Ever get up so bleary-eyed and unable to perform which you could barely get it collectively to stumble your method into the kitchen and blend a cocktail? Well, have we bought a product for you. The Black & Decker Bev does for combined drinks what Keurig did for espresso, full with all the professionals and cons that the comparability implies.

The $250 Black & Decker Bev “corded cocktail maker” is sort of the monstrosity on the countertop, weighing 16 kilos unloaded and measuring 15 inches tall with a footprint of 16 by 18 inches. Six tubes prolong downward into liquor bottles that you simply present—vodka, gin, whiskey (your alternative), rum, and tequila. The sixth hose is used for an included water carafe. 

The secret sauce of the Bev is that it makes use of Ok-cup-like capsules to ship all the opposite elements within the cocktail. So a margarita pod contains lime juice, sweetener, and a few kind of orange flavoring—by way of it’s not triple sec, as a result of the pods are nonalcoholic. The tequila for the drink comes from a bottle you load into the machine.

An organization known as Bartesian, which pioneered the idea and which additionally makes its personal (dear however elegant) dispenser {hardware}, is the brains behind all of this. Bartesian makes more than 40 flavoring pods, every producing a unique cocktail starting from the easy old school to the complicated intercourse on the seashore and, sure, even the enduring Long Island iced tea. Eight-packs of pods are $20, and word you don’t get even a single freebie with the Bev.

The Bev just isn’t probably the most elegant of contraptions, however in the event you requested me what a Black & Decker-produced cocktail making system would appear to be, this may most likely be what I’d sketch.

Raising the Bar

Setting up the Bev requires a little bit of effort and exposes a few of the gadget’s limitations. A normal Grey Goose bottle is simply too tall to slot in the machine’s vodka slot, whereas a Patron tequila bottle has too broad a mouth for the hose’s rubber gasket to connect to it. So certain, you need to use no matter spirits you’d like … so long as the bottles are the suitable dimension. (You also can pour that Grey Goose into an empty Popov bottle if you wish to hold it stylish, I suppose.)

The different massive catch is that the Bev doesn’t do any shaking or stirring. It dumps the elements—at room temperature—right into a glass, after which you’re by yourself with regards to chilling them and serving the drink. Initially I allotted all of the elements right into a shaker crammed with ice, then chilled them by shaking and at last depositing right into a serving glass, however finally I discovered that stirring drinks in an ice-filled serving glass was far easier and produced roughly the identical outcomes with loads much less cleanup. We aren’t speaking about craft cocktails right here, so some shortcuts are usually not going to kill anybody.

This method of working is very key in the event you use the Bev in the one method it makes any actual sense: As an attraction for a celebration the place individuals make their very own drinks as a substitute of you. Toss a bunch of Bartesian capsules right into a bowl, present some normal directions, and let your friends have enjoyable with it. They’ll certainly benefit from the gentle present the Bev places on in the course of the shelling out and the power to “dial your strength” amongst one in all 4 booziness ranges, together with virgin—although I’d warn you in opposition to choose the very best degree, which might go away you with greater than 4.5 ounces of hooch in your glass and a nasty hangover the next day.

I used to be actually hoping that the Bev would do double responsibility as a push-button booze dispenser, the place I may pull a lever and have a shot of whiskey or gin produced with out having to take care of a measuring gadget, however sadly the Bev can’t do that easy feat. It’s cocktails or nothing, and the machine doesn’t do something with out a Bartesian pod in place. A easy characteristic like this may give the gadget slightly further performance past making the comparatively restricted set of drinks that Bartesian gives. It most likely goes with out saying which you could’t add your individual recipes to the system.

As for the cocktails, they’re hit or miss. They all veer towards being too candy—some overwhelmingly so, it doesn’t matter what energy you choose—although in testing a half-dozen totally different pods, I surprisingly discovered the cosmopolitan to be probably the most approachable, adopted by the old school. The Long Island iced tea wasn’t half dangerous, both, however reminiscence after all will get a bit foggy from that time on.