You already have a countertop appliance for easily making craft beer at home. And it’s awesome. Next stop? Expand your drinking horizons by adding other alcohol-concocting appliances. Problem is, we haven’t really seen one-box countertop setups for brewing other types of libations. Until now, that is, with the Alchema.
A countertop appliance for making hard cider, it lets you turn apples, oranges, and other fruits into alcoholic swill. It’s as easy to use as any connected countertop appliance, too, with an accompanying app (iOS only) telling you exactly how much of each ingredient (which, basically, consists of fruit, sugar, water, and yeast) to add, then keeping track of how long till it’s ready.
When closed up, Alchema looks like a large Thermos bottle, so it shouldn’t be all that hard to find space for in any countertop. Once opened, it reveals a glass pitcher where you’re supposed to dump all your ingredients for fermenting. It comes with a medical-grade UV-C LED light that sanitizes the pitcher before every batch (not doing that can leave it with a funky smell), an integrated weight sensor that ensures you’re adding the correct amount of each ingredient, and a variety of sensors that allow the app to keep track of critical elements (alcohol content, air pressure, and temperature) throughout the process.
Aside from making cider (which takes between one to two weeks, depending on the recipe), it can also be used to make mead (less than a week) and grape wine (16 weeks). It can produce up to 0.6 gallons at a time (around three wine bottles’ worth).
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for Alchema. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $329.