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A $345 Automatic Coffee Stirring Device, Yea or Nay?
Technically better for the environment, but I mean…c'mon.
Every morning I get an ice coffee to go at the diner downstairs. The counterwoman pours ice, milk and coffee into a cup, lids it and hands it to me. I have given up on asking her, for the sake of even mixing, to pour the milk in last (milk is heavier than coffee) because she is set in her ways. So I get the coffee and it looks like this, milk at the bottom, coffee up top:
Enter a caption (optional)Instead of grabbing a coffee stirrer, I simply grab the cup by the top and rotate my wrist for ten seconds:
Enter a caption (optional)And then it's mixed, like this:
Enter a caption (optional)Call me crazy, but that's good enough for me. I don't need a perfect coffee-milk blend so I'm good.
At the Starbucks down the street from me, it's a different story. Every customer there stops at the stirring station, grabs a little wooden stick, stirs up their potion and tosses the mixing stick.
Engineer Scott Amron writes that "400 million stir sticks are thrown in the trash every day. That bothers me. Wooden sticks are bad. Plastic sticks are worse." So he invented something called the Stircle, an automatic coffee stirring device that costs $345:
This is one of those things where I see the need, and Amron's math is compelling…
A Stircle should stir 50,000 cups on about $0.10 of electricity or $0.000002 per stir. So, it costs 99% less to run than stir sticks. It can significantly reduce waste associated with stir stick production, distribution, transport, packaging, labeling, usage and disposal. It can also replace the spoon used by employees behind the counter, ensuring a consistent taste with zero cross-contamination.
…but I still think this is dumb. Not that Amron invented it, but that we as a society need to drink perfectly blended fluids and are willing to rip through forests or build more electronic gizmos to achieve that.
Admittedly, my proposed counter-solution would fail: I'd have us all use our actual wrists to wiggle-shake the drinks, and would be met with a resounding Ain't Nobody Got Time For That.
What say you to the Stircle, and what is your proposed solution?
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Comments
Hmm, don't put ice and milk into perfectly good coffee?
(Um, a new plastic cup thrown away every day, from the diner?)
Seem like a skilled pour would solve this. I don't know what bartenders call it, maybe a long pour? But as you are pouring in the second ingredient you start pouring low and lift your pouring hand higher maybe a foot above the glass and then bring it closer to finish. This imparts more energy to the liquid being poured in creating a more turbulent mixing action, requires no tools, or waste, or additional time.
This belongs on a shelf with the Juicero.
Why would that device cost $345?!?!?! It's an electric motor, some kind of weight sensor, an acrylic ring. $75 tops? His idea is that the counter at all coffee shops would have a bunch of these installed?
Lazy suzan?
Cups with a built-in straw down the side that you could blow bubbles through. The bubbles are more agitating than swirling and break through the density gradients since they are rushing upwards.
Ah, but then the purists would claim you're ruining the flavor by introducing oxidation.
Not much oxygen in exhaled breath.
All good intentions about waste, 400 million is a lot. However your proposal removes the ritual of stirring which in my POV is an important aspect of coffee.
Yes, the straw.
I am a co-owner of a coffee shop and this was moderately intriguing. I would tend to agree with John Davies not to put ice and milk into perfectly good coffee, but I don't get to choose what people order and an iced mocha requires a considerable amount of stirring if you want the chocolate sauce to be mixed into the drink properly.
I'm not sure how well it does the job. The centrifugal force just pushes everything outward. The chemical industry had a hard time producing homogenous mixtures until this was invented
I don't think the morning rush at a coffee shopare going to want or be willing to stand in a queue when a stir stick takes a second or less and more than one person can use them at a time!
Your idea is fine, and it seems like it'd take about as long as I watched the device in the video before I lost interest.
Nay! use only liquid sugar and you'd eliminate the need of stirring. Embed few long ribs along the height of the cup's wall and swirl it by hand. Don't add more reckless energy hungry devices.
at first glace i like it, i would want to use it for the novelty . But this problem could be solved by asking a barista to stir or mix.
This device I wouldn't put out for the customers to use. Instead I'd have the barista use it. At the end of the pour and cap, they'd just put the cup down to be stirred. They make the next drink and when that's done do a switch out.
Nay! First world problems. Eliminate all disposables!
How about making the compostable cup a little taller with a "swirl zone"? You would fill it to the swirl zone, put on the lid, and then swirl the cup to mix the contents. You may burn a fraction of a calorie in the process.