitchenware: He’s also designed everything “from snowmobiles to electronics to toys” for places like JC Penney. Heck, he even designed a coffee maker that’s featured in the Whitney Museum.

A person like that is an inventor for life. “I’m looking for something that I look at it and go wow, it’s going to make my life easier,” he said. “That challenge of finding the elusive secret.”

What’s the Most Popular Cocktail in Your State? (INFOGRAPHIC)

If you’ve ever wondered whether your at-home cocktail of choice is modern or momish, well, POC Metrics has your answer. The consumer analytics company has put together this nifty data visualization to show you the most popular cocktails, spirits, and ingredients by state during the 2015 holiday season.

Recently we discovered that the Moscow Mule is in a dead heat with the margarita in competition for the most-popular at-home drink, replacing the Cosmopolitan as the most popular vodka cocktail. I’m disappointed to tell you that the other three most popular vodka drinks in the country during the holiday season are Sex on the Beach, Long Island Iced Tea, and something called Rainbow Dee-Lite, which apparently is a rainbow-colored cocktail made with raspberry syrup, orange and pineapple juices, vodka, and Blue Curacao.

Surprisingly, spiked egg nog, hot toddies, and anything with pumpkin spice did not feature highly on any list. Vodka remains the most popular ingredient while almond milk was the least popular, right below celery bitters.

The results are based on data from 50,000 users of the Perfect Drink Smart-Bartending Platform, (If you’re not familiar, the platform helps users measure perfectly portioned cocktails from its stash of recipes or user-uploaded ones.)

Given the explosion of craft cocktail bars, speakeasies, and other places to posture with a martini glass in hand, I’m surprised that people’s at-home drinks of choice are so uncreative. Why the disparity between what people drink at home and what they drink out?

It all comes down to ingredients and ideas. There’s clearly room for a better cocktail discovery system, perhaps with recipes from bartenders and mixologists, so that people can step outside the Long Island Iced Tea comfort zone without investing in tons of mixers to accompany their vodka. How about taking the vodka-lime idea from a Moscow Mule and instead making a Salty Dog (add grapefruit juice), a Twister (add soda), or to be really retro, a Sea Breeze (add grapefruit and cranberry juices)? The power of suggestion would go a long way here.

Liquor stores can also capitalize on POC’s data to group mixers with the spirits that make the most sense by state, increasing sales with very little extra effort.

And perhaps most obviously, someone needs to start offering a premade version of some of these cocktails that doesn’t “taste like disappointment.”