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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ember

When Is Peak Coffee Drinking Time? 10:51 AM, According To Ember CEO

If you’ve ever wondered what time of day most people drink coffee — and who hasn’t, after all? — we now have a very specific answer: According to Ember CEO Clay Alexander, peak coffee-drinking time across the country is 10:51 AM.

“Nobody knew that before,” said Alexander. “That data didn’t exist.”

So how did Alexander and Ember figure out when most people down their morning cup of joe? By looking at the data from all the Ember mugs, which are connected via phone app, in the wild. The mugs, which come in both travel and ceramic varieties, launched in fall of 2016 (travel mug) and last fall (ceramic mug). They now number roughly two hundred thousand.

I sat down with Alexander, a long time inventor who created the world’s first twist-lock LED lightbulb that he eventually sold to GE before he started working on Ember’s tech in 2010, at last week’s Housewares show. I asked him about the idea of adding precision heating to drinkware, what other markets and applications he sees for the technology, and where sees Ember fitting in as part of the broader smart home. You can watch my full interview with Alexander below.

The Perfect Drinking Temperature

According to Alexander, everyone has an optimal temperature.

“For me, I like my coffee at 135 °F and my tea at 138 °F,” said Alexander.

It’s this thinking about optimal drinking temperature that led the longtime inventor to create Ember’s technology in the first place.

“I strongly believe that temperature affects taste,” said Alexander. “Let’s say you spend $10 on an amazing cup of coffee. It’s too hot in the beginning, you hit that perfect temperature and it’s right on, and then it depletes from there. So I thought, ‘what if I could hold that exact temperature that you like.'”

So that’s what he did.  He started applying for patents and was awarded his first for precision controlled drinkware in 2013 and eventually launched his first product in fall of 2016.

Precision Plates 

In 2009, Alexander was having breakfast with his wife when his eggs got cold.

“I remember looking down at my plate and thought, ‘It’s the 21st century; at a bare minimum my plate should be able to keep my meal at a nice temperature.'”

Before long, Alexander started strapping batteries to his plate and tinkering with a precision heated plate.  Soon, he was eating salmon that he was able to keep at a consistent temperature all the way through the meal.

Now his company has a working prototype and plans to release their smart plates in high-end restaurants.

“It just looks like a dinner plate, but it’s magically keeping your hot food hot and your cold food cold,” said Alexander. The plate would have heating zones, that would allow cold potato salad to stay cold and heat food like steak.  According to Alexander, if you move your steak, the heat will track under the plate.

In a way, this makes lots of sense. Precision heating has entered the kitchen in a big way through techniques like sous vide, and more advanced ovens; extending this precision to the front of house experience seems like a natural, next-step for precision temperature control.

Medical Applications

Alexander also envisions his technology in medical care applications.

“I thought, ‘what if we could use our technology to save lives?'”

According to Alexander, the spoilage rate for vaccines is over 40% in developing countries. Because of this, the company has been looking at using Ember’s temperature control technology to help get vaccines to doctors and reduce spoilage.  The company has already built a prototype that uses the company’s semiconductor powered refrigeration technology to keep up to forty vials refrigerated at a constant temperature. The “box” would be battery powered, controllable via a smartphone, and portable.

“You could strap that thing on the back of a moped and send into a village in Haiti and save lives,” said Alexander.

Baby Bottles, Too

The company also sees its tech working in baby bottles. Alexander realized this would be a good application when taking care of his own daughter and he had to manually put baby bottles in hot water to warm them up.

“With an Ember bottle, you pull it out of the fridge, and there’s a little base you couple to the bottle. When you couple it, it heats the milk and formula to 98.5 degrees, which is body temperature.”

He also sees data from applications like the baby bottle that could be useful.

When Alexander’s daughter was young, he’d go to the doctor, and the doctor would ask for feeding reports. “What if the bottle could track all the feeding for you, the ounces, the times of day, all that good stuff. I’m all about putting useful features into our apps.”

Smart Home Integration

Last but not least, Alexander also thinks his products could benefit from integration with the smart home.

“What if with the baby bottle, the baby starts crying, and you say: “‘Alexa, warm up my baby bottle’?”

If you want to hear my full conversation with Clay Alexander, you can watch the video below:

The Future of Portable Food Containers

The $80 Ember Connected Coffee Mug is Worth Every Penny

Let’s not bury the lead: $80 is a lot of money to spend on a coffee mug. And I can almost see your eyes roll as I justify the hefty price by saying, “But it’s a connected coffee mug!” Despite all that, I decided to get my wife the Ember Ceramic Mug for Christmas, and honestly, it’s worth every penny.

The Ember is a high-tech cup that allows you to keep your hot beverages at a precise, consistent temperature. Since your beverages don’t cool down, there’s no more slogging through the last bits or microwaving cold coffee. Using the accompanying app on your phone, you tell Ember what temperature you want your coffee (or whatever drink), and the mug does the rest.

Yes, this sounds indulgent, but as my wife will attest, it’s changed the way she drinks coffee.

Out of the box, the Ember comes with the cup and the charging saucer. Both feel solid and well built. The mug is a good size and has the right heft. There’s an LED light at the base of the mug that gives you a charging status and serves as a temperature indicator.

There’s also an accompanying app to control the temperature of your mug. Installation of the app as well as it pairing with the mug was a snap, and worked without hassle. The slider screen to pick your temperature is intuitive and easy to set.

The biggest surprise of the day came from how much my wife liked her Ember. She was used to enjoying the first sips of the morning, and then diminishing returns as she slowly made her way through the first cup, eventually microwaving half a cup, altering the taste.

With the Ember, the last sip was as perfect as the first, as evidenced by the fact that she unwittingly downed about four cups of coffee on Christmas morning. Just as my colleague Ashley loved the (even more expensive) Ember Travel Mug, the Ember coffee mug was something my wife never knew she needed.

I recognize that half a cup of cold(er) coffee in the morning is a very high-class problem. And there is also something to the fact that if coffee is something you enjoy every morning, you should enjoy every last drop of it.

Want: Ember’s Connected Coffee Mug (for Real!)

It’s cliche at this point to make fun of the overabundance of “connected” items (like a fork). But from the looks of this Co.Design piece, the new Ember connected coffee mug might actually be… useful?

Designed by Ammunition, the Ember ceramic mug keeps your beverage heated to a precise temperature (up to 145 degrees) for up to eight hours. No more reheating cold coffee in the microwave! For safety reasons, the heating stays active if it senses movement and shuts down after two hours of sitting idle.

The mug uses Bluetooth to talk to your phone, where you can control the temperature via an app. The Ember Ceramic Mug follows Ammunition’s previous release, the Ember Travel Mug, which lets you keep your beverages at a precise temperature with both heat and cooling capabilities (we liked that one too!).

All this temperature-controlled convenience doesn’t come cheap. The Ember Travel Mug will set you back $149, and the new Ceramic Mug is *only* $79. But if you consider that coffee drinkers have a daily habit, that’s just about twenty-one cents a day (after a year). That easily beats multiple trips to Starbucks.

While there may be an overabundance of connected devices, the Ember Mug seems like something people will actually connect with.

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.