It’s true that baristas know how to make best pour-over coffee but if you want to enjoy the same bud trigger at home, it can be a frustrating task. Fret not as we have found an interesting Kickstarter project that lets you have café quality pour-over experience at home, minus all the fuss.
Created by Apple design veterans, xBloom is an all-in-one coffee maker that takes care of bean grinding to solid state pouring in a single appliance.
The coffee maker works with the provided xPods loaded with different types of coffee beans. Each pod includes a RFID code for bean recognition and is meant for a single serving only.
You simply scan the code by placing the pod over the top of the machine and it automatically selects the grid size, temperature and ground-to-water ratio per the coffee pod.
Now, open the pod and put the beans in the grinder, then place the empty pod on the dock where the ground coffee is collected at the end of the grinding process.
Thereafter, you have to place the pod with ground coffee over its dock, and simply press the button. The right amount of water is poured as per the coffee pod recipe and a pipping hot cup of coffee is ready in under five minutes.
You can check out detailed information about the complete list of features below:
Grinding
It is touted as the world’s first coffee grinder with dual bearings that automatically adjust the step motor to produce specified grind sizes, and auto-recalibrates for consistency.
The coffee machine has a professional grinder with 48mm Titanium Nitride coated conical burrs that allow 20 automatic grind size adjustments.
Furthermore, the grinder has a specially designed mechanism and chute to achieve near-zero retention of stale coffee grounds and it is super easy to clean.
The golden water-coffee ratio
The proportion of coffee and water used in brewing is an important variable and directly impacts the strength of coffee. xBloom can do it for you in a consistent way and without any manual interference.
The xPod dock detects an xPod coffee capsule and initiates the brewing process with haptic feedback. The water starts pouring and xPod is moved right and left in a steady motion. The appliance also vibrates the pod in order to shake the coffee bed and evenly extract the coffee.
There is an embedded smart scale that accurately weighs the freshly ground coffee and water output needed for a perfect brew.
Pouring
This smart brewer takes water pouring to a new level. There are three modes that can pour water depending on bean-specific brewing style and pattern of a pod.
The brewing styles are center pour, regular spiral pour, and rapid spiral pour. These motions are similar to actions we make while making pour-over coffee by hand. The user can also customize the recipe using the mobile app.
xPods
Each xPod is filled with coffee beans that are roasted to order for maximum freshness. The right combination of pouring style and ingredients recommended by the roaster are initiated with a simple scan of the pod. The machine automatically adjusts the water temperature, grind size, and water ratio to bring out the real taste of each bean.
Also Read: These Reusable Coffee Pods Let You Wave Goodbye to Single-Use Plastic Pods
The company plans to launch new coffee pods to its marketplace every month. These can include some local roaster, or an independent coffee house from a different part of the world. Some of the current partner roasters are Counter Culture, Regalia Coffee, Verve, Boxx Coffee, etc.
These pods are also eco-friendly as they are made from bio-degradable material, except for the RFID tag on the back.
The company is also providing a reusable dripper that allows you to use xBloom with your own beans. It uses an RFID tag to store a default recipe as a baseline. The user can further optimize the brewing parameters via the companion app.
Price and Availability
Available in two colors, xBloom coffee maker is currently being crow-funded on Kickstarter, with an early-bird discounted price. You have to pledge the campaign for a minimum of $399 to get one coffee machine with 32 pods, in March 2023. After the campaign, the makers will retail it for approx. $799, so if you already fancy the idea, now is the ripe time to book one before the pledges are over.
