Kuku (a bit of levity)

JHCCoffee

I welcome all inventions (its how good products start), but this one seems off the wall.

Just thought I’d lighten things up abit.

Introducing the KUKU Coffee Maker, the ultimate coffee nerd’s dream! With its world’s first variable separation technology, you can now unlock hidden coffee flavors like never before. ☕️

Coming soon on Kickstarter, don’t miss out on our launch day special - enjoy a whopping 47% off! ☕️🚀

https://www.kukuhub.com/en/coffeemaker.html

MWJB

JHCCoffee Some of the hyperbole in the pitch is pushing it a bit, but the technological principle behind this brewer already exists in the field with Nespresso Vertuo and the Spinn coffee brewer (no experience with either).

jrling

Having read through their full blurb on what is a clearly a professionally produced website, I have to say that I agree with OP. Although it is clearly a different approach to brewing coffee, this is no one-man band with a ‘brilliant idea’ like many we have seen come and go in the past and they are trying to approach brewing in a different way altogether, which I applaud. Whether it makes better coffee of course is not yet discernible, but it is gaining interest, in that I was apparently the 46,800th person to sign up to their newsletter. If the pix are a true refection of their R&D workforce, it is impressive. They are based in China and have long term production partners, so perhaps this will not be a product that is developed by the early adopters over a period with massive delays to mainstream release. They also claim delivery partners and repair facilities in many countries including UK, which is of course vital for such an innovative product.

dfk41

In the bad old days, you had an idea, needed funding so went to your bank manager armed with a business plan etc. You funded your own development, if the idea was good enough. Roll forward a few years and it has changed! Now you produce a lovely website making lots of claims and persuade others to back your promises costing the developers very little….

Gagaryn

dfk41 In the bad old days, you had an idea, needed funding so went to your bank manager armed with a business plan etc. You funded your own development, if the idea was good enough. Roll forward a few years and it has changed! Now you produce a lovely website making lots of claims and persuade others to back your promises costing the developers very little….

Crowdfunding is a legitimate option. Don’t forget Niche raised over $14m through Indigogo. I’m sure if they had thought that going to the bank manager with a FBC was a better idea they would have chosen that path.

jrling

dfk41 In the bad old days, you had an idea, needed funding so went to your bank manager armed with a business plan etc. You funded your own development, if the idea was good enough. Roll forward a few years and it has changed! Now you produce a lovely website making lots of claims and persuade others to back your promises costing the developers very little….

I think in this case that you are being a little unkind. So far, they appear to have funded their own development costs including writing the app software in-house. They clearly have an existing comprehensive R&D department with multiple employees and you can see pictures of all the pieces required to build the machine have been developed at least to prototype stage and that’s before the Kickstarter campaign has started. In 4 days time on their Kickstarter pitch, we will see what pricing is shown and projected delivery times.

dfk41

Gagaryn By the time Niche went to Indiegogo, the prototypes had been in existence for 5 years matey. I believe they went there for tooling costs, not for any sort of development finance/help so that is not a good example. Also, Martin Nicholson the CEO is very well known in the design world having worked extensively for Kenwood

Gagaryn

dfk41 By the time Niche went to Indiegogo, the prototypes had been in existence for 5 years matey. I believe they went there for tooling costs, not for any sort of development finance/help so that is not a good example. Also, Martin Nicholson the CEO is very well known in the design world having worked extensively for Kenwood

Yup, he’s a clever man - he appreciates the benefits that Crowdfunding offered him over traditional means of raising capital, I’m sure if he thought that going to the bank was a better option he’d have moved in that way.

I don’t get the hate for crowdfunding - this launch doesn’t seem all that different in that it is also hoping to raise capital to take a prototype to production.

dfk41

jrling My comments were about Crowdfunding in general, rather than this particular project matey

jrling

For those interested enough, there is a 45 minute YT video of live demo of Kuku making cold brew, espresso and pour over with tasting comparisons with conventional machines and brew strength meter readings. So the workflow is shown in making actual brews. It is a prototype, but looks to me to be pretty near final production spec, with a few improvements to come, which are disclosed. The projected time for first deliveries is given as 6 months from now or August 2023. Obv we can expect that to be optimistic.

MWJB

jrling I am interested, but unfortunately the refractometer readings don’t provide any useful insights (ignoring the poor measurement protocol).

This doesn’t, of course, mean that the machine doesn’t work, but at the same time does not offer any kind of reassurance.

It’s a bit odd that for 2 demonstrations (hot espresso & pour over) the presenter wanted to use the Atago for the KuKu and the DiFluid for the regular brews (switching to the DiFluid for both brews on the pour over where the TDS was lower for the KuKu, despite the shorter brew ratio). I only saw the Atago button being pressed the once, which on the Brix/TDS model only gives the reading in Brix (which will be substantially higher than the TDS reading), this is backed up by the video, as when actually reading TDS, the letters “TDS” are displayed on the Atago refractometer read out (absent in the video at 25:54).

Any advantages/differences in extraction for the KuKu should be taken with a pinch of salt.

jrling

Yeah. Whilst I don’t pretend to know what you do about refractometer readings, the whole video was a bit amateurish. But for me, it did give a feel for what it would be like for workflow and everyday use, which I found useful. The whole process was a bit long winded - at least the way he did it, but for my one or two espressos a day, I would not rule it out as deal breaker - IF the end results were at least as good as my E61 with me on a good day and more to the point more consistent than my variations of results, esp if the companion app can produce repeatable parameters and of course without puck prep being involved, which is where most of my variations come from. I was looking at it as a poor person’s Decent DE1 (stretching a point I know!) with pour over and cold brew thrown in for good measure.

jrling

Kickstarter now Live. I can see that they have increased the size of the water container from 200ml to 300ml as they said would be the case on release. The issue for me is price. Even with an early bird discount of 50% off the ‘full price’ of $1,399 (which one treats with some caution) it is $699. But then delivery to UK is $45 and also the buyer is responsible for any duty/VAT, which is unquantified. This appears to be the case even though they have a distributor in Birmingham, UK?