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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

coffee tech

The Kara Pod is a Coffee Machine That Refills Itself by Pulling Water from Thin Air

This year at CES, Kara Water debuted the Kara Pod, a combo coffee brewer and air-to-water countertop machine. The Kara Pod takes company core technology, which turns humidity from the air into drinking water, and combines it with a coffee machine that can produce up to almost a gallon of water (3.2 liters) per day, which can be used as drinking water or for brewing coffee.

Kara Water was founded in 2017 by Cody Sooden and Michael Di Giovanna. The two wanted to create a machine that could produce clean drinking water free of contaminants. Sooden’s interest in the technology started after he began experimenting with capturing water from air while studying architecture. He eventually wrote a research paper on harvesting moisture from the air, which ultimately became the genesis of the company’s technology.

Kara Water isn’t the first company to show off water-from-air technology at CES. We’ve seen Watergen debut a working model in 2020, and Zero Mass Water, which uses solar power to capture moisture and turn it into drinking water, showed off its machine at CES 2019. But this is the first countertop appliance model we’ve seen and the first time we’ve seen air-to-water combined with a coffee machine.

According to Sooden, the Kara Pod will start shipping in March for $299. You can watch our interview with Sooden below.

The Kara Pod Coffee Maker Gets Water Refilled From Out of Thin Air

Fellow, Maker of Specialty Coffee Gear, Raises $30 Million Series B

Fellow, a maker of specialty coffee gear, announced today they had raised $30 million via a Series B funding round led by Nextworld Evergreen.

The San Francisco-based company, which has made a name for itself with its somewhat pricey design-forward coffee-making gear, was started by founder and CEO Jake Miller in his dorm room at Stanford where he began work on a coffee steeper that raised close to $200 thousand on Kickstarter.

Since those early days, Miller and his team have launched a family of coffee and tea gear, ranging from French presses to kettles to insulated coffee mugs. The company, which has gained a following among baristas and celebrities for its sleekly designed Stagg EKG kettles (and also influenced a dozen or more knockoffs), also sells coffee beans via its website and has opened a flagship retail store in San Francisco.

Fellow CEO Jake Miller

I first connected with Miller in 2017 when he showed off the Stagg Kettle and pitched his company at the Smart Kitchen Summit. I sat down with him yesterday to talk about his company and plans moving forward.

The home coffee gear market has a rough space for some startups, yet Fellow has been able to grow. Why do you think you’ve had success while others have struggled or gone out of business?

I do think a big part of our success was our “failure” to raise venture capital back in 2013. With limited cash, we had to be incredibly thoughtful about our product roadmap. Not only did we have to understand the appeal and market size of our products, but we had to be very honest with ourselves about the likelihood of us actually delivering a product that customers would love.

For example, although a tiny market, we had high confidence in our ability to launch the best pour-over kettle in the world with a small team and limited resources. In 2013, if someone would have handed us $5 million I think there is a good chance we would have bit off too much and wouldn’t have been able to deliver. It’s exciting to sit here today with the experience of the past 9 years and now the confidence/ability to deliver on the big stuff moving forward. 

What do you plan on using the funding for?

With the capital from the fund raise, we are going to build the team out further so we can run even faster in product development, coffee, and major distribution expansion, including international and our Fellow-owned retail stores. Our second store in Venice, CA opens in August.

The consumer hardware space has changed pretty dramatically since you launched almost 10 years ago, and crowdfunding is one of the aspects that has gotten harder (due to lots of high-profile failures). Would you crowdfund today if you were starting a company or take a different path?

I’m incredibly thankful to the thousands of backers who have supported Fellow through multiple products. The connections we’ve made with our early supporters is priceless. So yes, I think if done right, with the right intentions and expectations, I would absolutely use crowdfunding for a new company today. And, who knows, maybe Fellow goes back to crowdfunding for one of our future products! Even though we don’t need the cash for development today, the insights and feedback we get from our backers is essential to our success.

When you started designing your first product while still at Stanford, did you think you’d be building a consumer products brand long-term?

From day one, my goal was to launch a brand that had real permanence. I often talk internally about my dream of building a 100-year company. So, the desire was there. However, when I think back to 2013 at Stanford sitting in the Launchpad class at the d.School, my big dream was to have 10 employees who were passionate about product design. Now, all of the Kardashians have a Fellow Stagg EKG and it’s also being used by world champion brewers. Fellow today is far more than I ever imagined, but what is exciting is that I truly believe we are just getting started. 

Do you see Fellow expanding beyond coffee/tea hardware in the future?

At some point, yes. But, not today. There is still so much more our customers are asking us to do within coffee. However, at some point in time our customers will ask us to move into other categories in the kitchen. We build beautifully functional tools for the home barista today, and we’re excited to build beautifully functional tools for other passions in the kitchen in the future.

You were a Smart Kitchen Summit startup showcase finalist in 2017.  Do you have any memories from that experience you can share?

Yes! I remember pitching on stage alongside so many other great entrepreneurs. That was a real treat for me. Additionally, I remember seeing the other brands and products at the event and feeling inspired. Talking to other founders at SKS helped me to internalize the value that technology can create in the kitchen. 

Keurig Debuts BrewID Smart Brewing Platform, Launches First WiFi Connected Brewer

Today Keurig, the maker of the omnipresent coffee pod brewing systems, debuted a new smart brewing platform called BrewID.

So what is BrewID? According to the announcement, BrewID is “an all new technology platform designed to support a number of  features, such as the ability to identify a specific K-Cup pod brand from more than 900 pod varieties, including the specific roast, and automatically adjust the brewer’s temperature and strength settings to the specifications to the recommendations of the coffee roasting expert who created it.”

In other words, the new platform will allow Keurig coffee partners to create customized brew settings optimized for each specific roast.

“Every coffee needs a different technique to brew it to its optimized cup size or preference,” Roger Johnson, Keurig’s SVP, Appliance Global product Organization, told me over a zoom call. “And so this technology allows you to center so you understand what the roaster intended and then it’s up to whatever you’d like.”

Johnson said one of the goals of the new brewer with the BrewID platform was to achieve something closer to what you might get from a barista with, say, a pour-over coffee. To achieve that, the new brewer pairs the BrewID with Keurig’s Multistream brewing technology, which in the case of the new brewer, means five streams of water vs just one.

BrewID will make its debut in the company’s first Wi-Fi connected brewer, the K-Supreme Plus Smart Brewer.

I know what some of you are thinking: Coffee pods usually mean a quick, serviceable cup of coffee, but don’t equate to a barista crafted cuppa joe. While you are right, I do think that having a brew tailored for a specific coffee roast makes lots of sense. Dark coffee should be brewed differently than lighter coffee. Arabica beans should get treated differently than Robusta.

And that’s the goal of BrewID. By being connected, the device can access specific brew profiles from Keurig’s network of 75 or so third party roasting partners for specific brew instructions for the 900 or so different types of pods.

The new connected brewer also will have the usual list of benefits of being connected, including app-based programming and control and auto-replenishment. According to Johnson, while Keurig has offered auto-replenishment of pods with some of its earlier models, those models used a time-based system that would order pods at a pre-set interval. With the new Wi-Fi based brewer, pod auto-delivery will be based on usage of pods.

I have to admit, when I first heard the name BrewID, images of Keurig’s ill-fated brew “DRM” technology came to mind. Johnson assured me that Keurig learned their lesson from the Keurig 2.0 system rollout.

“You can brew any pod that you would like,” Johnson told me. “There’s no lockout feature. We celebrate a democratized system.”

Of course, one thing BrewID doesn’t change is the fact Keurig is still, well, a pod system. While Keurig has made big strides in making their pods recyclable – in fact, technically all K-cup pods are now recyclable – whether pods are actually recycled is dependent on consumers actually doing the work. This involves separating the lid, throwing the coffee into the compost and making sure the plastic cup is then put into the right bin. My guess is a lot of consumers still throw the spent pods into the garbage whole, putting plastic into the waste stream.

And while some new grind-and-brew systems like the Spinn do away with the pod altogether and may pose a threat in the future, those systems are still dwarfed by pods, which in 2020 account for a $25 billion market.

So for now, pods are still massive (and growing) business. And, with its new BrewID platform, Keurig is hoping to bring even more coffee drinkers to the pod.

The K-Supreme Plus Smart with BrewID will sell for $199 and will be available this fall.

After Four Years, It Looks I’m Finally Going To Get My Spinn Coffee Maker

Well what do you know? It appears my long, nearly half-decade wait for the Spinn coffee maker is nearing an end.

That’s because I got an email last week letting me know that my Spinn is on its way. For those of you who have been following along, the company first started pitching their centrifugal coffee maker back in 2016. I ordered one early – in the first wave – and waited excitedly for my machine to arrive in 2017.

Only it didn’t, and before long Spinn stopped given expected ship dates. The months soon stretched into years. Backers became restless.

In the meantime, I documented the long and twisting journey of Spinn, from its continued delays to it a new funding round and more.

The company said they started shipping last year, but my research showed they had only really shipped early production models to beta testers, some of whom included the company’s own investors. This shipment appears to be the first one to a broader set of backers.

The company, which had seen a slight setback due to COVID-19 related shutdowns, had teased they had finished production ready for backers in their most recent monthly update:

Since our last update, our colleagues in China have been working very hard on setting up the production line, the pre-assembly, assembly, packaging, and preparing all units of this batch for international shipment. These days, being able to line up a production run is all the more exciting. Our teams across the globe have been hard at work catching up after the shutdowns due to COVID-19.

Despite a four year wait, I’m still pretty excited for my Spinn. I can’t tell you how many emails I received from other backers over the last couple years asking if they should give up and ask for a refund. What I always told them was that despite the long wait, the company’s detailed monthly production updates and news of their funding made it seem the Spinn team was working to get this thing done.

Now they finally have. Once I get it in a few weeks, I’ll have to see if the long wait was worth it.

The Kelvin Home Coffee Roaster Enters Production, Ships To Backers in August

Back when the Kelvin, a countertop home coffee roasting appliance, launched on Kickstarter in March of 2018, their promo video made a simple but powerful statement:

“The roast of the bean, the most important factor in our coffee’s flavor, has always been completely out of our control.”

While that’s a bit of an exaggeration – there are plenty of home roasting machines available at the click of a button – the idea of a simple, small countertop appliance was enough to entice me to back the Kelvin. With an estimated ship date of December 2018, I had hopes I’d be roasting my own coffee beans by Christmas.

Two years later, I’m still without my Kelvin. When I’d checked in last August with the CEO of IA Collaborative (the company behind the Kelvin), Dan Kraemer told me via email he expected shipment in November, but another Christmas came and went and still no Kelvin.

But this week, a light at the end of my coffee roasting tunnel appeared in the form of an update that said the Kelvin had entered full production.

From the update:

Now that most parts are made for mass production, the team will begin assembling roasters and loading onto pallets to be shipped in the coming weeks. While our team was testing roasters from pilot production, our manufacturing team was preparing the Kelvin packaging.

Anyone familiar with the hardware crowdfunding knows delays are almost expected nowadays. Still, a year and a half delay is a long one, especially when it seemed much of the research and development of the product appeared completed by the time it showed up on Kickstarter.

I shouldn’t complain too much. Some products never make it to the customer, and other delays can take the better part of a half-decade (I’m looking at you Spinn), so just getting a product you backed on Kickstarter nowadays, no matter how delayed, can feel like a win.

While it might be a couple years later, here’s to hoping I’ll be roasting beans by Christmas.

Review: BLOOM is a Speedier Pourover Coffee Maker for Homes and Cafés

When I worked as a barista, my absolute least favorite drink to make was a pour over. Essentially a single-serving cup of coffee made individually, the process was fussy and usually took five minutes, which held up the line and stressed me out.

Coffee design company ESPRO has developed a new single-serve coffee brewer called BLOOM meant to improve on the traditional pour over method. BLOOM is currently wrapping up a successful Kickstarter campaign. This week I got to try it out myself to see what all the fuss is about.

Based in Vancouver, ESPRO had already made its own versions of several tried-and-true coffee brewers, including French Press and Cold Brewer. “Now we’re tackling the pour over,” ESPRO’s co-founder and President Bruce Constantine told me over the phone last week.

The main innovation by the BLOOM brewer is its flat bed — that is, the base of the brewer where the coffee comes out. BLOOM’s is larger than average and has 1,500 tiny holes, which means it can brew coffee faster than a traditional pour over device. According to Constantine, this shape also means that the coffee extracts more evenly, so the end result is more consistent. “It’s the first time the pour over has been reinvented in 30 years,” he told me.

Since the BLOOM has a non-traditional shape, it also requires specialized paper liners. ESPRO currently has patents out for both the paper and the BLOOM brewer itself. 

Photo: The parts of ESPRO’s BLOOM brewer [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

Constantine says he expects that the BLOOM will be a 50/50 product in terms of customers: 50 percent consumer, 50 percent foodservice in coffee shops and cafes. With COVID keeping more people at home, however, he said that they’re going to focus on the consumer market first. 

Home brewers certainly seem to be interested in the BLOOM brewer. ESPRO launched the Kickstarter for BLOOM on April 15 with a goal of $20,000. It was fully funded after eight hours. At the time of writing this, the Kickstarter had raised over $63,000 with eight days to go.

Kickstarter backers can get the BLOOM and 50 papers for $35. Constantine said when the device debuts in retail, it will cost $50 for the device and 10 papers. Packs of 100 papers will sell separately for $10 each. The company plans to sell the BLOOM directly through their website, and have already confirmed placements at retailers like Williams Sonoma, Sur La Table, and Nordstrom. 

Constantine said they expect to start shipping BLOOM to backers in July. As with any crowdfunded hardware product, there’s no guarantee that ESPRO will be able to hit that timeline — especially as COVID is disrupting manufacturing supply chains around the globe. But Constantine said that since they’re producing in China, which is over the worst of the virus, they actually aren’t experiencing any manufacturing slowdowns right now. 

In these uncertain times, things can change moment to moment. But it is comforting that ESPRO has already helmed four Kickstarter campaigns, all of which successfully shipped their products.

I got to give the BLOOM a try to get my caffeine fix this week. The process is extremely simple: put a filter into the brewing cone, place it over a coffee mug, add your ground coffee, then pour in the water. Coffee convention recommends that you “bloom” your coffee first (hence the name), which basically means pouring just a little bit of water into the grounds and letting it sit for thirty seconds to make space and let bitter carbon dioxide escape. After the bloom, I poured in the rest of the hot water and had a tasty cup of coffee in a minute and a half.

The BLOOM brewer ready for hot water. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

A minute and a half is a speedy brew time for specialty coffee. My typical Chemex routine takes around six, and regular pour overs take four to five. The coffee itself was delicious, and cleanup was a snap thanks to the paper liner, which gives it a definite edge over the French Press for me.

There’s no question that the BLOOM is easy to use and looks beautiful. However, after trying it out I was left wondering: “Is it really worth it?”

Sure, a traditional pourover and Chemex both take a few extra minutes to brew. But the amount of required active time is essentially the same. A Chemex costs around $45, on par with BLOOM, while a regular ceramic pourover is roughly half that. I’m not sure if a slightly faster brew time justifies purchasing a BLOOM in addition to these other brewers.

I think that the bigger opportunity for BLOOM is in cafes — where time actually is of the essence. But since COVID-19 has basically nixed pour overs from the menu — and might shutter some coffee shops for good — that might not happen for a while.

Until then, if you’re looking to speed up your morning coffee routine, or just add a fun new gadget to your collection to spice up quarantine, BLOOM could be a good fix.

Taika’s Canned Adaptogen Coffee Ticks the Boxes for Wellness-Loving Millennials

During quarantine I’ve been drinking more caffeine than ever, which means that by 10 a.m., I’m usually about to rocket out of my chair.

Maybe that wouldn’t be the case if I was sipping on the java from new startup Taika (“magic” in Finnish). Founded by an ex-Facebook employee and a champion barista, the company makes cans of “perfectly calibrated coffee.” The startup uses a patent-pending process to reduce the amount of caffeine in each can to 130mg. A 12-ounce cup of regular coffee has 200mg. It also features adaptogens and mushrooms like ashwaganda (for calm) and reishi (for immunity).

Taika is launching with three flavors: Black Coffee, Oat Milk Latte, and Macadamia Latte. The coffee is sourced from a roaster in Vancouver, BC, and the lattes are plant-based and don’t have added sugar.

The caffeine curious can get a variety pack of six Taika drinks, two of each flavor, for $36. A 12-pack of a single flavor costs $59. As of now, Taika’s coffee is available for two-hour contactless delivery in three cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. It also sells product to a handful of retailers in the San Francisco Bay Area and L.A.

Taika is clearly trying to appeal to consumers interested in the beverage wellness trend — especially younger people, like millennials and Gen Z. In fact, if you had a list of all the attributes of a trendy CPG beverage company, Taika would check literally all of the boxes. Cool, brightly colored branding? Check. Minimalist packaging? Check. Cheeky marketing? Double check. Taika’s cans even feature a phone number, which consumers are encouraged to text to make sure they got home safe. (I tried it and got a question about the Turing Test, then no response.)

With this wellness focus, Taika is clearly aiming to capture the same demographic as other good-for-you beverage brands, like CBD soda company Recess or Dirty Lemon. Price-wise, it’s in line with both.

Taika isn’t the first company to put adaptogens in coffee, or the first to create lower-caffeine coffee. But combining those two aspects, along with marketing explicitly geared towards wellness-conscious consumers, could help this startup rocket to success.

Will Bellwether Coffee’s Plug-and-Play Roasters Help Cafés Survive COVID-19?

Every Tuesday, before I make my weekly outing to grocery shop, I stop by my favorite coffee shop and get a black coffee and a donut. The shop used to be a hubbub of activity — freelancers hanging out on their laptops, friends catching up, kids running around — but now it’s quiet, with a masked barista serving up to-go coffees to patrons who line up outside to be served.

Like most other foodservice establishments, coffee shops are feeling the pain of COVID-19. To compensate some are cutting hours, reducing staff, or trying to incorporate new revenue streams, like selling local products, flowers, and emphasizing bagged coffee.

Bellwether Coffee, a company that makes electric, ventless zero-emissions connected commercial coffee roasters that can go into cafés, is trying to help coffee shops supplement their income by roasting their own beans. To try and get more partners during the pandemic, they’re offering to waive the first two months of roaster fees — provided the shop installs it between May and July. The roasters can be delivered in as little as a week.

On the one hand, coffee shops who are struggling to stay afloat probably aren’t able to commit to purchasing a pricey coffee roaster (the machines cost $75,000 to buy or can be rented for a monthly fee), even with the deal. On the other, Bellwether roasters could offer these shops a new revenue stream as they sell bagged beans roasted in-house. The coffee shops could also use their house-roasted beans in their drinks, so they don’t have to purchase coffee from other roasters.

The only reason this is actually feasible is because Bellwether’s roasters don’t require any special setup or expertise. The device, which is about the size of a standard fridge, is automated, so baristas or café managers don’t have to have any roasting experience to figure out how to use it. It runs on electricity and is ventless, so coffee shops don’t have to build out expensive ventilation systems to start roasting — something which would be especially tricky given the limitations around the pandemic.

The software that controls Bellwether’s roasters also features a marketplace where users can browse and purchase green coffee beans in 22-pound boxes. That way, shops don’t have to worry about setting up relationships with suppliers or buy massive amounts of beans if they’re just trying to set up a temporary roasting solution.

With all of that said, the roaster is still pricey. The Bellwether website notes that shops can lease the roaster for $1,150 a month for 60 months, but that’s still cost-prohibitive for small, local coffee shops — coronavirus or no.

Since coffee shops already have to-go infrastructure set up — takeaway cups and containers, etc. — they might actually have a better chance of surviving the pandemic than, say, full-service restaurants. They can also operate pretty easily with a bare-bones staff, since a single barista could take orders, make coffee, bag up pastries, etc.

That said, coffee shops, like all foodservice joints, still have a significant amount of overhead. Just like restaurants, we’ll continue to see cafés get creative to figure out new ways to cut costs and spark new revenue streams. Roasting their own beans could help coffee shops do both of those things. The question will then become whether or not cafés want to keep their Bellwether roasters after they’re able to reopen their doors post-pandemic.

These Coffee Bean Delivery Sites Will Help You Get Your Java Fix During Quarantine

Maybe you used to get your coffee at work. Or at a local café on your way into the office. Now that we’re supposed to be working (and staying) at home, how do you get your daily java fix?

Of course, there are plenty of coffee brewing devices out there, ranging from the simple to the high-tech and complex. No doubt you already have at least one kicking around your home.

But one crucial aspect for your home coffee routine that you will need to keep purchasing, quarantine or no, is the beans themselves. Sure, you could pick some up from your local grocery store, provided you’re comfortable doing that and don’t mind picking from whatever’s left on the shelves. Or order your beans via Instacart.

However, for those who seek a more adventurous rotation of beans — or can’t find artisanal beans at their local stores — there are plenty of delivery services happy to help you out. Here’s a list of coffee bean delivery sites that will mail curated packages of beans right to your door.

Photo: Crema
  • Mistobox can mail you over 500 coffee bean blends sourced from more than 50 roasters. Fill out a short survey and the service will suggest specific beans for you, or you can choose your own. Subscriptions to Mistobox start at $10.95 a month and can be delivered every one, two, three, or four weeks.
  • Trade Coffee asks you to complete a short quiz then recommends beans specialized to your tastes. You can either purchase the coffee through Trade or sign up for a subscription service to deliver beans ever one, two, or three weeks. Bonus: Right now Trade will donate $2 from every first purchase to support roaster employees. You can also leave tips for employees directly through their GoFundMe page.
  • Atlas Coffee Club is for java drinkers that want to take a (virtual) tour around the world — something that might be extra appealing now that we’re all stuck at home. Members of their coffee of the month club receive monthly shipments of beans, each sourced from a particular country. You can also buy beans directly on their site.
  • Passion House Coffee is a good option for coffee snobs (hi, it’s me!), especially if they’re having a hard time finding artisanal beans as coffee shops shut their doors. The company roasts each bag of beans themselves so they have absolute control over flavor and freshness. Bonus: They also deliver cans of cold brew!
  • Crema offers a short survey to guide you to a list of coffee beans, sourced from over 40 roasters, tailored to your taste and brew method. Coffees can be shipped every couple of days, weeks, or monthly. You can also buy 5-pound bags of beans if you’re going through a lot right now. Bonus: In response to COVID-19, Crema is currently knocking $1 off of every bag of coffee.
  • Counter Culture Coffee offers bags of beans available for individual purchase or subscription. It’s a single roaster, so you can get direct information about the source and processing of each roast and blend. You can also buy 5-pound bags if you want to stock up.
  • Just Coffee is a good option if you’re trying to prioritize ethical sourcing right now. The company is super transparent about their farmers and the environmental impact of each bag of coffee. You can buy single bags or sign up for a subscription.
  • If you have a favorite local roaster, you can also head directly to their website to see if they ship (they probably do). Support local!

It’s not much, but during this time when everything seems uncertain and like kind of a bummer, it’s nice to know you can count on getting something you love and rely on — like coffee beans — delivered right to you. Sometimes it’s the small things, you know?

COFFEEJACK, the Handheld Espresso Maker, Crowdfunds $1.1M on Kickstarter

Last week on The Spoon Editorial podcast, Head Editor Chris Albrecht discussed his recent look back at food- and drink-related crowdfunding successes and failures of 2019. He noted that some of the biggest success stories from the year were around gadgets geared towards two beverages: beer and coffee.

When it comes to the COFFEEJACK, that analysis seems accurate. The product, from Bristol, UK-based company HRIBARCAIN, launched a $13,081 Kickstarter for its single-serve portable espresso maker back in October. As of this writing, the campaign has raised over $1,093,000.

The COFFEEJACK is a handheld device that brews a single serving of espresso directly into your cup. Put finely-ground coffee beans in the base, fill it with hot water, and press the pump a few times to get a DIY espresso.

COFFEEJACK’s co-founders Ashley Hribar-Green and Matthew Cain (Get it? HRIBARCAIN!) met when they were engineers working on the cordless vacuum at tech company Dyson. They began developing an idea for an affordable portable espresso machine three years ago. Almost 400 prototypes later, they filed a patent on the current COFFEEJACK device, which creates high-pressure coffee extraction without the use of pods, filters or electricity.

As a one-time barista, I know that making espresso is far more difficult than, say, brewing up some joe in a french press. The key is to apply the exact right amount of pressure on the beans to extract all of the flavors. Cain told me that most espresso makers rely on air to create said pressure, which is why they’re often large and heavy. COFFEEJACK, however, relies on hydraulics to exert the necessary pressure, which requires far less space. That’s how the engineers came to develop a portable espresso maker small enough to hold in your hand, but forceful enough to extract an optimal shot.

Traditional espresso makers are not just unwieldy — they’re also expensive. An average home espresso maker — a real espresso maker, not the stovetop kind which essentially makes concentrated brewed coffee — will set you back around $500. By contrast, prospective backers can pre-order a COFFEEJACK for £70 ( around $91 USD). That’s on par with other handheld espresso makers on the market, though COFFEJACK’s founders told me their machine’s hydraulic extraction made it stand out from the rest.

Hribar-Green and Cain haven’t decided how much the device will cost once it hits the market. They expect to sell the COFFEEJACK both through traditional brick and mortar retail partners and online through their website. 

If you missed out on the COFFEEJACK Kickstarter campaign but really want a handheld espresso maker, don’t panic. HRIBARCAIN plans to keep the crowdfunding a-rollin’ with a six-month IndieGoGo campaign, launching soon.

The COFFEEJACK is set to ship in May of 2020. As always with crowdfunded hardware, there’s no way to guarantee that you’ll actually get your hands on the thing you forked over money for. However, HRIBARCAIN already has two successful Kickstarter campaigns under their belt, for a magnetically controlled pen and pencil, both of which are still shipping today. So the pair clearly has at least some experience with the hardware crowdfunding world. 

One thing I personally like about the COFFEEJACK is how it cuts down on coffee waste. Keurig and Nespresso machines rely on tons of disposable pods to make espresso. While some of those pods can technically be recycled, they usually end up in landfills. COFFEEJACK isn’t reliant on pods or even filters, so it’s relatively waste-free.

HRIBARCAIN is based in the U.K., but they plan to ship COFFEEJACK globally. Down the road, Cain told me they would probably focus on the U.S., since Americans have, in his words, a “real appreciation for gadgets and great coffee.”

At least when it comes to crowdfunding projects, he’s got a point.

SKS Q&A: Atomo’s Founder on Why He’s Creating Coffee Without the Beans

At the Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS}, we’re all about exploring the future of food. But what about the future of drink — specifically the future of our favorite morning beverage, coffee?

That’s exactly what Jarret Stopforth, founder and CTO of Atomo, is trying to brew up (sorry, we had to). Atomo is reverse engineering coffee to make a beverage that tastes just like your favorite cup of joe — but is made without a single coffee bean. And they just raised a tidy $2.6 million to jumpstart their mission.

Stopforth will be at speaking about his vision for the future of coffee at SKS this October. To give you a little advanced taste, we asked the him a few questions about the catalyst to create Atomo and his mission to forge a more sustainable way for people to get their morning caffeine fix. Check out the answers below, and don’t forget to grab your ticket to SKS!

At Atomo, you’re making coffee without any coffee beans. Tell us a little more about how that works.
We looked at green beans, roasted beans and extracted (brewed) coffee samples and through advanced analytical procedures studied the volatile and non-volatile compounds present. By evaluating the individual compounds in coffee we were able to map the most significant ones contributing to the characteristic aroma and flavor of coffee. Once we identified the most significant compounds we evaluated upcycled and natural plant-based material with high sustainability indices as a source for extracting and generating the blend that enables us to create a coffee “dashboard” – with this we can make coffee without the bean and tweak our dashboard to create different flavor and aroma profiles.

What’s your go-to-market strategy?
From our Kickstarter campaign in February, we pre-sold 64,000 cups of coffee to nearly 700 people around the world. We plan to fulfill those backer’s orders by the end of this year/beginning of next with a public product launch in 2020.

Where did you get the idea to make coffee without beans? What was your motivation?
I am an avid coffee drinker and always look for a consistently enjoyable experience that I can rely on. Having my doctorate in food science I am also always looking at food and beverage with an eye on how things are made and how to disrupt or improve them. After having a lot of lousy coffee I said to myself one day that there must be a better way to enjoy one of my favorite beverages and to create it from the ground up where we can control for consistency and quality. I was working on this when Andy approached me to see what I was working on in the background and wished I could be doing full time. And after sitting together to talk through the idea, Andy was motivated to join the quest based on the threats we were seeing with the sustainability and future of coffee – we wanted to create a consistently great cup of coffee that was also good for the environment.

What’s the advantage of making bean-less coffee? Economically, environmentally, etc.
The benefit of beanless coffee is that it is more sustainable by not requiring deforestation as well as using upcycled plant-based materials. Likewise, by using the upcycled ingredients we can create molecular coffee for a fraction of the price it takes to farm beans. We are delivering premium quality coffee that’s accessible to all.

How do you take your coffee?
Cortado.

Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

PicoBrew Goes Coffee-First With New ‘Brew Computer’, The Pico MultiBrew

PicoBrew, the Seattle based startup that’s made a name for itself with countertop beer brewing appliances, has set its sites on a different type of beverage with its newest product, the Pico MultiBrew: coffee.

In short, PicoBrew has taken the technology it has developed over the past decade for high-precision beer brewing and applied it to making the perfect cup of joe. The MultiBrew will use what the company calls “brew programs” to govern the time, temperature and fluid flow of each coffee brew.

If that sounds like a very high tech approach to coffee brewing, that’s because it is. This shouldn’t be all that surprising since PicoBrew’s founding trio includes a couple of former Microsoft execs and a food scientist.

“We’re ex-software guys and computer guys, as well as coffee and beer guys,” CEO Bill Mitchell told me last week when we visited the PicoBrew offices near the University of Washington to take a peek at the MultiBrew prototype. “So it made sense for us to start with the hardest drink [with] beer and go from there.”

While the MultiBrew is the first ‘coffee-first’ machine from PicoBrew, it isn’t the first that makes coffee. In fact, Mitchell’s brother Jim (a PicoBrew cofounder and a food scientist by training) started making coffee with their very first appliance, the Zymatic, and both the PicoBrew Z (pro unit) and Pico C (consumer) can make cold brew.

And then there’s the Pico U, the multi-beverage brewing appliance the company unveiled in the spring of 2018 and ultimately pulled the plug on even after hitting their Kickstarter funding target.  According to Mitchell, what they heard from their community was that while they liked the Pico U’s ability to make multiple types of drinks like coffee, beer and kombucha, ultimately the U wasn’t coffee-forward enough.

“Coffee, coffee, coffee is what we were told,” said Mitchell.

And so unlike the PicoBrew U — which looked like a scaled down version of the Pico C — the MultiBrew looks and acts like a coffee maker, allowing the user to brew different sizes ranging from single serve to a full carafe of coffee. The MultiBrew also lets users brew using their own coffee grounds or from pods that are made of the same compostable pulp paper material as with the Pico’s beer-ingredient packaging, the PicoPaks.

While I’ve given up on Keurig because coffee from pods generally tastes bad (not to mention all the plastic waste), PicoBrew has a spin on coffee pods that could make me reconsider. Not only are they are designing their own (compostable) pods that will not only apply precision parameters specifically designated by the coffee’s roaster, but are also designing the pods to mimic pourover brew methods rather than the brute force heated water injection method used by a typical pod-brew system.

Mitchell showed me a prototype of a MultiBrew brewpod with an laser-cut pattern through which the water will be poured on the coffee (photo below).

Similar to the way the company worked closely with craft brewers to create ingredients for PicoPaks, they are now in discussions with a variety of craft coffee makers about the possibility of cobranded coffee pods for the MultiBrew.  Unlike Keurig, which tightly controls the supply of coffee that goes into their coffee pods, PicoBrew is telling smaller roasters they can both provide roasted beans for their high tech system as well as optimized brewing parameters for the specific roast.

With all this emphasis on coffee, it should be noted that the MultBrew is true to its name and does brew drinks other than coffee ranging from kombucha to golden milk to, yes, beer. The MultiBrew will allow users to brew beer using the same kegs as the Pico C by putting the keg directly under the dispense mechanism (rather than using plastic tubing of the Pico C).

While the multi-drink capability of the MultiBrew does makes it stand apart from other high-tech coffee machines on the market, will it be enough? There’s certainly lots of competition in the high-tech coffee space, as companies like SharkNinja have sold millions of the Ninja Coffee Bar while newer entrants like the Terra Kaffe are in market with products that not only can grind coffee, but can make espresso and milk-based coffee drinks using highly-tailored brewing parameters.

We will see soon enough. The MultiBrew, which will be priced “in the same range” as the machines like the Ninja Coffee Bar (below $200), will be available for preorder in the fall and will ship in 2020.