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Coming Soon: Self-Heating Coffee
prostoalex writes "In 2005 Wolfgang Puck will start selling containers of self-heating coffee, USA Today says. The combination of calcium oxide and water will heat the coffee to 145 degrees and keep it warm for the next 30 minutes. The coffee will be sold in regular grocery stores, and folks at Fool.com tell Starbucks to watch out as this product, coming from a well-known chef, might target those of us grabbing a cup of hot latte on the way to work."
we have these in the UK. They taste about as good as warmed up cold coffee. Which is basically what it is....
I've tried the version available in Europe, and even allowing for the fact it's Nescafe to start with, it can't be described as even vaguely resembling coffee. Might be worth having in the car for emergencies, but it wouldn't replace anyone's daily coffee if they have any taste buds.
Phil
To state the obvious, the coffee doesn't generate its own heat (or it would be full of slaked lime, which might impair the flavour). The lime and water, to produce the heat, are in a jacket around it.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Comparing this to Starbuck's is foolish. People go to Starbuck's so they can say they go there. And to be seen there.
Your average coffee drinker does not even realize that most all Starbuck's coffee is over roasted and made of inferior quality beans. The really scary thing; the quality of Dunkin Donuts coffee beans are higher than Starbuck's! I did not know this, but a coffee guru (bean tester and whatnot for major coffee companies) tells me it is true.
As a Costa Rican, the idea of instant coffee is insulting, let alone self-heating coffee.
Every time I go home, I bring a few months' supply of 100% pure Arabica beans. Here in the US good coffee is insanely expensive.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Meals Ready to Eat, the US Army's replacement for it's old rations, usually come with a similar contraption: a wafer of material which is massively exothermic when combined with water.
It comes in a bag; you add water and then stuff your entree into the bag. The water comes to a boil (or at least apparently; it may just be hydrogen evolving from the reation, and they tell you not to use it in an enclosed place). The food goes from room temperature to way-too-hot-to-eat in a few minutes.
They recommend two of them if the food starts off frozen, but I've found that one will take it from rock-solid to tolerable (the things were designed to be eaten room-temperature as well.) It's not exactly luxury food, but it's incredible to have have hot food available almost instantly without having to carry cooking equipment or starting a fire.
Mmmm... alligator.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
I can't wait to walk down the coffee aisle and surreptitiously push the "heat" button on dozens of cans of coffee. Muhahaha.
"Damn, I got another can of self-heating coffee that doesn't heat!" I can almost hear the recalls as we speak. Another global corporation out to kill my neighborhood coffee shop, foiled by little old me.
What's your damage, Heather?
As others have said, self heating coffee has been available in the UK for 3-4 years. But using the Calcium Oxide/water reaction to heat food goes back at least 20 years. When I was a kid, self-heating cans of food were available for a while in camping shops.
Now with extra alkaloids!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I concurr. Dunkin Donuts has really good coffee.
The founder of Starbucks had a business insight:
1. Sell cheap coffee for 4 bucks. 2. ??? 3. Profit!
Step two being: Yuppies will buy it just to feel cool.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Same reason anything Linux or Apple does is compared to Microsoft. Starbucks and Microsoft both make crappy products with great marketing. Sure it's better if you grind your own(Linux), or visit the local non-chain coffeehouse (Apple), but when there's a Starbucks on every streetcorner (Microsoft's 90% market saturation), sometimes you just take the path of least resistance to get your fix(or work done).
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do people start breaking them open to see what's inside and spilling the boiling contents on their laps? Do they have a warning telling people not to do that? Or is self-responsibility considered more widespread across the pond?
"Look here, Cletus. This is what them's calls calcium oxi--- aaiiiiieeeeeeeee!!!!! Muh giblets!!"
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I think Starbucks realized if you charge a lot of money for your product and call it better, yuppies will flock to it and become coffee snobs.
So, this thing produces a cup of something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.