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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

connected beverage

Ember Is The $150 Coffee Mug You Never Knew You Needed

Every year, a host of new “smart” products launch into the connected ecosphere. We’ve seen connected vibrating pants (yes really) and Wi-Fi diapers and smart water bottles – where does it end?

Throwing connectivity into all of our things has led to some pretty dumb “smart” stuff. But then there’s Ember. I have to admit, you probably have to like coffee a whole lot to shell out $150 for this smart travel mug, but it’s basic function? To keep your coffee the right temperature, the whole time you’re drinking it.

The mug, which looks a little like an Amazon Echo (…don’t make that mistake and pour coffee on Alexa) is able to heat up or cool down the liquid inside. The temp can be controlled on the mug itself or via an app (smart!) and is wirelessly chargeable.

Ember Company Video

The folks over at New Atlas have a full review of the Ember mug and they have good things to say, including,

if you fall into Ember’s picky target audience – and want coffee flavor to stay optimized all the way to the end – you’re getting a product that does its job well and without compromise.

Coffee does not taste the same from the beginning of the mug until the end – especially if you have young kids who don’t let you finish a cup in the morning before demanding things from you. So yeah, it’s a little spendy. But if Ember is going to keep my coffee tasting the same from start to finish? I am here for it.

I am not the only one, apparently, because Starbucks reportedly keeps selling out (the company’s only retail location as of now) and the mugs are back ordered until April on the site. Though it’s the company’s flagship product, the website indicates the company plans “to revolutionize the way the world eats and drinks,” indicating more food tech products to come.

Check out the New Atlas full review of the Ember connected coffee mug.

Intel’s Efforts To Connect Collectors To Their Wine

Close to a decade ago, households with wine collections and cellars to house them had only a few choices: spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wine management system and hire someone to catalog every bottle in your collection or lose track of most bottles in your collection. And for wine enthusiasts, losing track of what you own is like throwing money out of the window because each wine has its own “drinking window” and once it’s passed, the wine loses value and drinkable potential.

Today, access to information about wine – whether it’s the wine you’re drinking at a restaurant or wine you personally own – has never been easier to find. But the issue of collection storage and management remains – this is where Sommely comes in. Created by Uncorked Studios, a design & engineering firm and backed by Intel, Sommely is smart inventory management system that comes with “smartcaps” to fit over each bottle of wine and a companion app and database. As you acquire new bottles of wine, you catalog them in your system and pair them via Bluetooth with a smartcap, then placing the cap on your bottle. You can record information like its, year, vineyard, where you purchased it, anything memorable behind the bottle, when to drink it and with what types of food you might considering pairing with it.

The smartcap acts as a sort of guide or flag, especially if you have a large wine collection stored cap-side out in wine racks. The app lets you find wines you own based on whatever criteria you’d like and then activates the smartcap to light up once you’ve selected it, for easy access. You can also tap the smartcap and your app will display that wine’s info, negating the need to pull the bottle completely out.

While not all of us have wine cellars at home or large wine collections to manage, the idea that Intel is putting resources into smart beverage management systems is intriguing. For the full story, visit Beverage Daily.