Hey guys, Adam from Tested. Starbucks the coffee company reached out to me
recently because they're super excited about the national rollout of their
Nitro Cold Brew and they wanted to know if I could film a video here in the cave
that helped them spread that excitement. They explained to me that what makes
their Nitro Cold Brew special is that it's infused with nitrogen which makes
these tiny bubbles that make it smoother and velvety. And I thought about my
coffee drinking habits and I know me. I know I like a lot of cream in my
coffee so I thought what if I could build a nitrogen powered machine that
would add sweet cream to Nitro Cold Brew? I decided to make what's called
aeolipile. It's called a hero's engine and it's an ancient
machine that is a sphere with two outlets and when you put an expanding
gas in it like steam they jet and they cause the thing to spin. I was
planning to use liquid nitrogen off-gassing to create the same kind of
pressure and use that spinning to do some work to deliver the creamer. I
should point out that the Starbucks lawyers have specifically asked me to
make it crystal clear that the liquid nitrogen I'm using to power my machine
has nothing to do with the nitrogen that they are infusing their Nitro Cold
Brew. OK with that being said I started building my hero's engine and at
the beginning it seemed pretty straightforward. I bought a stainless
steel gazing ball that people use in their gardens or their fountains. I
drilled into it. I braised some brass to it and started machining the rig that
would deliver sweet cream to my coffee. Now my inspirational starting point here
was obviously the nitrogen in Nitro Cold Brew. Starbucks uses a tap system to
infuse gaseous nitrogen directly into the liquid coffee, creating thousands of
micro bubbles that lead to that smooth texture I mentioned earlier.
I'm doing something a lot simpler. I'm simply using the fact that nitrogen
expands when it heats to power the jets of my hero's engine to spin it and do
the work to deliver sweet cream to my Nitro Cold Brew.
It all seemed to be going well until we started to do some testing. We got it
spinning just fine but it was very hard to get it to do any actual work. And I
have to admit that yesterday at around 4 p.m. I didn't think that I had a working
machine. In fact I was pretty sure that I had a total failure of a device.
After a lot of back and forth we decided just to shoot one final test that day
just to get it in the can and make sure we had great coverage of it. And then
this happened. Come on, baby. Come on. Let's get spinning.
No, no, move the wire. Move the wire. Move the wire. Move the wire.
Come on, come on, yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Come on, do some work. No. No. Work! Work! Work!
Work! Work! Come on!
Yes! Yes!
Yeah! Work! Work! Work! Work!
It might have actually worked! Holy shirtballs!
OK, the moment of truth. If everything goes according to plan here's what's
about to happen. I'm gonna take my liquid nitrogen from its Dewar, pour it into
this cup and then transfer it into my hero's engine which I will then cap. At
that point the boiling liquid nitrogen will be expanding out these two ports
which will cause this to spin counterclockwise at a high rate of speed
which if it all goes according to plan will cause this belt system to start
turning this thread which will drop this lever and pull this pulley tipping the
sweet cream into my Nitro Cold Brew. In theory. 10-year-old me is really excited
right now. Pouring nitrogen in my shop! All right.
Here we go. Transferring it into the hero's engine. Oh that's cold. Good. Good.
Good. Good. Good.
Come on, come on, come on. Last of it. 400. 800. Oh! That's good.
OK. The cap. That's a good sign. All right, here we go. Come on, come on. Yes!
Yes! Yes! Not speeding up. Come on. Speed up. Speed up! Speed up! Yes! Come on, you can do it.
I believe in you. Speeding up. Speeding up. Yes! Go! Go! Go!
OK, maybe I overdid it, but honestly don't you think that's why
they called me?