Wolfgang Puck has announced a new line of self-heating lattes. Shame on him! He should know better!

puck

The coffee will come in 4 flavours under the Puck brand. Others will be released by the developer of the can.

The new self-heating can took a company called OnTech 7 years to develop - not to mention the $24 million price tag. They intend to make back the profit by tapping into a small percentage of a huge coffee market - aiming at those who don’t want to go out for coffee but are also too busy/lazy to make it themselves.

The cans start to heat when a buttom on the bottom is pressed. Water goes into the inner cone area that is filled with quicklime. The chemical reaction heats the coffee to 145 degrees. In order to hold all this lovely technology, the can is made to weigh 1 lb 2oz - for 10oz of coffee. Try lugging that in your car.

How does taste sum up? Bad, so far. The panel of staff members thought it was warm (the purpose of the can), but that the coffee was sweet and tasted like chemicals. Mmm. Chemicals. Ingredients include sucralose, acesulfame, potassium (salt!?!) and “natural” flavours.

The newspiece identifies the need for this type of beverage because people eat more often in their cars now. Safety aside, that is a valid argument. However it should not mean you need to drink crap. And, this statement is interesting:

“I’m not trying to replace your dinner, but when you’re on your way to work and you need some oatmeal and you can’t get to the microwave, we will be there for you,” said Jonathan Weisz, the OnTech chief executive. “This is going to be a huge, huge part of society in the United States. In two years everyone will be drinking from self-heating containers.”

So, to sum up, do you really want a reheated coffee or latte of any sort that has been sitting in a can for who knows how long after it took who know how long to get it to the can after roasting from beans of some undetermined and likely non fair trade origin?

If you say yes, you’re on the wrong blog!

This news comes via the New York Times.