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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

drink

CES 2020: Watergen Wants to Replace the Water Cooler by Making H20 from Air

Maybe it’s just that I’m parched from the dry Las Vegas air, but it seems like water tech has been big at CES this year. There’s rOcean, the smart water machine which dispenses fizzy or flavored water on-demand. Zero Mass Water, which captures the humidity in the air and turns it into potable water with solar power, is also back.

This morning I had a chance to speak to another company trying to reinvent the way we get our H20. Watergen uses patented technology to create filtered water from air. The Israeli company’s water dispensers, called GENNYs, are about the size of a traditional water cooler and plug into electrical outlets. To make water, they suck air into the machine and cool it to a dew point to create water droplets, which is then filtered. A single GENNY can make up to 30 liters (8 gallons) of water per day and can be dispensed hot or chilled.

Watergen has been developing GENNY since 2009 and actually won a CES 2019 Best of Innovation award last year. However, it will finally start shipping the GENNY in the U.S., its first market, this June, for an MSRP of $2,499. Filters — which should be replaced every six months — will cost around $125. The GENNY will be available intially through Watergen’s website.

If you’re familiar with Zero Mass Water, you’ve probably noted that these two technologies sound pretty similar. But according to Watergen representative Nick Harris, GENNY is unique in that it can run on electricity and isn’t reliant on solar power (though the company is also developing a solar-powered device). That makes it a lot easier to set up in smaller settings, like homes or offices, and a lot easier to move. Zero Mass is also significantly more expensive; it costs over $5,000 to install a two-panel system, which creates enough water for four to six people (though they also have a new model which can be purchased for $2,500 each).

Watergen has a charitable mission as well. The company worked with the American Red Cross and FEMAA to donate some of its larger units to areas that lack consistent access to clean drinking water across the globe. Harris even told me they’d sent a unit to Flint, Michigan in the wake of the city’s enduring water crisis.

The Genny, however, is meant to be a more sustainable upgrade to home and office water coolers — no giant plastic water bottles required. And honestly, it’s about time that we start seeing some serious innovation in the H20 space. With rising populations and increased demands for meat, freshwater is becoming increasingly scarce. Places around the world — from developing countries to right here in the U.S. — struggle to have consistent access to clean drinking water. At the same time, our oceans are filling up with discarded plastic water bottles. Here’s hoping we see (and taste) more water tech at CES’s to come.

You can watch a video of me getting a tour of the GENNY device (and tasting its water!) from the CES show floor below.

A Tour of Watergen's GENNY at CES 2020

We Might Be Only 5 Years Away from Hangover-Free Booze

For anyone who’s experienced the vision-blurring head pain after a night of heavy drinking, we have an important announcement: A scientist in London has created a synthetic version of alcohol that contains no toxins and leaves you with absolutely no hangover.

That scientist is one David Nutt, the director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit at Imperial College London, who has created a liquid called Alcarelle which stimulates the same receptors in the brain as alcohol but without all the bad stuff that harms your organs and makes you feel icky the next morning (hat tip to The Guardian). Nutt and his team have been developing Alcarelle for several years, and think it could be on the market in as soon as five years from now.

Hopefully, that will give them some time to improve the taste of the elixir, which they currently mask with the help of fruit juice. The real hurdle, however, won’t be flavor. It’ll be getting the new technology to pass regulatory muster. Nutt told the Guardian that he expects Alcarelle will be regulated as a food additive or ingredient, so it’ll go through food regulations rather than clinical trials. That will speed things up, but they’ll still need to create their own drink product with a unique bottle for testing, which usually takes at least three years. Since Alcarelle isn’t just another flavor of beverage but a whole new beast, it’ll likely take more.

In the end, Nutt and his team want to sell Alcarelle to other drinks companies as their active ingredient. But as we said, regulatory red tape means that that likely won’t happen for a while.

However, Nutt is smart to be getting into the “better booze” market right now. Millennials and Gen Z are drinking less than their parents, at least in the U.S, while sales of nonalcoholic beverages — like seltzers or booze-free cocktails — are on the rise.

A big reason behind this shift is the burgeoning wellness culture. Consumers still want the benefits of alcohol — relaxation, social lubrication, etc. — but don’t want the negative health effects. That’s why there’s a growing interest in alternative intoxicants like cannabis beer. Alcarelle can, at least in theory, give people the reduced inhibitions they want at the end of a long workday without contradicting their wellness-focused lifestyle.

If and when that happens, you can bet this reporter will be first in line to try it.

Keurig’s Pod-Based Home Bar Mixes Up Cocktails, Beer, and Cider on Your Counter

Today Drinkworks, a joint venture of Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch, unveiled its first product: a countertop appliance which can prepare cocktails, ciders, and beers with the press of a button.

Available through an early access program in St. Louis, Missouri, the Drinkworks Home Bar is a pod-based system that can chill, mix and carbonate a variety of alcoholic beverages, from Margaritas to Mai Tai’s. Initially, there are twenty-four boozy pods to choose from, developed by “mixologists and beverage scientists,” according to the press release. The appliance also pairs with your smartphone to give system info and “fun tips.”

Though cocktails seem to be their main focus, you can also buy flights of beer pods, which include (surprise!) brews from Anheuser-Busch, including Beck’s beer and Stella Cidre. I can’t imagine a beer made by adding water to a flavor-concentrated pod filled with malt and hops would taste better than one from a can (or brewed from a PicoBrew), but I suppose some people would pay for the draft experience.

The Drinkworks appliances cost $299, and the company recommends pricing the cocktail pods for $3.99 each and the brews for $2.25 each. While we don’t know how the drinks taste, $3.99 is a pretty good price for a cocktail. Yes, you can make a bunch of drinks with a $30 bottle of rum — but if you want to make a cocktail like, say, a Mai Tai, you’d have to also have fresh lime, Orgeat syrup, and orange liquor on hand. All those extra ingredients add up. If you’re a super-cocktail enthusiast, or just entertain a lot, it might be worth the investment. Then again, most “mixology” nerds I know (cough, me) are too snobby to drink a cocktail made from a pod when they could mix it up themselves and have greater control over the finished drink.

Insert a drinkworks pod to get an Old Fashioned cocktail.

A limited number of Drinkworks drinkmakers are available for pre-order in St. Louis. While they’ll initially be available solely on the Drinkworks website, on November 19th local St. Louis brick-and-mortar stores, including all Total Wine & More locations, will carry them. They’ll roll out to more locations in Missouri and Florida in 2019, and California in 2020.

When Keurig announced plans to buy the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group earlier this year, my colleague Chris guessed that some sort of pod-based cold beverage appliance wouldn’t be too far behind — though maybe not one that sprouted soda. It seems Keurig was thinking along the same lines and decided to try to enter the booming craft cocktail market instead. By launching a home appliance, they’re also cashing in on the growing number of consumers who are staying home to get their buzz on (we’re looking at you, lazy millennials).

Bartesian cocktail maker.

Drinkworks will have to compete with other at-home cocktail concocters, and the one that immediately springs to mind is Bartesian, which makes a countertop device that also mixes up pod-based cocktails, and also retails for $299. Bartesian offers six cocktail pods which it sells for $11.99 for a pack of six; almost half the price of the Drinkworks pods.

While they might not have the massive warchests, reach, or name recognition of Keurig or Anheuser-Busch, Bartesian did raise a seven-figure round in September of last year from Beam Suntory and has handed their manufacturing operations off to Hamilton Beach.

It also has a head start: Bartesian shipped the first round of its countertop drink-mixing robot to Kickstarter backers in June of this year (in fact, it shipped two). While the next round, which is available for preorder now, won’t ship until March of 2019, that’s basically in line with Keurig’s timeline to ship its preordered Drinkworks machines sometime in 2019, at least in Missouri and Florida.

The other thing to consider is that Dr. Pepper and Anheuser Busch bring with them a number of well-known brands. That recognition could come into play as a key differentiator for cocktail mixes: for example, people might gravitate towards a Moscow Mule made with Canada Dry ginger ale, or a G&T made with Shweppes tonic. As of now they don’t seem to be using any Dr. Pepper branded sodas in their cocktails, but it’s something to keep an eye out for.

While something like branded vs. unbranded soda in your mixed drink may be a relatively small detail, Bartesian and Keurig are competing in a zero-sum game. I can’t imagine why anyone in the world would want two pod-based countertop cocktail machines, so any little thing that could give them an edge is worth exploring. It seems like this next year (or two) will be a race to see which robotic bartender can carve out the most space in this niche market — and on our countertops.

FirstBuild Wants to Crowdsource A Next-Gen Drink Machine For Your Sink

FirstBuild, the idea incubator and microfactory from GE Appliances, and the company behind the popular Opal Nugget Ice Maker, is hoping to crowdsource a drink machine that could go directly in your sink. The company is teaming up with cloud-based CAD software company OnShape in what they are calling the Drink Sink Challenge, a contest where makers will submit their CAD-based concepts to a panel of judges and the top three winners will be awarded cash prizes.

The contest follows a recent hackathon by FirstBuild in which the winner was a group that proposed the idea of integrating a drink dispenser directly into a sink. From the contest starter kit:

Last month, GE Appliances’ FirstBuild hosted a hackathon where the winning team developed an idea for a drink dispenser combined with a kitchen sink. With the growth of pod-based beverage centers for both coffee and cold beverages, this totally makes sense: Users are looking for more streamlined experiences, especially when precious kitchen countertop space is at stake.

The thing is, this does totally make sense. The great unspoken problem in the digital kitchen revolution is a lack of counter space for all these cool new products, so I really like the idea of building more stuff into the actual counters. And besides, who wouldn’t want a next-gen drink machine built into the sink the dispenses hot, cold and fizzy drinks?

According to the contest rules, any design must dispense one or more of the following:

• Ice
• Hot water served at 170° F or higher
• Single-serving coffee using a Keurig or
similar beverage pod
• Chilled water served at 40° F or lower
• Chilled carbonated water
• Chilled flavored beverages

Making things even more interesting is the contest is cosponsored by Lowe’s and Delta Faucet.  While early FirstBuild products like the Opal Ice Maker and the Paragon have been innovative, they’ve yet to really become mass market products. I’m intrigued to see if whether working with a large retailer and faucet company in these types of competitions could ultimately lead to productization of some cool ideas that reach wider audiences.

Another interesting angle to the competition is it looks like it’s one of the first big competitions for the new Giddy platform from GE Appliances and the folks that created FirstBuild. The platform is primarily an app that enables designers and creators to enter contests that range from ones with cash prizes (like the Drink Sink) to smaller ones like the Napkin Sketch Challenge for reimagining the future of the spice rack. This paper napkin sketch concept is really cool since folks are actually turning in what looks like sketches on napkins. One of my favorites is this Spice Jar Table RFID Reader.

An RFID Spice rack. Source: Giddy creator AaronMcD.

Giddy is somewhat reminiscent of Quirky, the crowdsourced creation company that was closely tied to FirstBuild in its early days.  Quirky, which just debuted a new version of itself under its new owners, had raised $30 million from GE in 2013 to design and build connected home products. Quirky was founded by Ben Kaufman. In a sign that old collaborations never die but are just reinvented, Kaufman’s Buzzfeed Labs teamed up with FirstBuild this summer to help build the Tasty One Top.