A cup of hot coffee is one of the simple joys in life wherein you don’t need to be rich to experience richness. Full bodied rich nectar of life itself flows from ground beans into us all, giving us strength and making the day;’s work possible. But what if the coffee is too hot? What if the coffee is too cold? Coffee mugs the world over are designed to keep coffee hot for an extended period of time. but there is a new entrant into the travel mug scene called the Yi-One that is trying to change the simple concept into something a bit more nuanced. 

The Yi-One is a project on Kickstarter designed to reduce your scalding hot, 200 degree, just brewed coffee to a drinkable, 150 degrees, in just 3 seconds.

No Magic Unicorns

No there aren’t magic unicorns blowing gently but firmly across the coffee as it is poured into the container, but rather a separate secret chamber at the bottom that allows a small amount of coffee to flow into, cooling as it sits. Waiting to be sipped. I’m not sure how I feel about only being able to drink from a straw, but that is the design. 

And then if that magic isn’t enough the Yi-One is designed to keep the coffee at that temperature for 5 hours, reducing the need to reheat and damage the delicate flavor profile of truly great coffee.

This price point is a sticking point

I know… I wish there were unicorns involved. But sadly no. Just Kickstarter and one adventurous Chinese company trying to get their product to market. I like that Kickstarter always has some fun coffee products on the way down the production line. 

The only sad part for me at least is the price tag. 99 dollars for a coffee mug is a little steep even if it had unicorns. Sadly, still no unicorns.