The Aarke Coffee System Offers Promising Innovation With Some Fiddling
A coffee maker's purpose is not to be beautiful. I have to tell myself this when looking at Aarke's new drip coffee maker, because the Aarke Coffee System is beautiful. This fact could serve to distract me from other important things.
The Aarke is Swedish, designed by Swedes in the Swedish modernist design tradition. But it also looks a little like a full Turkish tea service has been reimagined as a shiny new gasworks. It fills me with longing for a life I don't lead: functional, clean, freed from the messiness of a world marked by trivial disappointments.
Including a flat-burr grinder, the entire system costs north of $700, which is perhaps the price of such a life. The Aarke is part of a quiet renaissance among drip brewers, which had long been sidelined in the luxury world by espresso and pour-over. But a new generation of machines aims to elevate the home drip coffee game to the stuff of true connoisseurship, bringing out the most delicate flavors from premium beans at minimal effort on your part.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
The Aarke is among just a couple dozen brewers now certified by the international Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) as being capable of maintaining enormous precision in every particular: temperature, brewing time, coffee extraction, and probably also the purity of heart. The number of certified makers has doubled in the past half-decade. But the Aarke, with its shiny stainless steel exterior and modern industrial minimalism, just might be the fanciest-looking of the bunch.
Beneath its flashy reflective exterior, there some quite interesting engineering going on. The Aarke also offers a capability unlike any drip coffee setup I've tested: It promises to grind the exact right amount of fresh coffee beans for each batch of drip, using a sensor that measures whatever random amount of water you've freehanded into it. Wild stuff! More on that later. So Shiny, So Chrome
At the most basic level, the Aarke is a thoughtfully designed coffee maker, much like the carbonation system the company is best known for. Whatever its sophisticated sensors, it requires little effort to learn. It feels old-school. At 15 inches high it's not small by any stretch, but its heft could also be described as sturdiness. The Aarke also has what phone people like to call 'haptics.' The brew basket slides in with a satisfying mechanical clunk, and even the device's sole button offers pleasing resistance.
When you pour water in, the tank glows a subtle blue in response. This is the discreet way the Aarke says hello each morning. There are no beeps anywhere, no noises that aren't grinding or brewing. To start a brew, just add the appropriate amount of ground coffee to a standard No. 4 conical filter in the basket. Then, press the button.
Press that button quickly, it'll brew like a standard drip coffee maker. Press it for three seconds until the little light turns on, and it'll first bloom the coffee by wetting it down and waiting for trapped carbon dioxide to escape from the fresh-ground beans.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
5 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Klarna CEO sounds the alarm on a growing problem
When one door closes, another one opens. We all have heard of that saying, commonly attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor, scientist, and engineer credited with patenting the first practical telephone. It essentially means that when we lose one opportunity, another, and perhaps better, one is waiting for us. The trouble is, we usually focus more on what is lost, instead of what could be gained. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter For example, when I lost my previous job, where I was miserable for years but didn't the guts to quit, I felt both devastated and relieved. About three months later, I got this amazing opportunity, which I would never have sought if the previous door wasn't closed. With new technological advancements, many businesses are shutting down. A few examples include print media being replaced by online journalism, many brick-and-mortar bookstores closing after online bookstore giant Amazon launched, and Uber, Lyft, and other ride-sharing apps affecting traditional taxi businesses. Technology has been and will continue to change the world. For some, this might sound scary because of undesired consequences. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski raised these fears when he sounded the alarm on possible concerns with AI development. Image source: Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images Klarna Group is a Swedish fintech company that provides online financial services, popularly known as "buy now, pay later" (BNPL). Since its launch in 2005, the company expanded into banking, marketing, and commerce infrastructure. Siemiatkowski, as a recent guest on The Times Tech podcast, revealed that AI development will mean huge changes for certain roles. "There will be an implication for white-collar jobs," he said, adding that advancements like AI may lead to at least a recession in the short term. "Unfortunately, I don't see how we could avoid that, with what's happening from a technology perspective." Related: Nvidia's latest project may supercharge quantum computing Siemiatkowski has always openly shared his thoughts, often speaking more candidly than other tech leaders regarding AI's potential to kill some jobs. "I want to be honest, I want to be fair, and I want to tell what I see so that society can start [making] preparations," he said. However, the CEO believes in the long run, the change won't necessarily be bad. He also stressed that the reduction in white-collar jobs should lead to better pay and more appreciation for blue-collar jobs. He explained that "if you look at the factory workers today, lorry drivers, waiters, chefs, salaries are going up at a pretty good rate." Siemiatkowski predicts that the demand for those positions will increase. More technology: Palantir gets great news from the PentagonAnalyst has blunt words on Trump's iPhone tariff plansOpenAI teams up with legendary Apple exec Klarna also recently started hiring more human workers, which sparked a debate on whether the company is walking back claims that AI will eliminate positions. However, Siemiatkowskitold the crowd at London SXSW that"two things can be true at the same time." He pointed out that AI doesn't mean there won't be opportunities for real people to work at Klarna. "We think offering human customer service is always going to be a VIP thing," he said, noting that people are now paying more for clothing stitching by hand rather than by machine. In 2024, Klarna's revenue reached $2.81 billion with a net profit of $21 million, marking its first profitable year after heavy losses in previous periods. In 2022, Klarna's valuation dropped from $45.6 billion to $6.7 billion but has since rebounded to $14.6 billion. In March, the tech powerhouse revealed it is preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO), targeting a valuation of $15 billion, reported CNBC. Related: Google resolves major privacy issue In April 2025, the company postponed its IPO plans in response to U.S. tariff developments. The following month it disclosed disappointing earnings results for the first quarter of the year with a net loss of $99 million, two times the $47 million loss from the same period the year before. Klarna attributed the loss to restructuring, depreciation, and share-based payments. The company made a big bet on AI, replacing 700 humans with a chatbot. Over the last two years, it reduced the number of employees from 5,500 to 3,000, boosting revenue per employee and lowering costs. Related: Veteran fund manager unveils eye-popping S&P 500 forecast The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Saab, Helsing let Gripen fighter fly with AI in charge
COLOGNE, Germany — Swedish warplane maker Saab and Germany-based Helsing sent a Gripen-E combat jet aloft in late May powered by an artificial-intelligence agent that took control of long-range flight maneuvers from the human pilot, the companies announced. The series of three test flights above the Baltic Sea constitutes the first time that an AI application was in charge of real-world maneuvering, recommending missile shots at a Gripen training aircraft from a distance and evading disadvantageous flight paths that could turn dicey in a closer dogfight, executives told reporters in a June 10 call. The integration of of Helsing's Centaur AI pilot into the Gripen took merely six months and was made possible by the jet's avionics architecture, which separates hardware and software elements for rapid integration of third-party capabilities, said Johan Segertoft, head of Saab's Gripen business unit. The combination of Gripen-E with Centaur is market-ready, according to Saab, though an expected amount of additional development limits the utility to 'mature' customers of the jet variant at this point. To prepare for the test flights, engineers let the Centaur AI pilot compete against itself in a Gripen simulator environment, according to Helsing Vice President Antoine Bordes. According to the company's math, the prep work produced the equivalent of 50 years of human pilot experience. The Swedish government is indirectly onboard with the experimentation by way of co-funding it under the Project Beyond program, a key tech marker for the country's air force in charting a course toward a new warplane after the Gripen.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Turkey to export 48 of its nationally produced fighter jets to Indonesia
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey will export 48 of its nationally-produced KAAN fighter jets to Indonesia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday, marking the first export deal for the advanced aircraft that is still in the development stage. Erdogan said in an X post that the 48 KAAN fighter jets would be manufactured in Turkey and exported to Indonesia, adding that Indonesia's 'local capabilities' would be integrated into the production process. The Turkish leader didn't elaborate or disclose the financial details of the agreement. The deal came on the sidelines of the defense industry exposition, Indo Defence 2025, in Jakarta, Turkey's Sabah newspaper reported. 'This agreement showcases the progress and achievements of our domestic and national defense industry,' Erdogan said. He also praised Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto for his role in securing the agreement. Turkey's first indigenous fifth-generation fighter jet, the KAAN successfully completed its maiden flight in 2024. Its first units are expected to be delivered in 2028. The deal came amid growing economic and defense ties between Turkey and Indonesia. Earlier this year, the two countries agreed on the joint development of a Baykar combat-drone factory in Indonesia. Pakistan and Azerbaijan, which also have strong defense ties with Turkey, are reported to be interested in purchasing KAAN fighters.
