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Spotted: Drink tea but find pouring water over leaves or bags too simple and imprecise? Swiss start-up BRÜ have developed a tea-making machine that allows you to set the brewing time, water temperature and cup size at the push of a button — delivering the perfect cuppa, and saving energy as well.

Tea connoisseurs know that making tea is more than just pouring boiling water out of a kettle. For one thing, the water should not be boiling. For another, different teas need to steep for different amounts of time. The BRÜ tea making machine was developed to make it easy to adjust the brewing conditions.

The BRÜ takes both loose leaves and tea bags. The tea is brewed in the machine, and as the brewing chamber fills, water is dispensed evenly. Once the tea has been poured, the walls are flushed to make sure every last drop of tea lands in the cup. The machine can also save your settings, so that every time you make a cup of Pu’erh ripe Menghai Tuo Cah (or any other tea), it will taste the same.

BRÜ also heats only the exact amount of water needed, saving the energy of heating an entire kettle for just one cup. And BRÜ is not just for tea — it can be set to dispense plain, hot water at any temperature, so you can use it for pot noodles, hot chocolate or even (gasp) coffee. The project was fully funded on Kickstarter and plans to start shipping in April 2020. Retail prices will be around €170.

At Springwise, we love tea, and we are no strangers to innovations that use it. We have previously covered a pre-brewed tea spray that eliminates the use of tea bags and batteries made from green tea.