- I feel like I'm the Inspector Gadget of coffee.
Espresso gadget.
♪ Ta Na Na Na Na espresso gadget ♪
♪ Ta Na Na Na Na Na Na ♪
Hey guys, it's Alix and I love coffee.
Which is a good thing
because today I'm gonna be making tons of coffee
with gadgets I found on the internet.
Gadgets and coffee, my two favorite things.
I'll be evaluating them on price, how well they work,
and if you should consider getting them.
We've got a lot of gadgets to get to,
so let's check them out.
All right, here we are, we've got a lot of gadgets.
To kick things off, we've got this minipresso,
a miniature espresso maker.
We've also got two milk frothers.
This one's kind of pricey and this one is cheap.
So, we'll see how they both do.
We've got these two things for latte art.
If you follow me on IG,
you know I love a latte art.
We also have this coffee bean roaster,
we'll see how that goes.
We have our two grinders, manual and electric.
We've got the big boy over here, a vacuum coffee maker.
All right, let's put these gadgets to work.
Okay, first up, we have our on the go espresso maker.
Ooh, comes with a little bag.
It's not too big which is obviously good,
especially if you're camping.
It's like a Russian doll, you just keep going.
Oh.
Okay, so I have my little filter basket
with my coffee grounds.
This, I fill with boiling water.
This is the water tank.
Gonna screw that on the bottom
and now I'm going to unlock this.
(Alix gasp)
(Alix shouting)
It says start pumping slowly above the cup.
Oh, let's try it this way.
(Alix shouting)
(Alix laughing)
It's going. (laughing)
It sounds like a dying bird.
All right, so we've got our beautiful cup of espresso.
So you got the little like foamy foam on top.
Let's see how it tastes.
I think this is really good.
I would be stoked to have this.
This is some glamping stuff.
Next, let's test out our milk frothers.
So first up we have this one by Miroco.
Ooh, definitely looks pretty legit.
I'm gonna go for the heat and froth,
which is pressing it once.
Okay, so I'm gonna pour in my milk.
I've got some half and half here
and I'm just going to press this little button.
Oh, it's already going.
Pretty easy.
I like things that are easy.
It's already foaming.
That's fast.
Oh, there it goes.
Wow.
Ooh.
So I'm gonna pour it in our cup A.
Ooh, look at that.
It's perfect. I love it.
Next thing we're doing is this Milkboss milk frother.
Wow. I've never had one that comes with like a stand.
That's kind of cool.
So this thing didn't come with batteries,
which I never have batteries.
If I bought this, I'd be like a little annoyed.
Let's try.
Oh. (laughing)
I feel like a barista.
There's some sort of like technique at being
kind of closer to the top of the milk
to get the air incorporated for the foam.
Foaming this.
I think we're good.
Should I pour it in?
Yeah, that looks cool.
Although, I would say it's like a way bubbly or foam.
This one's a nicer texture.
You don't get that nice foamy like lip.
I want the foam mustache.
Okay, that's it for our milk frothers.
Next we're moving on to latte arts.
We have two tools
for making one of my favorite pastimes.
Latte art.
I've only seen this one online, it's a spice pen.
So you put like spices in it and then you can draw with it.
And this is like what I use a toothpick for,
for like put a finer details of the latte art.
Okay. Let's get it going.
So I guess we're gonna open this guy up first.
The spice pen.
It works.
I just need to fill it with my spices.
So right now I have some cocoa powder.
You could also use like cinnamon, nutmeg, matcha.
Oh my God.
I didn't even notice that.
I swear it's like a beluga whale.
That's hilarious.
It has eyes and everything.
I think it's pretty straightforward.
I'm going to spoon this in here.
It's all like a little messy to do.
So I was gonna press it and it,
I think it just vibrates and then it like spits it out.
Okay. I'm going to do flower.
No.
What?
I'm worried that the cocoa powder might be too chunky.
Yeah. It looks like it's clogging in there, unfortunately.
So I think cocoa powder is a no.
Now I'm going to use cinnamon,
which is already a little bit finer
than the clumpier cocoa powder.
And I'm also going to sift it.
So this already is kind of like a lot of work.
So give it a little test.
Much better, much better.
It just gets clogged so easily.
This is not very good.
Yeah. This sucks.
I'm very disappointed. I feel duped.
And now it's not even turning on anymore.
Okay. Our beluga whale is in timeout.
Now we are moving on to this metal toothpick thing.
I already liked this better.
I used a toothpick once to like make a cat
and that's what I'm trying to do.
It's probably multi-purpose,
like you could use this for your latte art
and then also use it to like pop a pimple. (laughing)
I'm pretty happy with my cat.
This is cat-ppuccino. (laughing)
So next we have something that looks pretty interesting.
It is a eco ceramic hand roaster.
So this is for roasting your own coffee beans,
which is actually something I've never done before.
This is bigger than I thought it would be.
I think it would be straightforward.
Put the beans in there and heat it up.
So we have our unroasted beans here.
I guess I'm just gonna put a couple of spoonfuls in here.
What we're looking for is for the beans to change color,
get darker and to expand.
(popping sound)
(Alix shouting)
It's like popcorn.
All right. Definitely a lot of popping going on.
I think it might come out through the handle.
Ooh, that's kinda cool.
Okay.
That was nice. I appreciated that.
So we've got our fresh roasted beans here
and now let's test some grinders.
Okay, sweet.
So we have a manual and an electric coffee grinder.
Compact design, fits easily in hand bags.
I'm gonna put some of these beans in here.
Let's try this.
Put this on top.
Hand crank goes on.
Put it up.
There we go.
The thought of doing this every morning is insane to me.
Okay. Let's try the other one.
For the next one we're gonna try our Shardor.
Okay. So I'm gonna pour our beans in here.
(machine whirring)
It's already to the coarsest level of that, so much easier.
This definitely feels closer to what you'd get out of a bag.
We've got our coffee grounds
and now it's time to put them to use
with the big daddy Bodum vacuum coffee maker.
In here, we've got our pot.
(Alix laughing)
This so interesting.
We also got a novel of instructions.
So I'm gonna put two cups of water in here.
And then I'm gonna do two scoops of our fresh ground coffee.
Now I just gotta turn it on.
Bubbles.
Woo, this is really science-y.
This is kind of cool.
I like this.
It's interactive.
What is happening?
So we've got a lot of noises coming through.
(Alix shouting)
Okay. I messed up.
I was supposed to put the water in here
and I put it in here.
So, we're gonna try this again.
We are going to fill our water in here, this time.
Two cups.
And now, put this guy on here.
Coffee goes in here.
What we're actually doing here,
which makes a lot more sense than what I did before,
this hot plate is gonna heat up our water at the bottom,
gonna create some water vapor,
which then goes up into the top,
saturating our grounds here,
and then dripping back down into the bottom
where we have our pot of coffee.
The more you know, I'm like Bill Nye.
Alix Nye, the science girl.
Woo.
Cool, we're back in action.
Oh, here we go.
Yeah, there we go.
So when it turns off,
then it releases some of that pressure
and now the coffee is going.
It's a show, this is a spectacle.
Let's see.
Do I take this off of here?
I know that seems kind of weird.
Like, what do you do with that now?
This could be really annoying to clean.
Got my MakeItFancy mug.
Make it fancy.
This is definitely a make it fancy coffee, I'd say.
I should be careful.
I'm gonna try it.
This is also our fresh roasted coffee beans,
so I'm kind of curious.
It's a nice, clean, basic morning cup of Joe.
Next step, my final verdicts.
(drum roll sound)
All right, here are my thoughts.
Bringing it back to the minipresso.
This was $50.
I actually really liked this.
I think it's really useful.
If you are on the go, if you're camping
and don't have access to a full blown espresso maker,
I give this two thumbs up.
I really liked this frother.
I think it gave a really nice luxurious foam.
It also heats up your milk, which is really helpful
if you're making a cappuccino or a latte.
This is $40 and I would absolutely consider getting this.
Next we have the Zulay milk frother.
This one works well.
Although, it doesn't have the capability
to heat up any milk.
This one's $12, so it's a little more affordable.
Although I would only recommend this one
if you want to like mix things in your coffee,
rather than making your foam.
Next up we have our latte art tools.
This was $10.
And although I appreciate that it's cute,
I give it two thumbs down.
We paid $5.69 for this metal latte art tool.
It worked.
I would just say, use a toothpick.
So, middle?
Next we have our coffee roaster.
We paid,
we paid $30 for this one and it roasted our coffee,
but didn't give the most even roast.
So I am probably gonna give this a thumbs down.
Next we have our coffee grinders.
Starting with the Javapress manual coffee grinder.
This was $40 and it did work.
Although, I just feel like that's too much work
for grinding your coffee beans.
Might as well not do this.
Thumbs down.
Now we have our electronic coffee grinder.
We paid $33 for this one and I loved it.
It was easy to use, it's functional, it's quick.
And I give this two thumbs up.
Next we have our Bodom vacuum coffee maker.
We paid $54 for this.
And I actually really enjoyed this.
I think it's fun to get to watch the whole process
of the coffee making.
It's like a science project.
It was fairly fast and it produced a solid cup of coffee.
I give this two thumbs up.
If you want to check any of these out,
the links to the products are below.
And let me know what you want me to review next.
Bye.
I'm like so hyped up on coffee now.
Oh, hands tests.
Oh.
(upbeat music)