Thanks again to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this video and for the limited time offer! Click here bit.ly/BrightCellarsHowToDrink14 to get 50% off your first 6 bottle box! Part 1: ua-cam.com/video/QyA5vUeOkdA/v-deo.html Twitch: bit.ly/2VsOi3d H2D2: bit.ly/YTH2D2 twitter: bit.ly/H2DTwit instagram: bit.ly/H2dIG Blog: bit.ly/H2DBlog Patreon: bit.ly/H2DPatreon Gear: amzn.to/2LeQCbW
Tried Bright Cellars, not a fan. All the wines are actually bottled and owned by the same company. They just selling convenience with the illusion of variety while bottling leftovers they buy from different wineries. IMO you'd be better off trying different 2 buck chuck bottles from Trader Joes and seeing what you like.
the fact that bartesian called you an "overaged hipster" is kinda funny cos "drink robot that makes shit cocktails and is called a bartesian" feels like it could *only* be marketed to hipsters
@@JC-fj7oo Of course. This also shows that, on top of selling an awful product, they have absolutely no respect for their customer base. Great company!
It’s really telling how Bartesian reached out for a possible sponsorship initially, but immediately jumped to throwing insults the moment a genuine review came out. They could have so easily said something like “everyone has different tastes” “he may have gotten an older batch” “he’s more into classics” but instead just insults
@@howtodrink It happens. It's easy to watch a video and think of "What if..." It's different when you are going through and are doing it. When you did the first video with it, I had a suspicion that they took the cheap way out and plumbed everything together. This video confirmed it. I love the channel and you have introduced me to many drinks that I enjoy drinking.
man, Greg deflated INSTANTLY once he saw the signatures and chilling center in the keurig. the difference in quality between the two is just miles. keurig team actually put effort into theirs
The keurig was definitely a genuine attempt. It's probably just something that's hard or impossible to do reasonably. But they tried. Real product really trying to Do A Task. The bartesian is like an insult given physical form. I'm frankly shocked.
Especially at the same price point. Like if the Bartesian was like $60-100 I could kinda justify it, but both being around $300-350? That's just a scam compared to the Keurig.
@@Gamerkat10 I think their problem was because the pods included alcohol in them it limited where and how they could be sold and cut out a layer of customizeability. At that point you might as well buy a canned cocktail.
i honestly got real sad seeing those signatures man, like no customer will ever see those, really makes me think this was an honest passion project that sadly failed due to whatever reasons.
I've seen that kind of etched signatures once before on the inside of an old Microsoft Joystick design. I wonder how common the practice is given that most customers will never see it.
The Bartesian is literally made of the same parts as a windshield washer-fluid system. They could just buy them off the shelf. The most expensive part of manufacturing would be making the molds for the plastic housing. It's insane that this thing cost anywhere near as much as the Kurig.
I was thinking the same thing. The injection molding for the components was easily the most expensive bit. The thing that made me laugh the most was that the controller board they used is actually a really common controller board I have seen in used in cheap products before, just relabeled. It's a 70$ (max at market) product being sold as a premium product. In theory someone could create a device at a lower price point, take examples from what is being complained about here and improve, and sell a better product then what the Bartesian is for cheaper.
Also made me realize how easy it would be to make a functional version of this. One that would run a quick purge every time, no BS proprietary pods necessary
@@aaronhelmsman When I saw that air line that's what I thought this was doing, until I realized it is tied in after all of the booze lines. And, based on what was left in the main line after Greg made a drink, it isnt even clearing the main shared line. It made me wonder if the original design actually had the purge line split off and tied in after each booze and water solenoid to clear out the entire system (minus the short line between bottle and solenoid), but a higher up realized they could save $2 per unit if they only tied it in farther down the line. Then, they didn't bother programming in a purge since it didn't do anything. Only other thing I can think of is a really terrible attempt at adding aeration. If that is the case, they deserve far less credit than i was willing to give them
As a engineer this video was painful to watch. Not the destruction, that was warranted, but the fact that Bartesian charged a similar price to the Keurig is mind boggling. based on parts alone the Bartesian should at most be $100-150. Drinkworks made a genuine attempt at a cocktail machine.
@@burnerheinz As an every-man, I could probably build a better version of the bartesian. Starting with every bottle having a dedicated line to the head.
As a firmware consultant who's worked on a somewhat similar machine for a startup, I get it. Smaller companies like that have higher overhead costs and smaller audiences so they have to charge more for it. I'm more surprised the Drinkworks is so cheap. RnD on that thing must've been expensive
Well now I want a Mai Tai. Bar wench fetch me my Orgeat. Wait? I don't have a bar wench. ok, now taking applications for bar wench. Bring your own Orgeat.
As someone who makes cocktail robots as a hobby I can relate to the struggles these manufacturers have. If you're ever planning on coming to San Francisco you should make sure that it coincides with the Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge that's (usually) held every year at the DNA Lounge.
@@suzu9404 AvE is too nice about how he dismantles sometimes. The healing bench ain't gonna make the product any better. UA-cam needs more destructive reviews of terrible products!
the "water" inside the Keurig was probably a Chill block. the water inside it never gets used, its just used to chill your drink. i can see a peltier junction (solid state AC unit) on the side which could freeze that water into a chiller block.
I definitely agree that gin/vodka would have made a hell of a lot more sense than gin/rum. EDIT: My conclusion is as follows: Bartesian is a scam. Keurig was an honest, if misguided, attempt.
@@SimuLord Hence my statement of "Honest, if misguided." They made a very good go of it, but the product ended up being so intricate that it had too many points of failure.
The saddest/worst thing about Bartesian is that it's not like they couldn't deliver a half decent machine. They had all the right parts. Just changing the hoses (separate lines for each flavor), adding a few more components and such for line clearing, add a bit more to the software to display messages about the autocleaning, and find a better way than shoveling factory reject drink mixes as "pods" and then it would have been a halfway decent machine. But nope, they did none of that and their refusal to acknowledge that their machine makes bad drinks reeks of charlatanism. Honest businesses will at least accept criticism and use it to improve their product.
i'm rewatching the original cocktail robot episode and you described the bartesian's margarita as having a weird additional "vanilla hookah tobacco" flavor to it, which, now knowing that everything's going through the same tube, maybe sounds like what a margarita might taste like if you threw a little splash of whiskey in there (the previous drink through was an old fashioned)
@@Gamerkat10 it's basically made of the same crap that your car's windshield washer system is. I could probably build something that did the same thing in my garage for 20 dollars and gas money to go to AutoZone. The bartesian is just a scam, straight up.
@@shocker1209081 it wouldn't help because they have one pump. They should have designed it better.... ie water starts the loop and every alcohol is only very tiny hose with solenoid into same hose as water and then simply rinse whole single hose line before and after drink. Easy peasy
I dont know why, but when Greg found the signatures under the drinkworks I actually felt bad and almost teared up... someone really put some love into this, unlike the other one.
Apparently it was, I heard kureg bought the original plans or company who built this and it was I think called something else. So there was a really good attempt and I think it could work if they made is bigger and stuck to higher quality parts. The problem with Krueg is their bread and butter is to make things super affordable but I think this should have been a higher price point so they could put in better parts. I’ve seen wine versions of this idea for almost a grand and they last a very long time. I think if a different company bought it and went into a different direction it could have worked maybe.
This may seem heartless but it has no effect on me at all; if anything it has the opposite effect of irritating me. Think about it, there's no way the "team" hand-etched their signatures into tens of thousands of machines. They would've done just one, sent the design on to the plastics fabricator and they would've mass-produced them like with any other piece of technology out there. And they put it in the machine where the vast majority of users would never look, to create a sort of Easter egg effect. 99% of people will never know and never think about it, and the 1% who do will instantly feel that jolt of sympathy and feeling of "artisan-ness" seeing it. It's a psychological pathway that they _want_ you to feel, because it disguises the fact that this is no different to any other piece of machinery that would've been mass-produced and mass-assembled by some factory workers (and nobody's thinking about _them_ ; where are _their_ signatures?). That kind of consumer manipulation is incredibly cynical to me and it's sad it seems to have worked on so many people. Like, the other brand was called out and responded the way they felt they needed to. They verbally defended their product (not saying they did it the right way) and everyone's giving them shit for it; meanwhile the other just has one piece of plastic and gets a ton of sympathy, and doesn't have to say a single word. They're not better, just smarter.
@@ZzyzzyzzsYeah... I think this is nonsense. Sometimes people really are proud of the things they make. It's underneath the lid because they didn't want anyone to see it. It's included in the machine because they know it's there and it brings them joy. Just a little point of pride for a small team. If they wanted to emotionally manipulate buyers with something like this, they'd put it in the instructions or somewhere it would be found by a large percentage of customers. It may have even been from the original team that designed the machine before it was sold to Keurig. They might have negotiated that in the buy out as a way to still feel like they were part of it, even though it was going to be mass produced. I understand most things are corporate manipulation. But your post seems like a huge reach. Like I said, some people are actually proud of the products they make. It was an honest effort and this little team probably wanted to do something special.
so I've been one of the owners of the Keurig drink works and when I got my email saying I can get the refunds I called in and asked them why they're going to discontinue it. according to the representative I spoke with, there were a lot of hoops to jump through in order to be able to get the pods sold in each state. and this I can attest to because living in Virginia I couldn't just go to a store and buy the pods because they had alcohol in them and only Virginia ABC can sell liquor. for a year and a half any time I put in order in it had to get shipped in from either Maryland or Pennsylvania and became a huge hassle with FedEx over the delivery.
MA has, um, a rather unique stance on alcohol as well, can buy hard liquor everywhere including grocery stores, but only wine purchased from in state businesses can be shipped by fedex/ups type shippers
I've actually taken my Drinkworks apart, and a few notes for you - The insulated water chamber is actually cooled by a Peltier to chill the water (which is why it takes 50 minutes to chill water) - Carbonation does go into the clear water vessel - The pod is dispensed directly from the top head via a mechanism to crush the pod, and retract the bottom safety pin - Water flows from the vessel into the pod area - Water is dispensed from pod head, mixes with pod
Honestly was watching it and was guessing what you confirmed. Concept wise it would work just like a normal Keurig and mix with the pod instead of sucking it in or else it would have even more cross contamination than the bartisian.
@@markmacleod2077 Peltier cells are thermoelectric, there is no coolant fluid involved. The "copper tubes" going in the chiller are heat pipes to cool the hot side of the peltier cell.
13:14 can you imagine if the entity mixing your drinks spilled liquor everywhere every time it poured? I’d be so shocked and appalled, I’d probably watch every video on his channel.
I'm genuinely impressed with how bad the bartesian is designed. Nothing about that should be complicated. You just draw from some reservoirs, that's it. That's the most complicated thing. 6 small hoses for all 5 spirits and water would be all you need, but they didn't want to "splurge" on the multiple pumps they would need
Crazy thought: there are multiple ways they could have achieved this without requiring multiple pumps. Here's two off the top of my head: 1. Use gravity. No pump needed. 2. Instead of sucking the liquids through the pump (which is guaranteed to cross contaminate a little, and likely means the pump will have a short lifespan) use the pump to pressurize air inside of the liquid bottles, which then forces the liquid out. In both cases, they need to add a drain and a mechanism to flush water and then air through the tubes. Not only for cleanliness, but it could also be used to flush common tubes between uses. Instead of using an inline flow meter, which can be contaminated, use a scale in the glass stand to measure weight of each ingredient.
@@haphazard1342 When we watched another review of the Bartesian, my husband and I wondered how they kept the tubing from the rum/gin section from being cross-contaminated. We really didn't consider that they just didn't give a shit. Our idea was that it could have two separate openings/hoses in the bottom of the unit, with a notch for alignment, and a small tab/pin in the cap of the two bottles that would fit into the notch. Mostly idiot proof, because the pin would prevent you from inserting a bottle the wrong way.
It really changes things when you see a signature on the inside of a product. It's one thing to rag on a piece of equipment of questionable quality that was made in some sweatshop with zero attention, but once you can see that someone took the effort to etch their name on an inside panel where no one can see it you realize there's a personal connection to that appliance. Someone (multiple someones in this case) believed in their crappy little electronic bartender enough to personalize their effort in assembling it, and it makes it that much harder to say "this product doesn't need to exist." Whoever these people are, they truly believed that it did need to exist, and were willing to bring it to life through design, prototyping, and finalization of the design. To those people who were brave enough to sign their work: your product may not have been a success this time, but I truly hope you keep imagining and designing products. Your next gadget might be the one we all can't live without in ten years' time.
Difference being that Master Lock has, afaik, never bothered to try and whine at LPL even to the pitiful extent that Bartesian did at Greg. Possibly because he *is* a lawyer...
I really appreciate this episode and the last one. We were seriously considering saving up and getting one of these things for our place. You legitimately saved us a chunk of money we shouldn't have spent. We host a fair amount of small parties with our friends and like to have a drink during tabletop sessions. Being limited on fridge and cabinet space means keeping a bunch of different ingredients is a no-go, so these *seemed* like a nice, if too expensive, alternative that would allow everyone to have the drink they wanted and not have to make a mess or worry about bringing their stuff with them. It seriously could've been useful for situations like that, especially so people who aren't knowledgeable in making drinks could still have them without relying on someone who did (I'm not putting down the DM screen every time someone wants a drink). It's so frustrating to see how little effort and money they put into such expensive machines and pods.
The Kureg seems like it was a system designed by someone else and halfway through was bought out so they didn't get the chance to do later prototypes and test it out, I would have been curious to see a second generation unit.
Yeah, Bartesian can say they keep going out of stock because they're so popular, but we all know it's because of the ongoing supply-chain issues. They can go kick rocks.
Not to mention, just because you sell a lot of something, doesn't mean it is a good product. McDonalds doesn't make a good burger, but they sell millions.
@@ADBBuild To be fair, McDonalds makes an excellent product as far as what it's going for. It's a consistent burger and fries that won't immediately kill you. Very few people keel over dead or projectile vomit after a given McDonald's meal, no matter where in their home country they get it. (The nutrition being deadly in the long run aside, of course.) If McD's served alcohol, it would probably come out of a Bartesian and we'd all say "Well, you ordered a McMargarita, of course it didn't taste good. As long as it got you drunk, that's what you should care about."
11:14 - Shhhhh! We could build this and make millions!!!!!! Then sell out to Diageo for billions, and buy yachts from David Seal. (I hear he has a UA-camr special deal)
To be fair, Diageo will probably buy up anything so long as it claims to do something drinks-related. You don't get that kind of market share otherwise.
@@howtodrink You could easily market it as a kind of alchemy machine too. Literally just takes Aqua Vitae and turns it into drinks to cool and soothe thy heated brow.
The juicero did not even add water, by the way. It just smashed juice out of a prepared package of fruit pulp. That's ALL it did. You could achieve the same with your hands.
You forgot that it was an Uber expensive subscription service for both the juice packets and the app to make the machine run. For the money though the machine was incredibly overbuilt.
Offer the pumps and tubes and valves to a local maker space they would love the parts for a robot or something insted of dumping them. Also interesting to see what's inside
So I looked at the Bartesian manual online and they only recommend doing a rinse basically when you've stopped using it/aren't going to use it for a while. So definitely recommending that you mix all of your alcohol in a way
My favorite thing about it spilling liquor everywhere when you remove a resevoir is I have a 25 dollar gravity water feeder for my cat that doesn't spill a drop of water. Its not a complicated concept. What absolute garbage.
Yeah but you have to remember these companies make those things cheap as physically possible sell it to you for a massive profit and then hope your dumb ass gets hooked on buying the over priced pods which cost them pennies at best to make.
Right? I was thinking about my wet-vac and how its gravity-fed water tank doesn't spill a drop when I lift it up. That said, I assume viscous liquids like whisky make the engineering of a perfect valve more challenging. All the more reason they should've just put the base spirit flavors in the pods and standardized on Vodka or Everclear.
Right??? That startled me a lot because I have like. a $35 humidifier for my room that is full of MASSIVE amounts of water and somehow does not spill a single drop when I load and unload it. that's just some random thing I bought off Amazon, it's not even high quality. this isn't a hard concept, and that is BOOZE you're spilling! precious, expensive booze!
So from what I'm seeing from this, I could build a better version of a Bartesian with an Arduino board, some food grade tubing, and a few cheap peristaltic pumps, and run the entire cost up to about 50-60 bucks, and in doing so remove the pods, make the system open source for community improvement, and make the entire concept actually viable from my shed. How theyre defending this product is baffling...
Greg totally destroying machines was a really interesting mix up. Your analysis was more thoroughly reasoned than I expected and nailed the problem with most the appliances they're trying to put in your home right now
I want whoever made the Keurig one to have another crack at it. I think if they scrapped the pod idea and went with multiple small tanks (or take a leaf out of bartesian's book and have replaceable bottles) that you fill with specific ingredients to make lots of one cocktail with all the bells and whistles it already had, I think it could be an awesome product. Have it aimed at a party throwers audience, so it can make like 40 margaritas in a night, slightly better than just having a keg of Margarita. maybe they could make a more deluxe model with more tanks that can make 2-3 drinks without changing out the ingredients.
I like this idea too, but I bet Keurig and most other companies view this machine as a way to sell pods. I doubt they give a hoot about the actual machine and its use. So making it actually useful in the way you're describing seems unlikely
I think it might have been a buyout by Keurig for a startup that was only part way done with dev, possibly because Keurig was working on their own machine. Usually how that stuff goes.
The Margaritaville MD3000 was exactly this. It's now discontinued, but for a party, it's amazing. It's not, however, something you keep on the counter for a random drink now and then, like these want to be.
I'm 8 months late but when he ripped the head off the Bartesian it was an instant like on this episode. Actually any episode he does is an instant like. Love HTD!!!
It's heartbreaking seeing how much love and care obviously went into the drink works, and I almost would be curious to see what future iterations would have brought
Seeing the love that went into the Drinkworks at some point almost makes me want to see the original team give it another go. I do honestly think there could be a market for a product where you provide the booze and a machine mixes it for you. It is a little strange though to have a machine etch signatures onto the bottom of the lid. Almost makes me wonder if it was just some units that were hand signed for one reason or another.
Literally all they need to do is make a machine which measures pours of base spirits. I know they won't sell pods that way, but it's the way to go for something like this.
@@AerodynamicBrick oh yeah, they were almost certainly not making any money on the units sold. They were banking on the recurring subscription fees which failed miserably
what surprised me was how they basically maximized cross-contamination with that setup; i expected 4 (or however many) tubes branching off of the main one, and instead it was a plate of spaghetti.
Greg: "It probably has four tubes for the different alcohols. Me: "Oh you sweet summer child." At first I was thinking maybe the Bartesian did something smart like dispense the alcohol then dilute the pod with water that simultaneously flushed the final shared tube. But no, it's just nasty. I'm not convinced the Keurig is sucking the drink syrup into the mixing chamber, precisely because it's a syrup and will make a mess of everything. I think it's more likely it reads a code on the pot to determine what to do, then chills, aerates, and/or carbonates water in the chamber, and finally pushes the result through the pod (diluting the syrup in the process) and into your glass. But I might also be wrong, since I can't examine the hardware in detail. Either way, it's not surprising it's overly complicated and prone to failure.
@@josephschultz3301 Thanks, I do think I'm probably right. I'm just saying it's not inconceivable that, were I the one dismantling it, I might see something that makes me go "Oh god, why would you do that, what the hell, no wonder they couldn't keep these things functional."
@@arcanum3000 Exactly, yo. And it's an overarching problem with most, if not _all,_ of these drink machines. The idea is that it makes the process of fixing a drink more convenient, but in order to achieve that they've produced a machine that can only do the job poorly, and in the most roundabout way possible too. I'm sure there's better designs out there, ones that are less prone to failure and generally less high-maintenance too, but I haven't seen them yet. Just the fact that these devices can get as disgusting as they do is a major reason why I'd never purchase one. Anybody who's cleaned the mold out of a soda dispenser knows the kind of gunk that can build-up in these things.
I hope you keep the part that has all their signatures on it. Its honestly a really cool piece of the machine. Also thank you for this dive into these machines. I love watching things get taken apart like this
I was looking for a laugh but ended up heartbroken because keurig was shown how much love was put into it. Even if it was bad, a group of people had actually etched their names where no one would see it because they believed in it😭😭
Those two rods inside the Keurig mixing chamber are almost certainly for measuring the water level inside that tank. I've made a setup like that myself before to measure a water level.
My guess of all the water that spilled out was the chiller's fluid in a closed loop, like a PC water cooler (even the radiator/chiller looked straight out of master cooler's catalog)
there is no chiller, the cooler is a peltier cell (thermoelectric cooling) which is cooled on the hot side by the thing that looks like a PC tower cooler
When you got to the second one, if you'd add a timer it would look like a scene from every action movie. "Meredith!!! I cut the red wire or the orange wire??? Quick, we got one second left". "It always stops at one."
Fun fact: I work in radio and Keurig paid for a NATIONAL campaign throughout all our stations to give away a DrinkWorks machine in every market and then literally 10 days after we began the campaign, they decided to kill the DrinkWorks. Amazing leadership over there.
Somebody is going to be earning their paycheck this week. The funny thing is that I was mostly agnostic about these machines. I'm not their target audience anyway: I'm old, have a well-stocked and equipped bar, and know how to make a good cocktail. (I don't much anymore because my husband is on chemo and misses being able to drink.) But their heavy-handed response to Greg means that not only would I never buy one, I will actively discourage anyone I find considering one. WTG, Bartesian social media team!
its really funny that even in putting down the juicero you managed to overstate what it did. it was pouches of jice, that it squeezed out for you. no water mixing or anything, just squeezed a pouch of juice into a cup for you. people even took the puches and did it by hand easily.
I wonder if the Kuerig could just be replaced with a sodastream? It honestly seems like they took a something like that and put it into a small fridge and then combined water, pod ingredients, and Co2 for airating
Would you even need a separate product? Any drink that calls for a carbonated ingredient, just throw the hooch and other stuff in the bottle, and carbonate it all at once.
Having used a few Keurig coffee pod machines in the past, I can buy that the Keurig robo-bartender was an honest attempt to make something that worked, but that it failed just because of the *water*. Their coffee makers are pretty renowned for having the constitution of Victorian orphans and dying within weeks if you don't use distilled water in them no matter how diligent you are about descaling them, and that's a machine with just one line for just one liquid.
It might be weeks late at this point, but Greg, I hope you kept (or keep) the Keurig's lid with all the signatures. They really, genuinely cared about their product, and that's exactly the kind of thing that deserves to be kept on a shelf on the set, to remember that dedication, and to display it for the future. It'd be horribly sad if that was just forgotten about and thrown away with the rest of the scrap.
It looks like it could be using TEC/Peltier cooler to chill the water in the mixing vessel. The heat sink attached to it just looks like a standard one for your CPU.
@@howtodrink No, if it is using a peltier cooler, it will chill it much colder than ambient. Peltiers are used to cool computers, but also in cheap small minifridges and stuff. It uses electricity to create a temperature difference across the cooler. One side gets cold as the other gets hot.
@@ADBBuild Peltiers definitely aren't used in any consumer grade computers since they're not very powerful and are very inefficient. For the most part cooling computers to sub-ambient temperatures isn't very useful unless you're going for competitive overclocking (but that's really its own thing). My guess is that this doesn't use a Peltier at all, but is using a more standard refrigeration unit and is using the CPU cooler to dissipate the heat from the compressor to make it more efficient
Both of those systems needed a clean / purge cycle to run between drinks. Long term storage of the alcohol in those tubes was going to make them take on "hose flavor" too.
Hey Greg, with the hotter half of the year coming up down here in Texas, I've been playing around with some tea cocktails over the week or two. been really enjoying one and thought you might dig it. Been going with ~Cracked ice in shaker ~2.5 oz Ellington Reserve mango whiskey. ~2.5 oz Deep Eddy's peach vodka. ~1.5 oz Carmen's Antigua spiced rum. ~1.5 oz Deep Eddy's lemon vodka ~Juice from half a lemon into the shaker. ~Top with half of a pure leaf unsweet tea (The small bottles) That's what I go with for making a full shaker. (makes 2 or 3 drinks depending on glassware)
11:45 "You are wasting money on the machine." If this thing did everything the way Greg expected it to, that statement would still hold true. Hell, even if this thing *somehow* made perfect drinks _100% of the time_ , that statement would still hold true. EDIT: I also suspect I know why Yeti hasn't reached out to sponsor the show: they saw the savagery Greg unleashes on crap products, and decided not to risk it. Which is a shame, since they're awesome.
Is no one gonna bring up Greg's electrical knowledge? Might not have been super advanced but homeboy knew more about the wiring and components than most people who fuck with their electronics.
So glad I found your channel before buying the Fartesian on “sale”! I wonder if the engineers who designed the product assumed the alcohol would just kill the bacteria and mold.
Wow, that Drinkworks is a really fascinating machine. Looking at it, the Juicero comparison might actually be more apt. Juicero was a product idea designed to suck up venture capital money. This resulted in the engineering team essentially getting a blank check to make the device. It was beautiful, the engineers and machinists should definitely be proud of it. They created a fantastically designed and crafted gadget that ultimately... connected to WiFi and squeezed a bag. The Bartesian looks like nothing more than one of the drink robots I've seen at Maker Faire, just put in a pretty package and built to a price. Not surprised it outlasted the Drinkworks. It'd be hard not to with that profit margin.
In the original review: AS SOON as you said the Bartisian's margarita had a "vanilla taste" I immediately said to myself "It's just one hose, isn't it?" and I was right.
As someone with experience in the matter if you're going to recycle it you have to go through and take all the electronics out because those have to go to electronics recycling center then you can dispose of the hoses and the plastic as either regular recycling if they'll take it or landfill if they won't
I'm glad you revisited these! I completely missed the first round of robo drinks, and seeing this pop up made me go back and watch that one. great stuff all around
Pretty sure the air line is there to be able to purge the line after a cocktail is mixed. That doesn’t solve the mixing from the shorter lines though. Also how well does that purge really work…
I couldn't tell from the video, but I wonder if all the liquors sharing a central line isn't as bas as we think it is, if the machine always pulls liquor first then water. Since "would" water always come last, it flushes the central line. So the next liquor only mixes with water in the central line, not the previous liquor like we think.
In theory, yes, but the company producing said machine would have to alter water preasure after each different coctail (different viscosity). So more R&D and it probably wouldn't be countertop or in the price range they (w)are. Adoption rate should be fairly low as well
That big fan/heat sink contraption in the Keurig is what's called a peltier. When electricity is applied, one side gets very hot while the other side gets very cold. This is what they put in those little refrigerator/warmers that hold 4 cans of soda/beer/soup that you plug into your cars cigarette lighter. They work decently on a small scale like this, but that's about it. *Side note:* I've taken apart a couple of different Keurig devices. They are all complex and extremely over complicated.
I can't believe the bartesian actually exists. How is something that expensive, with a marketing team so vehemently supporting it, when it's actually so poorly designed? It boggles my mind.
Money, the unit probably cost 50 bucks to produce, that's huge profits and most companies don't give a shit about the consumer, so you pay a marketing team to sell it no matter how big a piece of shit it is
Genuinely a very cool video. I'm not a gadgets person in even a small capacity but seeing the inner workings of these things is really interesting, especially comparing these two in terms of quality and complexity. (also Greg going beast mode biting and ripping and killing the Bartesian was an unexpected treat). Agree with other comments on seeing if there are local maker spaces that will take some of the parts off your hands rather than just taking it to a waste management center.
I've been meaning to comment on this for a while: it's always fun when Merideth chimes in! Greg is amazing solo but some interaction helps liven and lighten things up.
One of the best shows ever! Pulling apart the Keurig alone was fascinating, so much tech in such a small space. The amount of things that can’t get sanitized on those super automated home machines is staggering. It’s crazy the amount of money people will spend to not use cocktail tins, a jigger, a strainer, and a long spoon.
I love the ad break in this one, it was clearly shot after one (or several) episodes were shot that day. Is it commonly known that once tipsy MOST wine tastes delicious? Should that be Bright Cellars motto? "For when two bottles in a night aren't enough let this be your third"
Thanks again to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this video and for the limited time offer! Click here bit.ly/BrightCellarsHowToDrink14 to
get 50% off your first 6 bottle box!
Part 1: ua-cam.com/video/QyA5vUeOkdA/v-deo.html
Twitch: bit.ly/2VsOi3d
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twitter: bit.ly/H2DTwit
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Blog: bit.ly/H2DBlog
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Gear: amzn.to/2LeQCbW
You could of named this voided warranty
Tried Bright Cellars, not a fan. All the wines are actually bottled and owned by the same company. They just selling convenience with the illusion of variety while bottling leftovers they buy from different wineries. IMO you'd be better off trying different 2 buck chuck bottles from Trader Joes and seeing what you like.
HOLY SHIT we have those squeeze it here i remember drinking them when i was little
Take it to a ewaste place not the trash heap.
Cointreau in a Margerita? Triple Sec, no?
the fact that bartesian called you an "overaged hipster" is kinda funny cos "drink robot that makes shit cocktails and is called a bartesian" feels like it could *only* be marketed to hipsters
Right? Isn't older hipsters with some spending money the exact target market for a drink making robot?
@@JC-fj7oo Of course. This also shows that, on top of selling an awful product, they have absolutely no respect for their customer base. Great company!
you see, they sell to overaged hipsters that don't see themselves as overaged
I'm wearing a scarf during Summer and listening to bands you've never heard of, so I can still buy one, right?
Hipsters hate nothing more than other hipsters. They are, of course, in denial about being Hipsters themselves.
It’s really telling how Bartesian reached out for a possible sponsorship initially, but immediately jumped to throwing insults the moment a genuine review came out. They could have so easily said something like “everyone has different tastes”
“he may have gotten an older batch” “he’s more into classics” but instead just insults
In the Bartesian, you should have put in 4 different colored waters in the bottles and seen how bad it mixed them.
you are all smarter than me, damn it
I was thinking the same thing!
@@howtodrink It happens. It's easy to watch a video and think of "What if..." It's different when you are going through and are doing it. When you did the first video with it, I had a suspicion that they took the cheap way out and plumbed everything together. This video confirmed it. I love the channel and you have introduced me to many drinks that I enjoy drinking.
@@howtodrink Wonder if you know someone who has one and is willing to try it
I liked the yolo suck this out of the hose 😂
man, Greg deflated INSTANTLY once he saw the signatures and chilling center in the keurig. the difference in quality between the two is just miles. keurig team actually put effort into theirs
The keurig was definitely a genuine attempt. It's probably just something that's hard or impossible to do reasonably. But they tried. Real product really trying to Do A Task. The bartesian is like an insult given physical form. I'm frankly shocked.
This Is classic let me borrow your homework but tweak it philosophy
I haven't seen the original video about it,but, despite the faulty product,it looked like a better put together product regardless
Especially at the same price point. Like if the Bartesian was like $60-100 I could kinda justify it, but both being around $300-350? That's just a scam compared to the Keurig.
@@Gamerkat10 I think their problem was because the pods included alcohol in them it limited where and how they could be sold and cut out a layer of customizeability. At that point you might as well buy a canned cocktail.
i honestly got real sad seeing those signatures man, like no customer will ever see those, really makes me think this was an honest passion project that sadly failed due to whatever reasons.
Yeah same
100% like he said you know they really tried and believed in the product.
It felt a bit crushing seeing those ...
The Bartesian, on the other hand, has no signatures on it because no one who worked on the project wants their name associated with it.
I've seen that kind of etched signatures once before on the inside of an old Microsoft Joystick design. I wonder how common the practice is given that most customers will never see it.
The Bartesian is literally made of the same parts as a windshield washer-fluid system. They could just buy them off the shelf. The most expensive part of manufacturing would be making the molds for the plastic housing. It's insane that this thing cost anywhere near as much as the Kurig.
I was thinking the same thing. The injection molding for the components was easily the most expensive bit. The thing that made me laugh the most was that the controller board they used is actually a really common controller board I have seen in used in cheap products before, just relabeled. It's a 70$ (max at market) product being sold as a premium product. In theory someone could create a device at a lower price point, take examples from what is being complained about here and improve, and sell a better product then what the Bartesian is for cheaper.
Also made me realize how easy it would be to make a functional version of this. One that would run a quick purge every time, no BS proprietary pods necessary
@@aaronhelmsman When I saw that air line that's what I thought this was doing, until I realized it is tied in after all of the booze lines. And, based on what was left in the main line after Greg made a drink, it isnt even clearing the main shared line.
It made me wonder if the original design actually had the purge line split off and tied in after each booze and water solenoid to clear out the entire system (minus the short line between bottle and solenoid), but a higher up realized they could save $2 per unit if they only tied it in farther down the line. Then, they didn't bother programming in a purge since it didn't do anything.
Only other thing I can think of is a really terrible attempt at adding aeration. If that is the case, they deserve far less credit than i was willing to give them
As a engineer this video was painful to watch. Not the destruction, that was warranted, but the fact that Bartesian charged a similar price to the Keurig is mind boggling. based on parts alone the Bartesian should at most be $100-150. Drinkworks made a genuine attempt at a cocktail machine.
As a factoryworker i could probably build a better version of the bartesian on my own starting with the pump placement
I was thinking the same thing. That is maybe $50-70 to make and they sell it for $370!
@@burnerheinz As an every-man, I could probably build a better version of the bartesian. Starting with every bottle having a dedicated line to the head.
@@shadowtheimpure oh i don't even know why they did that. Looks is the only Argument but even then it doesn't even look good.
As a firmware consultant who's worked on a somewhat similar machine for a startup, I get it. Smaller companies like that have higher overhead costs and smaller audiences so they have to charge more for it. I'm more surprised the Drinkworks is so cheap. RnD on that thing must've been expensive
"Overaged hipster" is a bold insult from a company that makes a $350 cocktail machine
Greg: honestly reviews a shitty piece of bartending robotics
Bartesian: "Disregard the review by this overage hipster"
Greg: "Hold my mai-tai..."
Well now I want a Mai Tai. Bar wench fetch me my Orgeat. Wait? I don't have a bar wench. ok, now taking applications for bar wench. Bring your own Orgeat.
I'm still trying to figure out who "Mika Kunis" is...
@@colbunkmust ---Mika married Apton Kooper, I think😆
The official bartesian account blocked me on Instagram today for pointing out that their spirits don't use 4 separate line.
@@Moseswasntamerican they should be flooded with comments about this.
As someone who makes cocktail robots as a hobby I can relate to the struggles these manufacturers have. If you're ever planning on coming to San Francisco you should make sure that it coincides with the Cocktail Robotics Grand Challenge that's (usually) held every year at the DNA Lounge.
That actually sounds incredibly cool.
@@howtodrink just leave your toolbox at home xD
drink dad needs to take apart more random stuff and explain what it does while drinking. please make that a thing.
It’s not the craziest idea
@@howtodrink Pressure vessels, capacitors and components containing heavy metals are best enjoyed while under the influence of alcohol, I hear. 😄
Sounds like someone needs to subscribe to AvE, lol
@@howtodrink Maybe, its time to start your youtube empire! One Chanel at a time. Can't wait till you start your fashion channel!
@@suzu9404 AvE is too nice about how he dismantles sometimes. The healing bench ain't gonna make the product any better. UA-cam needs more destructive reviews of terrible products!
the "water" inside the Keurig was probably a Chill block. the water inside it never gets used, its just used to chill your drink. i can see a peltier junction (solid state AC unit) on the side which could freeze that water into a chiller block.
I definitely agree that gin/vodka would have made a hell of a lot more sense than gin/rum.
EDIT: My conclusion is as follows:
Bartesian is a scam.
Keurig was an honest, if misguided, attempt.
@@SimuLord Hence my statement of "Honest, if misguided." They made a very good go of it, but the product ended up being so intricate that it had too many points of failure.
They did gin/rum because no drink is ever going to call for both at the same time.
@@HolySorcerer i raise you the abomination that is the long island iced tea (and it’s variations)
I'd say have gotten a look at the guts, does it really matter? They're all going to get mixed together anyways.
The saddest/worst thing about Bartesian is that it's not like they couldn't deliver a half decent machine. They had all the right parts. Just changing the hoses (separate lines for each flavor), adding a few more components and such for line clearing, add a bit more to the software to display messages about the autocleaning, and find a better way than shoveling factory reject drink mixes as "pods" and then it would have been a halfway decent machine. But nope, they did none of that and their refusal to acknowledge that their machine makes bad drinks reeks of charlatanism. Honest businesses will at least accept criticism and use it to improve their product.
i'm rewatching the original cocktail robot episode and you described the bartesian's margarita as having a weird additional "vanilla hookah tobacco" flavor to it, which, now knowing that everything's going through the same tube, maybe sounds like what a margarita might taste like if you threw a little splash of whiskey in there (the previous drink through was an old fashioned)
Oh my god, you're right. What an unbelievably bad design.... how did they do it....
@@Gamerkat10 it's basically made of the same crap that your car's windshield washer system is. I could probably build something that did the same thing in my garage for 20 dollars and gas money to go to AutoZone.
The bartesian is just a scam, straight up.
@@SavageGreywolf Great, now you got me thinking about making some jury rigged garage bar with a universial windsheild washer pump and some tubes.
@@SavageGreywolf And for another $10 you could add enough hoses to avoid cross contaminating everything. X'D
@@shocker1209081 it wouldn't help because they have one pump. They should have designed it better.... ie water starts the loop and every alcohol is only very tiny hose with solenoid into same hose as water and then simply rinse whole single hose line before and after drink. Easy peasy
It’s cathartic watching Greg verbally and physically disassemble these machines.
I dont know why, but when Greg found the signatures under the drinkworks I actually felt bad and almost teared up... someone really put some love into this, unlike the other one.
Apparently it was, I heard kureg bought the original plans or company who built this and it was I think called something else. So there was a really good attempt and I think it could work if they made is bigger and stuck to higher quality parts. The problem with Krueg is their bread and butter is to make things super affordable but I think this should have been a higher price point so they could put in better parts. I’ve seen wine versions of this idea for almost a grand and they last a very long time. I think if a different company bought it and went into a different direction it could have worked maybe.
And that's the way empathy works
@@yeetmeat2734 it is one of our best qualities after all. Tho this would be sympathy not empathy
This may seem heartless but it has no effect on me at all; if anything it has the opposite effect of irritating me. Think about it, there's no way the "team" hand-etched their signatures into tens of thousands of machines. They would've done just one, sent the design on to the plastics fabricator and they would've mass-produced them like with any other piece of technology out there.
And they put it in the machine where the vast majority of users would never look, to create a sort of Easter egg effect. 99% of people will never know and never think about it, and the 1% who do will instantly feel that jolt of sympathy and feeling of "artisan-ness" seeing it. It's a psychological pathway that they _want_ you to feel, because it disguises the fact that this is no different to any other piece of machinery that would've been mass-produced and mass-assembled by some factory workers (and nobody's thinking about _them_ ; where are _their_ signatures?).
That kind of consumer manipulation is incredibly cynical to me and it's sad it seems to have worked on so many people. Like, the other brand was called out and responded the way they felt they needed to. They verbally defended their product (not saying they did it the right way) and everyone's giving them shit for it; meanwhile the other just has one piece of plastic and gets a ton of sympathy, and doesn't have to say a single word. They're not better, just smarter.
@@ZzyzzyzzsYeah... I think this is nonsense. Sometimes people really are proud of the things they make. It's underneath the lid because they didn't want anyone to see it. It's included in the machine because they know it's there and it brings them joy. Just a little point of pride for a small team. If they wanted to emotionally manipulate buyers with something like this, they'd put it in the instructions or somewhere it would be found by a large percentage of customers.
It may have even been from the original team that designed the machine before it was sold to Keurig. They might have negotiated that in the buy out as a way to still feel like they were part of it, even though it was going to be mass produced.
I understand most things are corporate manipulation. But your post seems like a huge reach. Like I said, some people are actually proud of the products they make. It was an honest effort and this little team probably wanted to do something special.
so I've been one of the owners of the Keurig drink works and when I got my email saying I can get the refunds I called in and asked them why they're going to discontinue it. according to the representative I spoke with, there were a lot of hoops to jump through in order to be able to get the pods sold in each state. and this I can attest to because living in Virginia I couldn't just go to a store and buy the pods because they had alcohol in them and only Virginia ABC can sell liquor. for a year and a half any time I put in order in it had to get shipped in from either Maryland or Pennsylvania and became a huge hassle with FedEx over the delivery.
Oh thats a huge point I hadn't considered
This is probably the answer that least damages their reputation so they’re going with that one over the likely multitude of other reasons
MA has, um, a rather unique stance on alcohol as well, can buy hard liquor everywhere including grocery stores, but only wine purchased from in state businesses can be shipped by fedex/ups type shippers
@@bellablue5285 I´m sorry, but... that doesn´t make a whole lotta sense.
@@bellablue5285 Not your comment, it was clear and well explained. I mean, the alcohol laws.
I really like the part where Greg ripped the innards out of the machines and sucked out their fluids like a feral animal
Holy shit I didn't even think of it like that
The feral growls he made. WTF?
I've actually taken my Drinkworks apart, and a few notes for you
- The insulated water chamber is actually cooled by a Peltier to chill the water (which is why it takes 50 minutes to chill water)
- Carbonation does go into the clear water vessel
- The pod is dispensed directly from the top head via a mechanism to crush the pod, and retract the bottom safety pin
- Water flows from the vessel into the pod area
- Water is dispensed from pod head, mixes with pod
Honestly was watching it and was guessing what you confirmed. Concept wise it would work just like a normal Keurig and mix with the pod instead of sucking it in or else it would have even more cross contamination than the bartisian.
That chiller is also closed-loop I believe. Looks like that water (or coolant) was likely filled and sealed at the factory.
@@markmacleod2077 There's no coolant or anything pre-installed. It comes dry from the factory, except for a few drops for testing.
@@markmacleod2077 Peltier cells are thermoelectric, there is no coolant fluid involved. The "copper tubes" going in the chiller are heat pipes to cool the hot side of the peltier cell.
Wow a peltier to cool it? That's pretty inefficient but would save a lot of space on cooling.
13:14 can you imagine if the entity mixing your drinks spilled liquor everywhere every time it poured? I’d be so shocked and appalled, I’d probably watch every video on his channel.
Greg: "there's like mold growing in the tubes"
Also Greg: "I'm just gonna suck this out"
I'm genuinely impressed with how bad the bartesian is designed. Nothing about that should be complicated. You just draw from some reservoirs, that's it. That's the most complicated thing. 6 small hoses for all 5 spirits and water would be all you need, but they didn't want to "splurge" on the multiple pumps they would need
Crazy thought: there are multiple ways they could have achieved this without requiring multiple pumps. Here's two off the top of my head:
1. Use gravity. No pump needed.
2. Instead of sucking the liquids through the pump (which is guaranteed to cross contaminate a little, and likely means the pump will have a short lifespan) use the pump to pressurize air inside of the liquid bottles, which then forces the liquid out.
In both cases, they need to add a drain and a mechanism to flush water and then air through the tubes. Not only for cleanliness, but it could also be used to flush common tubes between uses.
Instead of using an inline flow meter, which can be contaminated, use a scale in the glass stand to measure weight of each ingredient.
@@haphazard1342 When we watched another review of the Bartesian, my husband and I wondered how they kept the tubing from the rum/gin section from being cross-contaminated. We really didn't consider that they just didn't give a shit. Our idea was that it could have two separate openings/hoses in the bottom of the unit, with a notch for alignment, and a small tab/pin in the cap of the two bottles that would fit into the notch. Mostly idiot proof, because the pin would prevent you from inserting a bottle the wrong way.
@@haphazard1342 I was also wondering why they didn't pressurize. Simple and low cost. Just have a 1 way valve for air on the reservoir caps.
dude that's like 5$ per pump and 1$ per hose, are you crazy?
If they used everclear, they could use it both to make vodka and flush the water lines through as sterile.
It really changes things when you see a signature on the inside of a product. It's one thing to rag on a piece of equipment of questionable quality that was made in some sweatshop with zero attention, but once you can see that someone took the effort to etch their name on an inside panel where no one can see it you realize there's a personal connection to that appliance.
Someone (multiple someones in this case) believed in their crappy little electronic bartender enough to personalize their effort in assembling it, and it makes it that much harder to say "this product doesn't need to exist." Whoever these people are, they truly believed that it did need to exist, and were willing to bring it to life through design, prototyping, and finalization of the design.
To those people who were brave enough to sign their work: your product may not have been a success this time, but I truly hope you keep imagining and designing products. Your next gadget might be the one we all can't live without in ten years' time.
Yeah but also the thing they designed will unnecessarily fill landfills with garbage that will never decompose soooooo
Watching him tear apart the bartiesian was oddly satisfying. Like the Doom guy ripping the head off a demon except the demon is making shitty drinks
Rip and pour.
“My friend ISABELLE makes better drinks than you!!!”
Appropriate, since Greg sounded like a Pinky for a few seconds when he finished of the Barteasian.
How To Drink - *says their product is bad*
Bartesian - You don't know what you're talking about!
How To Drink - *SHOWS that their product is bad*
@@myopiczeal It's almost LockpickingLawyer-levels of public product shaming.
Difference being that Master Lock has, afaik, never bothered to try and whine at LPL even to the pitiful extent that Bartesian did at Greg. Possibly because he *is* a lawyer...
The fact bartesian wants people to disregard probably one of the most knowledgeable mixologists i know of goes to show how bad their company is.
Any time a company feels the need to throw shade on negative review(er)s is a big red flag.
I really appreciate this episode and the last one. We were seriously considering saving up and getting one of these things for our place. You legitimately saved us a chunk of money we shouldn't have spent.
We host a fair amount of small parties with our friends and like to have a drink during tabletop sessions. Being limited on fridge and cabinet space means keeping a bunch of different ingredients is a no-go, so these *seemed* like a nice, if too expensive, alternative that would allow everyone to have the drink they wanted and not have to make a mess or worry about bringing their stuff with them. It seriously could've been useful for situations like that, especially so people who aren't knowledgeable in making drinks could still have them without relying on someone who did (I'm not putting down the DM screen every time someone wants a drink). It's so frustrating to see how little effort and money they put into such expensive machines and pods.
The Kureg seems like it was a system designed by someone else and halfway through was bought out so they didn't get the chance to do later prototypes and test it out, I would have been curious to see a second generation unit.
Yeah, Bartesian can say they keep going out of stock because they're so popular, but we all know it's because of the ongoing supply-chain issues. They can go kick rocks.
You’re never in stock if you only make as many as people order
Not to mention, just because you sell a lot of something, doesn't mean it is a good product. McDonalds doesn't make a good burger, but they sell millions.
@@ADBBuild It also helps they're basically the only ones on the market now.
@@ADBBuild bad example.
@@ADBBuild To be fair, McDonalds makes an excellent product as far as what it's going for. It's a consistent burger and fries that won't immediately kill you. Very few people keel over dead or projectile vomit after a given McDonald's meal, no matter where in their home country they get it. (The nutrition being deadly in the long run aside, of course.)
If McD's served alcohol, it would probably come out of a Bartesian and we'd all say "Well, you ordered a McMargarita, of course it didn't taste good. As long as it got you drunk, that's what you should care about."
The signatures made me a little sad, too, Greg. I hope they move on to better things that don't produce so much plastic waste.
11:14 - Shhhhh! We could build this and make millions!!!!!! Then sell out to Diageo for billions, and buy yachts from David Seal. (I hear he has a UA-camr special deal)
Hey man if I can get cut in on that action I’m about it
To be fair, Diageo will probably buy up anything so long as it claims to do something drinks-related. You don't get that kind of market share otherwise.
@@howtodrink You could easily market it as a kind of alchemy machine too. Literally just takes Aqua Vitae and turns it into drinks to cool and soothe thy heated brow.
Glen & Greg is a crossover I would kill for
Glen!
The juicero did not even add water, by the way. It just smashed juice out of a prepared package of fruit pulp. That's ALL it did. You could achieve the same with your hands.
But you're a busy mark- I mean sucker- I mean person, and you don't have time for that!
It was a high-tech smasher that was, for some reason, using DRM and a phone app... to pour a single glass of low-quality, super-perishable juice.
Oh, no! It also had a sensor to make sure the packages were Juicero packages, which were hideously expensive!
You forgot that it was an Uber expensive subscription service for both the juice packets and the app to make the machine run. For the money though the machine was incredibly overbuilt.
@@Kyzrath just low quality it's much worse than that.
Offer the pumps and tubes and valves to a local maker space they would love the parts for a robot or something insted of dumping them. Also interesting to see what's inside
Good Call!
So I looked at the Bartesian manual online and they only recommend doing a rinse basically when you've stopped using it/aren't going to use it for a while. So definitely recommending that you mix all of your alcohol in a way
My favorite thing about it spilling liquor everywhere when you remove a resevoir is I have a 25 dollar gravity water feeder for my cat that doesn't spill a drop of water.
Its not a complicated concept. What absolute garbage.
Yeah but you have to remember these companies make those things cheap as physically possible sell it to you for a massive profit and then hope your dumb ass gets hooked on buying the over priced pods which cost them pennies at best to make.
Right? I was thinking about my wet-vac and how its gravity-fed water tank doesn't spill a drop when I lift it up.
That said, I assume viscous liquids like whisky make the engineering of a perfect valve more challenging. All the more reason they should've just put the base spirit flavors in the pods and standardized on Vodka or Everclear.
Right??? That startled me a lot because I have like. a $35 humidifier for my room that is full of MASSIVE amounts of water and somehow does not spill a single drop when I load and unload it. that's just some random thing I bought off Amazon, it's not even high quality. this isn't a hard concept, and that is BOOZE you're spilling! precious, expensive booze!
So from what I'm seeing from this, I could build a better version of a Bartesian with an Arduino board, some food grade tubing, and a few cheap peristaltic pumps, and run the entire cost up to about 50-60 bucks, and in doing so remove the pods, make the system open source for community improvement, and make the entire concept actually viable from my shed.
How theyre defending this product is baffling...
I would love for someone to do this, because the drink machine is a fun idea, just terribly terribly executed.
Great, now I have another project in the queue
There's a dude on Reddit who made exactly this.
@@JeepWranglerIslander links, good sir!
@@JeepWranglerIslander links plz
From one overaged hipster nerd drinker to another, thank you for your service in tearing these stupid little droids apart.
Those are definitely NOT the 'droids we're looking for
@@dleonidae Damn you, you beat me to it.
Greg totally destroying machines was a really interesting mix up. Your analysis was more thoroughly reasoned than I expected and nailed the problem with most the appliances they're trying to put in your home right now
I want whoever made the Keurig one to have another crack at it. I think if they scrapped the pod idea and went with multiple small tanks (or take a leaf out of bartesian's book and have replaceable bottles) that you fill with specific ingredients to make lots of one cocktail with all the bells and whistles it already had, I think it could be an awesome product. Have it aimed at a party throwers audience, so it can make like 40 margaritas in a night, slightly better than just having a keg of Margarita. maybe they could make a more deluxe model with more tanks that can make 2-3 drinks without changing out the ingredients.
I think the big issue would be cleaning the lines. Leaving any sweet juice will cause shit to grow.
I like this idea too, but I bet Keurig and most other companies view this machine as a way to sell pods. I doubt they give a hoot about the actual machine and its use. So making it actually useful in the way you're describing seems unlikely
@@bradleylovej yup, they are a pod company that tries to get people to buy new things to put those pods in.
I think it might have been a buyout by Keurig for a startup that was only part way done with dev, possibly because Keurig was working on their own machine. Usually how that stuff goes.
The Margaritaville MD3000 was exactly this. It's now discontinued, but for a party, it's amazing. It's not, however, something you keep on the counter for a random drink now and then, like these want to be.
I'm 8 months late but when he ripped the head off the Bartesian it was an instant like on this episode. Actually any episode he does is an instant like. Love HTD!!!
It's heartbreaking seeing how much love and care obviously went into the drink works, and I almost would be curious to see what future iterations would have brought
Seeing the love that went into the Drinkworks at some point almost makes me want to see the original team give it another go. I do honestly think there could be a market for a product where you provide the booze and a machine mixes it for you.
It is a little strange though to have a machine etch signatures onto the bottom of the lid. Almost makes me wonder if it was just some units that were hand signed for one reason or another.
Literally all they need to do is make a machine which measures pours of base spirits. I know they won't sell pods that way, but it's the way to go for something like this.
The signatures would just be a bit of extra engraving on the mold for the top panel. Just a few more lines of G-code.
The Juicero comparsion was very apt in this case considering how incredibly over engineered the juicero was
When AvE took one apart, I was surprised at the quality that went inside of it, especially for the deal that you had to sign up for.
@@AerodynamicBrick oh yeah, they were almost certainly not making any money on the units sold. They were banking on the recurring subscription fees which failed miserably
Except the bartesian was just incredibly under-engineered. They could've made it work with their concept, But they did it terribly.
@@azblurbit and that's probably why Bartesian is still in businness
When Greg asked whether it was gonna be four or five hoses, I already knew it was going to be one. The air intake was a surprise though.
what surprised me was how they basically maximized cross-contamination with that setup; i expected 4 (or however many) tubes branching off of the main one, and instead it was a plate of spaghetti.
Am I the only one who just imagined Greg’s father-in-law mixing him a screwdriver (the cocktail) and Greg being like “thanks?”
And stirs it with a screwdriver for that added dad joke
Greg: "It probably has four tubes for the different alcohols.
Me: "Oh you sweet summer child."
At first I was thinking maybe the Bartesian did something smart like dispense the alcohol then dilute the pod with water that simultaneously flushed the final shared tube. But no, it's just nasty.
I'm not convinced the Keurig is sucking the drink syrup into the mixing chamber, precisely because it's a syrup and will make a mess of everything. I think it's more likely it reads a code on the pot to determine what to do, then chills, aerates, and/or carbonates water in the chamber, and finally pushes the result through the pod (diluting the syrup in the process) and into your glass. But I might also be wrong, since I can't examine the hardware in detail. Either way, it's not surprising it's overly complicated and prone to failure.
No I think you nailed it. If the Keurig sucked the pod into the chamber that chamber would get as gross if not worse than the Bartesian
Don't sell yourself short, Ed, 'cause I think you hit the bull's-eye there.
@@josephschultz3301 Thanks, I do think I'm probably right. I'm just saying it's not inconceivable that, were I the one dismantling it, I might see something that makes me go "Oh god, why would you do that, what the hell, no wonder they couldn't keep these things functional."
@@arcanum3000 Exactly, yo. And it's an overarching problem with most, if not _all,_ of these drink machines. The idea is that it makes the process of fixing a drink more convenient, but in order to achieve that they've produced a machine that can only do the job poorly, and in the most roundabout way possible too.
I'm sure there's better designs out there, ones that are less prone to failure and generally less high-maintenance too, but I haven't seen them yet. Just the fact that these devices can get as disgusting as they do is a major reason why I'd never purchase one.
Anybody who's cleaned the mold out of a soda dispenser knows the kind of gunk that can build-up in these things.
The tiger growl, the chomping on the rubber tub, I was unprepared…
Yes, Greg growling was an experience I was not ready for
This better not awaken anything in me!
I hope you keep the part that has all their signatures on it. Its honestly a really cool piece of the machine. Also thank you for this dive into these machines. I love watching things get taken apart like this
I was looking for a laugh but ended up heartbroken because keurig was shown how much love was put into it. Even if it was bad, a group of people had actually etched their names where no one would see it because they believed in it😭😭
Greg: I'm not a tech guru guy.
Also Greg: Does a pretty damn good job at a tech review!
Those two rods inside the Keurig mixing chamber are almost certainly for measuring the water level inside that tank. I've made a setup like that myself before to measure a water level.
I guess we should just ask "Mika" Kunis for all of our bartending info, since she clearly is the expert, according to Bartesian
My guess of all the water that spilled out was the chiller's fluid in a closed loop, like a PC water cooler (even the radiator/chiller looked straight out of master cooler's catalog)
That radiator was 100% some chinesium CPU cooler that they repurposed for that. Not saying they shouldn't. Apparently it worked. But it was just funny
@@azblurbit chinesium cpu coolers aren't made of food grade plastic tubing
👁️👄👁️
there is no chiller, the cooler is a peltier cell (thermoelectric cooling) which is cooled on the hot side by the thing that looks like a PC tower cooler
@@harryw.174 he is talking of the radiator
I love the Meredith mic. I like having her commentary. Really adds something to the channel.
When you got to the second one, if you'd add a timer it would look like a scene from every action movie. "Meredith!!! I cut the red wire or the orange wire??? Quick, we got one second left".
"It always stops at one."
Fun fact: I work in radio and Keurig paid for a NATIONAL campaign throughout all our stations to give away a DrinkWorks machine in every market and then literally 10 days after we began the campaign, they decided to kill the DrinkWorks. Amazing leadership over there.
I'm curious how the bartesian (however it's spelled) social media team would react to this video
They should delete their account
@@howtodrink 🤣🤣🤣
@@howtodrink they should delete their product and potentially the company
With great fury, I'd imagine.
Somebody is going to be earning their paycheck this week.
The funny thing is that I was mostly agnostic about these machines. I'm not their target audience anyway: I'm old, have a well-stocked and equipped bar, and know how to make a good cocktail. (I don't much anymore because my husband is on chemo and misses being able to drink.) But their heavy-handed response to Greg means that not only would I never buy one, I will actively discourage anyone I find considering one.
WTG, Bartesian social media team!
Bartesian called you an over-aged hipster. You called an ambulance… for them. Absolutely destroyed them and their machine.
I actually don't drink but I come here for your wonderful personality.
Same here! I also don't like coffee yet I've watched every video from James Hoffman
Same; just the ideas, history, and flavor theory behind the drinks are entertaining/intriguing
I find these to be great alternatives to cooking shows because I can't stand alcohol so I don't get hungry watching.
its really funny that even in putting down the juicero you managed to overstate what it did. it was pouches of jice, that it squeezed out for you. no water mixing or anything, just squeezed a pouch of juice into a cup for you. people even took the puches and did it by hand easily.
This video is incredible. I didn't know I wanted to see someone literally tear apart a machine and figuratively tear apart it's creators. 😂
I wonder if the Kuerig could just be replaced with a sodastream? It honestly seems like they took a something like that and put it into a small fridge and then combined water, pod ingredients, and Co2 for airating
Honestly soda stream should just come up with a coctail line and put these out of business.
A tiny kegerator?
Would you even need a separate product? Any drink that calls for a carbonated ingredient, just throw the hooch and other stuff in the bottle, and carbonate it all at once.
@@richardbloodgood4399 I'm sure people do this already. Champagne up some simple white wine by carbonating it? (eww that sounds quite bad)
Absolutely living for the feral snarling Greg biting at the Bartesian hoses
"Ask ashton kutcher and mila kunis" Yea, we should ask people who invested in the company if the product is good lol.
Having used a few Keurig coffee pod machines in the past, I can buy that the Keurig robo-bartender was an honest attempt to make something that worked, but that it failed just because of the *water*. Their coffee makers are pretty renowned for having the constitution of Victorian orphans and dying within weeks if you don't use distilled water in them no matter how diligent you are about descaling them, and that's a machine with just one line for just one liquid.
It might be weeks late at this point, but Greg, I hope you kept (or keep) the Keurig's lid with all the signatures. They really, genuinely cared about their product, and that's exactly the kind of thing that deserves to be kept on a shelf on the set, to remember that dedication, and to display it for the future. It'd be horribly sad if that was just forgotten about and thrown away with the rest of the scrap.
The frickin' GROWL at 18:26! Sir!
It looks like it could be using TEC/Peltier cooler to chill the water in the mixing vessel. The heat sink attached to it just looks like a standard one for your CPU.
I think that's correct. It's just chilling the water down to ambient air temp
@@howtodrink No, if it is using a peltier cooler, it will chill it much colder than ambient. Peltiers are used to cool computers, but also in cheap small minifridges and stuff. It uses electricity to create a temperature difference across the cooler. One side gets cold as the other gets hot.
@@ADBBuild Peltiers definitely aren't used in any consumer grade computers since they're not very powerful and are very inefficient. For the most part cooling computers to sub-ambient temperatures isn't very useful unless you're going for competitive overclocking (but that's really its own thing).
My guess is that this doesn't use a Peltier at all, but is using a more standard refrigeration unit and is using the CPU cooler to dissipate the heat from the compressor to make it more efficient
The back-and-forth between Greg and Meredith is as stellar as ever xD .
Greg: _"YOU WANNA DRINK SOME WINE?!"_
i really love these "greg's gadget hole" episodes
I don’t think it’s polite to talk about his gadget hole in public 🕳
Both of those systems needed a clean / purge cycle to run between drinks. Long term storage of the alcohol in those tubes was going to make them take on "hose flavor" too.
Lmfao I was waiting for this for so long, the last one was great
Hey Greg, with the hotter half of the year coming up down here in Texas, I've been playing around with some tea cocktails over the week or two. been really enjoying one and thought you might dig it.
Been going with
~Cracked ice in shaker
~2.5 oz Ellington Reserve mango whiskey.
~2.5 oz Deep Eddy's peach vodka.
~1.5 oz Carmen's Antigua spiced rum.
~1.5 oz Deep Eddy's lemon vodka
~Juice from half a lemon into the shaker.
~Top with half of a pure leaf unsweet tea (The small bottles)
That's what I go with for making a full shaker. (makes 2 or 3 drinks depending on glassware)
11:45 "You are wasting money on the machine."
If this thing did everything the way Greg expected it to, that statement would still hold true. Hell, even if this thing *somehow* made perfect drinks _100% of the time_ , that statement would still hold true.
EDIT: I also suspect I know why Yeti hasn't reached out to sponsor the show: they saw the savagery Greg unleashes on crap products, and decided not to risk it. Which is a shame, since they're awesome.
Yeti makes bad stuff?
Genuinely asking, ive only used their thermos cups
Is no one gonna bring up Greg's electrical knowledge? Might not have been super advanced but homeboy knew more about the wiring and components than most people who fuck with their electronics.
pov: Greg teaches you about electrical components whilst drinking heavily
So glad I found your channel before buying the Fartesian on “sale”! I wonder if the engineers who designed the product assumed the alcohol would just kill the bacteria and mold.
Wow, that Drinkworks is a really fascinating machine. Looking at it, the Juicero comparison might actually be more apt.
Juicero was a product idea designed to suck up venture capital money. This resulted in the engineering team essentially getting a blank check to make the device. It was beautiful, the engineers and machinists should definitely be proud of it. They created a fantastically designed and crafted gadget that ultimately... connected to WiFi and squeezed a bag.
The Bartesian looks like nothing more than one of the drink robots I've seen at Maker Faire, just put in a pretty package and built to a price. Not surprised it outlasted the Drinkworks. It'd be hard not to with that profit margin.
Love your enthusiasm, curiosity and disgust as you joyfully rip these contraptions apart
guys you really did it. although I know you put in a lot of work, your work is about showing drinks and drinking them! congrats ^^
Man really started tearing the Bartesian apart with his bare hands and growling as he gnawed on parts of it like god damn
In the original review: AS SOON as you said the Bartisian's margarita had a "vanilla taste" I immediately said to myself "It's just one hose, isn't it?" and I was right.
The post destruction snarl is such a vibe! Greg you're the best!
As someone with experience in the matter if you're going to recycle it you have to go through and take all the electronics out because those have to go to electronics recycling center then you can dispose of the hoses and the plastic as either regular recycling if they'll take it or landfill if they won't
I'm glad you revisited these! I completely missed the first round of robo drinks, and seeing this pop up made me go back and watch that one. great stuff all around
It's kind of impressive Bartesian managed to make something so shockingly bad
Pure human entropy! Perfect. Keep it up, Greg.
Pretty sure the air line is there to be able to purge the line after a cocktail is mixed. That doesn’t solve the mixing from the shorter lines though. Also how well does that purge really work…
The two pitfalls of engineering in two different machines: overly-complicated to the point of failure, and overly-simplistic to the point of failure
Yup
I couldn't tell from the video, but I wonder if all the liquors sharing a central line isn't as bas as we think it is, if the machine always pulls liquor first then water. Since "would" water always come last, it flushes the central line. So the next liquor only mixes with water in the central line, not the previous liquor like we think.
In theory, yes, but the company producing said machine would have to alter water preasure after each different coctail (different viscosity). So more R&D and it probably wouldn't be countertop or in the price range they (w)are. Adoption rate should be fairly low as well
He literally tried some of the residual liquid and it was tequila and whiskey mixed with water
That big fan/heat sink contraption in the Keurig is what's called a peltier. When electricity is applied, one side gets very hot while the other side gets very cold. This is what they put in those little refrigerator/warmers that hold 4 cans of soda/beer/soup that you plug into your cars cigarette lighter. They work decently on a small scale like this, but that's about it.
*Side note:* I've taken apart a couple of different Keurig devices. They are all complex and extremely over complicated.
I can't believe the bartesian actually exists. How is something that expensive, with a marketing team so vehemently supporting it, when it's actually so poorly designed? It boggles my mind.
To sell to techbros with too much money. It’s a status symbol.
Money, the unit probably cost 50 bucks to produce, that's huge profits and most companies don't give a shit about the consumer, so you pay a marketing team to sell it no matter how big a piece of shit it is
Capitalism in a nutshell.
Because fools can be convinced to buy it.
Because people are fucking stupid and will buy anything if it “looks” cool.
Genuinely a very cool video. I'm not a gadgets person in even a small capacity but seeing the inner workings of these things is really interesting, especially comparing these two in terms of quality and complexity. (also Greg going beast mode biting and ripping and killing the Bartesian was an unexpected treat). Agree with other comments on seeing if there are local maker spaces that will take some of the parts off your hands rather than just taking it to a waste management center.
What makes the Drinkworks even worse is it has DRM on the capsules, it's useless after they shutdown. It's such a waste.
the inside of the chamber at 26:06 would make a nice Fallout thingy with some paint and light xD
maybe some sort of a children of the atom lamp :D
I've been meaning to comment on this for a while: it's always fun when Merideth chimes in! Greg is amazing solo but some interaction helps liven and lighten things up.
One of the best shows ever! Pulling apart the Keurig alone was fascinating, so much tech in such a small space. The amount of things that can’t get sanitized on those super automated home machines is staggering. It’s crazy the amount of money people will spend to not use cocktail tins, a jigger, a strainer, and a long spoon.
It's kinda funny how much the spilled alcohol bugs Greg when how much he spills has become a meme. Love it though.
The difference between him and Bartesian is that he makes this shit look good.
@@richardbloodgood4399 it's not wasted if it's for *A E S T H E T I C S*
I love the ad break in this one, it was clearly shot after one (or several) episodes were shot that day. Is it commonly known that once tipsy MOST wine tastes delicious? Should that be Bright Cellars motto? "For when two bottles in a night aren't enough let this be your third"