That Coffee Roasters: coffee technology

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jueves, 1 de febrero de 2018

Print Your Pictures in Latte Art with Edible Inks

Would you pay for it?

Are you a fan of latte art? Who isn’t nowadays? Having beautiful designs accompanying your cup of coffee is just so fun and pretty. They make some good Instagram material as well. It’s really cool to see all the baristas that put so much dedication into every cup of coffee they serve. But what if you could decide the exact design that you want on your drink? What if there were no limits to what you want your latte to reflect?

Now it’s possible. Thanks to 3D printing technology, you can have any pictures you want to be drawn on the surface of your cup of joe. If you’re a selfie addict, you can also have your own pictures on them as well, although that might be… a little narcissistic. But hey, you do you.

How does it work?

In only ten seconds you could have a highly detailed image on your latte. These machines combine 3D printing with an ink-jet system to create complex imagery. They use natural coffee extracts, called Ripple pods, to draw the pictures with different shades of brownish colors.

Through the Ripple app, you can choose from a gallery the design you wish to have on your cup. You can also select a picture from your own camera roll and pick anything, from inspirational messages to images of your loved ones or friends. After you’ve selected the image, it can be edited, scaled, filtered and even have text added to customize your latte art as much as you want to!

Steam CC, the company behind the printer, sells the product for $999, available to commercial establishments that sell coffee. It includes a Wi-Fi enabled device and hundreds of images to choose from, with new ones constantly being uploaded to the cloud. Artists can also submit their work for consideration! Typically, the system automatically adjusts all designs to a range of cups up to 7’ high and 4.5’ wide.

If you have the mobile Ripple app, you can find cafes within your zone that serve drinks with a Coffee Ripple printer and head there to pick your own creation.

If you have a restaurant or a coffee shop, these printers could be a really cool way to offer a unique experience to your customers and increase brand loyalty. Cafes are perfect places to hang out with friends, and people are always looking for things they can share and talk about with their loved ones. Giving your customers the option to customize their own products and even give them a sentimental value is a great example of an experience worth sharing with others!

So would you like to print your own pictures in your latte art? Even if you end up drinking it up, it can be really fun and cool way to surprise your friends and family. Tell us in the comments what you think and stay updated with our content by following us on That Coffee Roasters’ social media!

All you have to do is choose a picture.

That Coffee Roasters

Phone Number: (305) 821-8811

2697 W. 76 Street, Hialeah, Florida 33016

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viernes, 26 de enero de 2018

Coffee Is Served by a Robot Barista at This Melbourne Coffee Shop

How much can a robot barista do?

Is your favorite barista an actual human being? Ugh, you’re so outdated. Non-human coffee shop workers are what’s in now, didn’t you get the fax? So pick your new one at your nearest café for only $9999,99 and name it something fun like... Francis. Seriously, jokes and saltiness aside, this is becoming a thing! There’s a robot barista serving coffee at a coffee shop in Melbourne, and it looks like a cool work of engineering. Let’s dig into it!

Once Alike is the café and Rocky is the robot’s name that could potentially catapult Australia’s coffee culture into the future. It replicates a barista’s work in almost all accounts, grinding beans, tamping them, and pulling the espresso shots. Of course, you won’t get the human experience of actually talking to your barista… or getting your name written wrong, but it seems like you could enjoy a fantastic cup of coffee courtesy of Rocky.

In words of Liam Wilkie, one of the engineers behind the project, Rocky makes coffee as well as any barista. And the advantages? “When you’ve been in the industry so long, you realize the most important things are quality and consistency. People want their coffee the same every time they go back to a cafe that specializes in coffee. There are limitations to having a human behind the bar. We get stressed and emotional during busy periods. It’s not fun to make 1000 lattes on a Saturday – it’s really hard work,” he explains.

It makes sense. However, it’s only natural that baristas should also be worried that this becomes a threat to their jobs. They are still very superior in one thing though: Rocky takes roughly anywhere from 2 to 6 minutes to brew a cup of coffee, much slower than any experienced barista would take. Nevertheless, this is still an experimental project, so we can expect that robots in the future will be able to get every order right at a much more efficient amount of time.

Rocky is not the only one of his species

Previously, in January 2017, another robot barista also made the news at a coffee shop in San Francisco, called Café X. It was more like a robotic arm that operated an already-automated coffee maker, but it did mark the beginning of something that could potentially become a trend in the future.

Are these things even sold commercially though? Well, this year they might. A company called Bubble Lab, based in China is working on a robot barista they showed at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It’s also a robotic arm, and each one of them could cost $30,000 this 2018. Quite the investment, right? It still looks slow, so we’re not sure if it’s worth it for now.

But if we’ve learned something since the beginning of the 20th century, it’s that technology advances way faster than we realize. So it’d be no surprise to see a full-fledged, self-cleaning robot barista, which brews coffee as quickly and as efficiently as any human today, soon. Would you change the personalized factor of each cup of coffee for the robotic approach?

At That Coffee Roasters, we believe coffee is not only a beverage but also an experience that depends on the way each person sees and lives coffee. We’re not against technology but think about it as food and chefs. Every chef has their craft, their value. Baristas are the same, so we believe replacing them might not be as simple as it seems. What do you think? Let us know in the comments and keep joining us every Friday to talk more about innovations in the world of specialty coffee!

Could technology replace baristas?