This coffee set up costs over $20,000 and looks more like science equipment than a coffee machine. It’s in San Fran so I fully expect some makers to stop in and start to play a cheaper DIY version. More @ The NY Times…
The Japanese siphon bar, which makes brewed coffee, at the Blue Bottle Café in San Francisco. The only halogen-powered model in the United States, the siphon bar was imported from Japan at a cost of more than $20,000.
The $20,000 Coffee Maker, Step by Step – The New York Times – [via] Link.
Related:
Project: Coffee Roaster. To experience coffee nirvana, roast your own beans with this cheap, portable coffee roaster – Link.
DIY Coffee (PDF) – Link.
18 thoughts on “$20k coffee gadget”
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Looks fun. I made something that vaporised with a halogen lamp once…. Its quite effective, those lights get really hot, really fast!
Anyone know about the brewing principal used? I can bust together the electronics.
Yeek! After reading through the description, it looks like $20k for a glorified bunsen burner and Buchner funnel set up. And to boot, it doesn’t sound all that different from a percolator. Anyone feel up for campfire coffee?
This appears to me to simply be a computer-controlled hotplate, and a pair of glass flasks. Why on earth did this cost $20K? I’m afraid Mr. Freeman is just too trendy for his own good (or maybe it’s his customer base that has gadget lust, in which case he’s a genius).
Yeah, this thing is all style and no substance. I bet I get better coffee from my Melita OneCup that cost me $3 at Krogers.
It’s doing vacuum process coffee – it’s a neat trick to use the pressure from heating the water to make the water rise into the beans, and then the reduced pressure from cooling it back down to pull it through the filter (rather than just gravity).
Not sure it’s worth $20,000, but it’s definitely the showiest coffee maker I’ve ever seen, and it’s worth something to have the whole thing nicely put together…
I once bought this kind of coffeepot from Bodum for 10€ or something, it sucks, it’d really hard to clean. But the coffee tastes great.
http://www.pocketsoap.com/weblog/2006/01/santos.jpg
Halogen-Lightbulbs? No big deal, I use them to toast bread…
$20k would be better put into a nice roaster and a good espresso machine, imho. You can get decent stuff for 20k
I saw “The Bucket List” last week. the look on Nicholson’s face when Freeman’s character told him what his precious Kopi Luwak coffee had to go through (literally) to get to him was priceless.
I feel the same way about a 20 Kilobuck coffeemaker that you have to “earn” the privilege of buying, and the BS “wine critic” description of what it makes.
I bought one of those vacuum pots at a yard sale once for $2. Really fussy, and my Philistine taste buds couldn’t tell the difference between it and my Melita Cone.
Stir 4 times and don’t touch the glass… I’ll bet the importer laughs till he cries every day….
Others have said it, so I’ll say it too. Bodum Santos + Halogen lamps. (Plus timers?) Much less than $20,000…
OTOH, I picked a Santos up for $3 at Salvation Army about 8 years ago, and it still makes some of the best brewed coffee around. They’re great.
like ol’ Barnum said…