At last! An interactive scale that plots your brew and allows you to share with others. See it work at CoffeeCon San Francisco.
I met Aaron Fujiki at SCAA Seattle, where I happened upon his booth and realized what a powerful product he had. He told me that Rex Tseng, Johnny Hou and he founded acaia Corp. on one simple principle: to bring together design and technology into the coffee community. Their vision of the next generation of coffee brewing equipment is the seamless software/hardware integration is the acaia Coffee Scale.
This is the first scale of its kind to blend the concept of simple, modern, and minimalist design with brilliant functionality. At first glance it’s just an ordinary scale, designed for coffee brewing with the usual functions: power button and tare function, and a LED display that features gram measurements and a timer. But the scale in itself is a technological feat. It is calibrated by industrial standards, with a 10th of a gram sensitivity. It has a 20ms response time, providing the coffee enthusiast ultra-fast response time and instant readings. Those of us who use a scale to brew will really appreciate the response time. The acaia scale has a built in stopwatch, that can be displayed alongside the weight measurements.
But, the scale is just half the product and really just an extension of their meticulously crafted acaia app. The acaia Coffee Scale connects via bluetooth 4.0 with either acaia’s iPhone or Android apps, which can be considered the brains of the scale.
These plots are invaluable to your brewing the perfect cup. (Image courtesy Coffee Geek.)
Not only will the acaia app allow us to take control of our scale on our smart phone; we can catalog our entire coffee brewing process, including the name and variety of the coffee beans used, the water and coffee ratio, and the consistency of the speed and timing of the entire pouring process. acaia calls it a “Brewing Print”, and it really will empower the user to recreate a logged cup of brewed coffee parameters or learn how to make it better.
The Brewing Print combines design and integration of technology, and helps us to visualize and brew a better cup each time. Also, you can share your Brewing Print over social media with your friends and family. For the first time ever not only will you be able to share what you brewed, but exactly how you did it too. I can envision online coffee enthusiasts engaged in long interactive threads where, finally, they can integrate precise, accurate brewing details into their subjective analysis, making their conversations truly meaningful and based on objective criteria.
The geek in me can’t wait for this product. The fact that we have it in San Francisco at CoffeeCon should warrant some serious salivation. Here’s hoping they bring enough for some at-show sales. I know I want one.
The acaia journey has never been a solo expedition. It is one that has been, from the very beginning, a user-centric and community-oriented adventure. It is together that we look to transform the coffee brewing experience. It is thanks to a very successful Kickstarter that we were able to get this product off the ground and into your hands. It is thanks to the coffee community that we received SCAA’s 2014 Best New Product and People’s Choice for Best new Product. We look forward to seeing everyone at Coffee-Con Consumer Coffee Festival and sharing our dream with you. Let’s start brewing and sharing our results in style!
