With portable espresso machines, French press mugs and other brewing gadgets percolating up all over the place and coffee shops on every second street corner, you'd be forgiven for wondering, does procuring a cup need to be any more convenient? For a pair of Atlanta-based entrepreneurs, the answer is, yes, which is why they developed the Hey Joe mug that can prepare a brew on demand, meaning a fresh cup of coffee is only ever a push of a button away.
"The mug can hold 14 oz (414 ml) of water and brew 14 oz of coffee," Jordan Warren, founder of Hey Joe Coffee, tells Gizmag. "This is somewhere in between a tall and a grande at Starbucks."
The 0.9 lb (408 g) brew mug uses a vertically stacked two reservoir system, giving it a tall and slender shape. Water is poured into the upper compartment at any temperature and is then warmed by a heating plate intersecting the top and the bottom compartments. Once the water reaches a preset temperature, it drips through a hole and onto the coffee pod which is seated in a sliding tray in the center of the mug. From here, the coffee fills the bottom reservoir with the hot plate continuing to regulate the temperature.
This is all set in motion with a push of the button located on the side of the mug. One push will see coffee brewed at 140° F (60° C), two pushes heats things up to 155° F (68° C), while three pushes will prepare a serve of cold drip coffee. This process takes from a minute and a half for cold drip, to three minutes for hot, depending on how much liquid you put in, Warren explains.
The Hey Joe mug works with the company's custom coffee pods containing either its Bold as Love, which is described as a full bodied blend, or its Red House blend, which is closer to a medium roast. The company claims the huge amounts of waste created by take-away coffee was part of the inspiration for Hey Joe, and they haven't limited this eco-friendly approach to the mug only. The pods use biodegradable packaging and also contain flower seeds, meaning that once they're done breathing new life into your day, they can be planted to bring new life to your garden as well.
"Currently they are just a standard wildflower," says Warren. "If I have my way with it there will be many varieties of flowers down the road and this may be thinking big, but I'd really like to include vegetables in the packaging."
Recently we've seen devices such as the Impress Brewer and the Temperfect Mug emerge to promise new convenience for coffee enthusiasts. Hey Joe appears to borrow strengths from all of these, with a mug that can not only prepare a fresh brew while you're on the go, but keep it warm until you find time to drink it.
Hey Joe runs on a detachable battery which is charged via USB. Warren tells us each charge should be good for three cups of coffee, though it does depend on the amount of liquid involved. Milk and sugar can be mixed in either before or after the brew by detaching the battery and adding it to the bottom reservoir.
Warren and his team are looking to raise US$20,000 on Kickstarter to fund the first production run for Hey Joe. A pledge of $49 will put you in line for the mug only, while $69 will also send 40 pods of Hey Joe coffee your way, if everything goes as planned. The team hopes to begin shipping in November 2014.
You can see the pitch video below.
Source: Hey Joe Coffee
