Tag: drinks

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Food and Beverage

The Hypercool lets your brews chill in only a minute

The heat of the summer season means beaches, barbeques and lots of brews, something the crowdfunding world has always been cognizant of with projects like the Coolest Cooler and the Kreweser. But while these offerings meant easier ways to transport food and beverages along with extra features like USB chargers and wheels, none address the age old problem of warm drinks, aka the bane of a get-together.

patent-claimedThe HYPERCOOL portable cooler address this problem using the magic of physics. It can be filled up with water, frozen overnight, and then be used to rapidly cool cans or tall boys of one’s favorite beverage. How? Using an external motor that spins the can over that bed of ice. The friction cools the beverage in just 60 seconds; wait 30 more seconds and it’ll be ice cold.

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Connected Objects Food and Beverage

Eazyshot dispenser keeps the good times simply flowing

Large and sophisticated robot bartenders have been featured on commercials for cruise ships, but simpler and less expensive models are making a pitch to be the next countertop appliance. Many of them seek to make a wide variety of drinks, even employing Keurig-like pods for cocktails.

Eazyshot, though, keeps it simple with a limited range of shots in its egg-like form. Liquors are filled up in its refillable tube-like reservoirs to make variations of “Mexicans” and “Bombers” from the tap of a companion app. The device can even function as a Bluetooth speaker to kep the party tunes accompanying the party. The Eazyshot is expected to retail for about  $495 but early bird rewards have started at about $345. The campaign is seeking $65,000 CAD (about $49,137) by September 24th.

The best part of Eazyshot is its portability, including the ability to run on battery power. Its smaller size means it can’t make the variety of drinks of other bartender bots, but — let’s face it — these are something of a novelty right now anyway.

Categories
Food and Beverage

Bartesian cocktail mixer is a Keurig that swears it doesn’t have a drinking problem

Mixing cocktails can be fun but it can also be time-consuming and expensive if you need to hire a bartender. And at a party, the host can get bogged down making drinks.

Bartesian hopes to solve the cocktail crisis. The idea piggybacks off of the popular single-serve coffee maker by Keurig. If that device is designed to wake one up, this one is here to help one party down. Essentially, the drinker provides the alcohol and the Bartesian uses recyclable pods to mix the drink with aplomb. Right now, Bartesian offers three well-known drinks and three signature drinks that include a margarita, cosmopolitan, and sex on the beach. Each Bartesian costs $299, and the campaign hopes to raise $100,000 by July 26th. The robot bartenders would be delivered by April 2016.

Bartesian’s main challenges will be whether its pod-enclosed drinks live up to freshly made ones as well as trying to develop a wide range of pods for the endless varieties of cocktails. As we learned in the coffee pod wars, only one or two can really survive. Bartesian is not only a far cry from those industrial bartenders promoted on luxury cruises, but comes on the heels of another crowdfunded cocktail maker in Somabar, which is $150 more.

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Food and Beverage Technology

Somabar intelligent bartender packs mixology into a box

A cocktail is one of those things that is easy to enjoy, but a challenge to create well. Precisely mixing the right ingredients is of utmost importance, but without practice the experience can quickly become a mess or result in less than stellar flavor. For many people, this ultimately relegates the cocktail to a luxury that can only be enjoyed at a bar, and never at home.

Somabar is a Wi-Fi enabled, intelligent bartender capable of creating perfectly mixed cocktails in under five seconds, finally bringing the mixologist home. Dishwasher-safe Soma Pods can be easily connected to it and filled with a user’s favorite ingredients, even boasting the ability to infuse bitters. Somabar thoroughly measures and mixes all ingredients, and the creations that result can be altered to a user’s preference using the companion iOS and Android app. In addition, users can create their favorite cocktails and share them to the Somabar community. The $399 Somabar is slated for a July 2015 delivery provided the campaign reaches its $50,000 goal.

The world of cocktails and mixed drinks can be overwhelming. Products like the Somabar are trying to make delicious beverages much more accessible by offering platforms that pretty much do it for you. Others like the B4RM4N and Connected Ozz also help users make cocktails but do so while teaching how to create them as well. Although Somabar won’t be teaching users anything, it makes up for it with its ease of use and dead simple operation.

Categories
Food and Beverage

Chill Lizard watches over cans chilling in the freezer, tells you when they’re ready

If it is indeed true that global warming is, in part, caused by consuming warm beer, then Chill Lizard seems to have a most noble cause. The Chill Lizard band gets attached to one’s beverage of choice, set for one’s desired temperature, and the coaster buzzes when the beverage has hit the ideal cool spot, averting explosive freezer messes. The wireless sensor in the band is how the coaster receives the alert, similar to a system used in various restaurants for when a table is ready for waiting customers. The product automatically defaults to a temperature of 36 degrees and can be adjusted up or down. It will go as low as 29 degrees for frozen treats.

Chill Lizard is apparently designed with an American marketplace in mind since there doesn’t seem to be a Celsius indicator available. Provided the wireless connection will work from inside the freezer, this product is great for those who can’t plan ahead enough to put beverages in the fridge. This campaign seeks to raise $30,000 by December 30, 2014. For $30, backers get one product and an expected delivery of February 2015.

Categories
Camping Food and Beverage

Rover remote control cooler delivers cold ones on your command

We’re all lazy. Most of us are only motivated to get up by the urge to use the bathroom or hunger. Rover caters to this type of attitude. This remote-controlled cooler has wheels that can travel on most types of terrain, including sand. Shaped like a little jeep, this cooler can hold up to 60 cans and has LED lights for use in the dark. It also has several cup holders making it useful as a table as well. Get the Rover with MLB or NFL sports decal, your favorite college’s logo or with no logo at all. A special offer letting you purchase Rover with your own logo is in the works.

Due to the unfortunate above-mentioned lazy nature of the human race, Rover makes a great addition to any camping party, picnic or beach outing. The remote is a little clunky, but that only makes it difficult to lose. If the remote does happen to get lost, Rover users will have to actually get up, tragically. In terms of convenience, Rover ups the ante from the Kreweser Cooler that lets you ride a cooler around. Rover is better for getting drinks around to lots of people, though it won’t tote you around too. One will cost backers $249 with estimated delivery in December 2014. Rover is looking to raise $45,000 on Kickstarter.

Categories
Connected Objects Food and Beverage

B4RM4N connected cocktail market uses its smarts to make others stupid

Although a bartender’s tricks and talents can seem pretty easy to us inebriated folk, the truth is that it takes quite a long time to perfect the skills necessary to mix drinks that won’t make us grimace while we sip them. Worse yet, when most of us try our hand at making a drink or two for family or friends, the end result is a drink that doesn’t look great and the realization that we really don’t know what we’re doing at all.

To become presentable to the public again, you could buy a bunch of books or plunk down the cash for a mixology course, or you could grab a B4RM4N and let it do all the work. The device is a modern mixologist in a three-piece shaker, comprised of a stainless steel that encloses a Bluetooth LE antenna, an accelerometer, and LED lights all in a one, high-tech package. Pair it with your smartphone, select a recipe with the B4rm4m companion app, the number of servings, and it will lead you step by step in the process of creating the perfect pour. It even tells you how long to pour ingredients and shake them all together. With over 110 recipes and counting, there will never be a lack of ideas. You can even have the app suggest recipes to you based on what’s currently in your fridge, and if that egg vodka mint actually ends up tasting good, you can share it with the B4rm4m community so that anyone can make it. The B4rm4m is currently going for an early bird price of $99, jumping up to $199 upon release. Backers can expect theirs in July 2015 if the campaign achieves it funding goal of $100,000.

The similarly titled Barman is a campaign in the past that is very similar to the B4RM4N. Both have similar features, but the B4RM4N goes about things in a more compact way, while the Barman uses an external scale to help you create your drink. All in all, the B4RM4N is a svelte device that will look good in many scenarios and its social features make it not only useful but very fun, too.

Categories
Camping

Rapid Hut offers shelter nearly anywhere

Talk about having it made in the shade with cool lemonade! Here is a product that not only allows the user to make their own shade, but, if the weather turns wet, it also keeps the user relatively dry. Rapid Hut is a temporary shelter that is easily erected, doesn’t require any tools for set up, folds up for easy transport, and can be anchored to the ground when it’s windy outside. It also has a couple of windows on either side to help with air-flow on those hot sunny days, and the windows double as drink holders. This looks like a great item to have for picnicking, camping, and watching many outdoor events. One downside is that it only fits two averaged-sized adults, so friends and family will have to get their own. For $275, backers get one product with some free stuff. Expected delivery is November 2014.

Categories
Camping Food and Beverage

Cooler Bobs light up your cooler for finding your drink in the dark

With tailgate and fall camping seasons in full swing, here is a nifty idea for enjoying those cold beverages without having to guess what’s being fished out of the cooler.

Cooler Bobs add a bit of color to the outdoor night life. The luminescent light bearers hide under the ice in coolers and emanate an optional blue, red or green hue through the cubes, with additional colors expected to be available in the near future. That way, bare hands spend as little time as necessary finding a drink, and parched tongues don’t end up disappointed by an unpalatable flavor.

It would be interesting to know what is being used to cause the round orbs to light up party time coolers, though one would hope that the creators have considered that if any heat is being given off, the ice melts faster. For $10, backers get one product with an expected delivery of December 2014.

Categories
Camping Food and Beverage

KruzieCooler makes food faster, cruises on anything

KruzieCoolerCoolers are the bulkiest part of any picnic and most only serve to keep food cool. The KruzieCooler has different uses to make eating outdoors even easier. This product boasts different compartments, a bottle opener, bungee cords for convenient toting and large rubber wheels to take the terrain better. While the KruzieCooler does improve upon the traditional cooler design, it unfortunately lacks the pizzazz of the Coolest which has a USB port, lights, and blender attachment on top of the features it shares with Kruzie. KruzieCooler will cost backers $159 and hopes to raise $120,000 on Kickstarter.