Robo-tea

By Daniela Walker 29 : 03 : 2016 Tea : Connected Device : The Internet Of Things

San Francisco – Start-up Teforia has brought the science of tea brewing to the kitchen counter.

Teforia’s intelligent infuser calculates the temperature and time for each specific tea
It enables users to personalise their blend and select the levels of caffeine and antioxidants

It is often assumed that making tea is as simple as plopping a teabag in a cup of hot water and letting it steep for a bit, but Teforia, founded by Allen Han, a product designer with a Microsoft pedigree, wants to change all that. Its infuser comes with a connected app that enables at-home tea drinkers to choose a personalised recipe, depending on the tea they are brewing.

Teforia sells its own tea pods that have been RFID-tagged so that the machine automatically knows how to infuse them. But users can choose to make the tea sweeter or draw out different compounds such as antioxidants because the infuser can steep the tea leaves multiple times and at different temperatures during the brewing process.

Users can also use their own tea as the machine uses artificial intelligence to determine the best infusion method through a series of questions on an accompanying app. Once the tea is brewed, users can provide feedback to enable the machine to tweak its recipes until the perfect cup is made.

The Big Picture

Tea drinking has gone unchanged for thousands of years, but Teforia is bringing science to the ritual at a time when consumers are increasingly interested in its intricacies. For more, see our seed on Sydney’s Rabbit Hole Organic Tea Bar, which offers 22 varieties of tea.