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WIRED
29-05-2025
- Business
- WIRED
The Best Vegan Meal Delivery Services and Kits
Photograph: Molly Higgins Photograph: Molly Higgins WIRED TIRED Fresh produce. Easy to no prep or cook time. Complex flavors. Great textures. Gluten-free. Limited availability in the US. Maybe too adventurous for some. Mostly salads. Thistle (8/10 WIRED recommends) is the best healthy, single-serving (mostly) premade meal kit I tested. With the most laborious meals requiring just a flash in a hot pan to enhance flavor, these refrigerated meals are mostly a mix of gluten-free, fruit-focused breakfasts; inventive, fresh salads; and preprepared bean- and pasta-forward veggie dinners. The Mexican-inspired corn and poblano pepper salad was solid and hearty; the lemongrass shirataki bowl—a cold noodle salad dish—hit all the right elements of savory-spice and varied texture. Thistle's vegan take on cheesecake with tres leches-esque coconut vanilla mousse and tahini caramel was perhaps the best vegan dessert I've ever had. Without a discount, this plan is a bit above my price point, but it remains one of my favorite vegan meal kit services I've tested. Is the brand completely vegan? Yes, with an optional add-on for sustainable meats for certain dinners and lunches at an additional $3 per meal. Availability: East and West Coast cities and Chicago (you can enter your zip code to see if your area is covered). Plan details: Thistle has a new, curated preset menu each week, consisting of three meals, a snack, and a dessert for six days of the week, but you can make edits based on your preferences. Delivery is one or two times per week, depending on your plan. Cost: At the time of writing, breakfasts start at $13, lunches and dinners at $17, and snacks at $8. You must order a minimum of three meals per week. Prices decrease the more you order. Photograph: Molly Higgins Photograph: Molly Higgins WIRED TIRED AI-powered menu curation. Many choices of familiar flavors and foods. Good for people transitioning or new to a vegan diet. Also offers grocery options. Difficult to view meal options before committing. Flavors could be one-note. WIRED reviewer Matthew Korfhage liked Hungryroot's AI tool that micro-customizes menus for dietary restrictions or preferences (7/10, WIRED recommends), which also makes this a great meal kit for vegans. It didn't have the adventurous element of Purple Carrot or the plant-centric freshness of Thistle, but Hungryroot would be great for those with kids who need more tame options, or for people who want familiar choices, like those easing into a plant-based diet. However, with its AI-assisted customization options, you can easily curate it to your tastes. Nearly all the meals I prepared were solid but one-note, needing an extra element to add complexity—acid from a squeeze of lemon, or red chili flakes for heat improved many of these dishes. Throughout my week of testing, meal kits required little prep and only took about half an hour or less to make. They were varied but basic, with a lemongrass tofu and broccoli stir-fry, cauliflower tacos, and American fare like a veggie burger with sweet potato fries and a bunless Beyond burger and guac. Is the brand completely vegan? No, you'll need to use filters and look for icons to find vegan choices, and AI customization curates future meals based on preferences. Availability: Delivers to the lower 48 US states. Plan details: Delivers every day of the week, and you can make changes or skip until Monday or Thursday at 7 pm before your next delivery, depending on your delivery date. The smallest plan is two or three two-serving dinners; after, plans vary depending on how many additional breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, and sweets you choose per week. Cost: At the time of writing, dinners will cost you $13 a serving, lunch costs $12, and breakfast is $5. The number of meals you choose turns into 'points,' where the sum is different for every dish (for example, one dinner plate is 12 points, snacks vary as a couple points apiece). Any remaining points can be used the next week. Like many meal kit plans, the company offers heavy discounts for first-time users, like 30 percent off your first week and a free food item.
WIRED
23-05-2025
- Business
- WIRED
I Got a Sneak Peek of the Ratio Eight Series 2 Coffee Maker. Lord, It's Beautiful
Ratio's new coffee maker is a luxury machine that avoids plastic and makes delicious coffee. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. I've made no secret about my love for coffee makers from the Portland-based company Ratio, ever since it came out with the Ratio Eight model a decade ago. Two of WIRED's favorite drip coffee makers on earth are made by Ratio, in fact. As well as anybody, the Portland company has managed to take the finicky techniques of third-wave barista pour-over and merge them with automatic drip coffee to create some of the most full-bodied and aromatic cups of coffee I've had the pleasure of tasting. To taste it, all I have to do is press a single button. The machine does the work, not me. The Ratio Four (8/10, WIRED Recommends) remains my favorite single-serve drip coffeemaker made by anyone, anywhere. It's a masterclass in simplicity. But it all began a decade ago with the Ratio Eight, which helped change the conversation around what a home drip coffeemaker could be, adopting the aesthetics and a lot of the techniques surrounding barista café pour-over but applying them to an automated home coffee machine— using locally hewn wood and the shapely curves of a Chemex-style pour-over coffeemaker. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage Well, now the Ratio Eight has gotten a makeover, for the new world of drip coffee it helped inspire—informed by all the coffee makers that Ratio has developed in the meantime (and even one they haven't released). The new 8-cup Ratio Eight Series 2, slated for release in September, is now available for presale on Ratio's website. For a limited time, preorders are discounted to $639. But by September, when the Eight Series 2 is projected to go on sale for real, that price will shoot up to $799. That's among the highest prices I'm aware of for a drip or pour-over coffee maker. Is it worth it? I can say I got to try out the new Ratio Eight Series 2 at Ratio's offices this week, just before preorders launched. I was very impressed by what I saw, and even more impressed by what I tasted. I won't know everything until I get to play around with the device at home. But the coffee I had was full-bodied, full-flavored, and delicious. And it's a beautiful machine. Here are the specs on the upcoming Ratio Eight Series 2—and my early thoughts based on trying the device. Ratio Eight Series 2 Design Specs Redesigned for More Consistent Coffee If you're a fan of the original Ratio Eight, chances are you were drawn in first by the aesthetics: the walnut wood accents. That pretty hourglass shape of the blown-glass carafe, with the conical brewing filter best known from café pour-over. The sturdy walnut trim stayed. But Ratio has learned a few things since making the original Eight, said Ratio founder and CEO Mark Hellweg, at a meeting this month that also included the Eight's designer, James Owen. One of the things Ratio learned is that using a closed, flat-bottom brewing chamber leads to much more consistent coffee than conical glass. It's easier to control both in terms of water flow and brewing temperature, and is more forgiving if you don't have a super-expensive grinder. (That said, you know, we like expensive grinders and recommend a few.) 'Once we went flat, we realized, 'This is the way,'' said Hellweg. I'll admit, I'll miss that pretty glass carafe, just on the visual level. Hellweg says they'll indeed keep making the Chemex-style carafe as an option. But the Series 2, by default, will look much different, though it still has its hourglass shape as a link to the past. Instead, the new brewing basket will make use of technology that Ratio developed when making two of my favorite coffeemakers, the Ratio Four and the Ratio Six Series 2, which consistently feel like magic tricks to me when I use them at home. I often find new homes for coffee makers I test. I keep my Ratios. Few others can manage such full-bodied, consistently thick extraction on automatic drip or pour-over-style coffee, while being so simple to use. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage Brews Like Café Pour-Over The Ratio brewing method is somewhere between what a barista does in a third-wave café and a classic drip machine. First, there's the 'bloom,' which is a poetic name for pre-infusing coffee grounds with a small amount of hot water. This releases the carbon dioxide trapped in fresh beans, which would otherwise interfere with extraction when the hot water begins flowing in earnest. Another thing that makes café pour-over coffee express flavor so well is agitation. Basically, if you drop water onto coffee, or shake it, or spin it, the coffee will release its secrets better. It's like shaking an interrogation subject. (Actually, on second thought, don't do this.) One of Ratio's signal technologies from the beginning has used a 'Fibonacci-inspired' spiral showerhead, a shape often touted as a means of maintaining water efficiency. On the Eight Series 2, when Hellweg brewed a batch at Ratio's Portland headquarters, this meant that water extracted evenly across the entire brew basket, with no obvious channeling. So the falling water droplets extract both faster and evenly. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage Temperature control is a more interesting and complex conversation. Ratio is one of a small number of coffee-maker companies who've had their devices certified by the international Specialty Coffee Association as hewing to a very tight set of criteria, which includes holding temperatures within a tight 4-degree (Celsius) range during the entire brewing process. But even this doesn't tell the whole story. I can attest from experience that not all SCA-certified coffee makers produce great coffee—and that great coffee definitely can come from noncertified coffee makers. Ratio does a lot of sophisticated firmware rejiggering to play around with temperature curves during brewing—what chief operating officer Bradley Walhood, in an excitable moment, called 'a literal crapload' of testing and firmware updates. In the Eight, this means that they mess around with wattage to change how the heating element works. Though the Ratio Eight Series 2 is a 1,400-watt device, they intentionally don't use all of it at all times, changing energy consumption in order to change how the heating element works over time and get the best-tasting brew. Like Ratio's previous Four, the Eight Series 2 will have two different brew modes for small and large batches of coffee, to further refine temperature curves and keep them in optimal ranges. Plastic Contact Is Minimized One of the biggest selling points on the Eight was always minimal plastic. There's a lot of interest in plastic-free everything, in these days when new and frightening revelations about microplastics seem to come once a week. But it's difficult, and very expensive, to make a truly plastic-free automatic coffee machine. Plastic-free brewing is a bit of a holy grail, achieved mostly by much older, lower-tech methods like French press, moka pot, and pour-over. The Eight Series 2 comes as close as any automatic drip machine to achieving this. The cold-water reservoir is a BPA-free Tritan copolymer. The base is also made of polymer. And there's a bit of plastic used in the heating element that doesn't come into contact with water, said Hellweg. But the tubing, inside the device, is made of glass. The pipe connectors are silicone. The chassis is stainless steel, and so is the brewing basket. The thermal carafe is stainless steel, while the nonthermal option is borosilicate glass. What all this means is that heated water or coffee never touches plastic. This also has the side effect of giving each part on the Eight a truly satisfying heft. 'Check this out,' said Hellweg, with evident pride, handing me a small and weighty piece of steel that could double as a stress fidget. It was the lid to the water reservoir. It actually did feel good, the weight of this lid. Plastic makes you forget the satisfying solidity of cast metal. These more expensive materials are reflected, of course, in the price. But It's Quite Pricey The preorder window offers a quite substantial discount on the anticipated retail price, but it's still not low. The $639 preorder price for the Eight Series 2, and the $799 anticipated retail price in September, are at the very highest end of drip coffee machines on the market. They're also double the price of Ratio's own Six and Four. Will the coffee alone justify this higher price? It's hard to know based on one delicious carafe of coffee. That's the sort of thing I'll only learn over time, when testing side-by-side. Compared to the Ratio Six, the Eight Series 2 offers the same 40-ounce batch size but some new programming and new technology—including the ability to optimize its brewing program for small batches of 20 ounces or less. But really, as with a lot of luxury goods, much of the cost is going into luxury: intangibles, style, loveliness, and of course, more expensive materials. In the case of the Eight Series 2, these costs will have a lot to do with the steps Ratio took to avoid plastic: the double-walled stainless steel, the borosilicate glass tubing, the American walnut wood. The new thermal carafe, with its stainless steel construction, is sturdy and lovely. Ratio's owners and designers also cited uncertainty surrounding tariffs, which is almost certainly a factor in announcing a price that'll first take effect six months from now. The Eight Series 2, like a large portion of products from small companies in the United States, is manufactured in China because American factories aren't set up for custom tooling on small production runs. All I can say is that it's pretty, and it brews delicious coffee, and it feels in my hand like a thing that costs what it does—in a year when a lot of things suddenly cost a bit more. But based on past experience with Ratio, the Eight Series 2 will probably remain the best-tasting cup of drip coffee I can get by just pressing a single button.
WIRED
14-05-2025
- Automotive
- WIRED
Our Favorite Micro Electric Bike Just Got a Big Upgrade
I've become popular with children lately. It's not intentional. It's just because I've been riding around town on the new Pro series JackRabbit OG2—a zippy, motorized electric bike so small, its simple existence can make a gobsmacked tween lean out of his mom's car window all the way down to his clavicles just get a better look. Photograph: JackRabbit ' Eeeeeeeeeee -biiiiikke!' shouted another kid from a sidewalk as I went by, before loudly declaring the ride 'actually kinda cool.' Later that day, this was also the opinion of a sleeve-tatted dude with a flat-brimmed hat hanging outside a dive bar. 'I like your bike, bro!' he called out. A JackRabbit micro bike brings all sorts of people out of the woodwork, everyone from skater dads to fitness bikers who ask far too intensely how the Jackrabbit is 'classified.' Whether this tiny motorized bicycle is, in fact, truly an ebike, is the source of somewhat nerdy contention. JackRabbits have footrests that look like pedals. But they have no actual pedals, chains, or gears. You drive the 'bike,' instead, by using a throttle on its right handlebar. It's a wee scooter that looks like a bicycle. And now, with the Pro series of Jackrabbit's on-and-off-road variants, it's a bit more powerful. Little Orange Ridin' Photograph: Matthew Korfhage The OG2 Pro's 20-inch wheels, short wheelbase and angled geometry give it the profile of an old-school BMX, the standard-issue ride for the devil-may-care. The Pro model weighs a mere 30 pounds, light enough to one-hand it up a set of stairs. For a tiny thing, it's also peppy; it zooms along at 20 miles an hour on high, the residential speed limit where I live. From the bike lane, I have made weirdly protracted eye contact with drivers, as they pace me almost precisely.
WIRED
30-04-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Factor Meals Have Gotten Much Better. Now to Ditch the Microwave
Factor's selling point over other ready-to-heat meal kits has always been twofold. One is that its meals are friendly to keto and other versions of high-protein and carb-conscious diets. The other is that its microwaveable meals have never been frozen, leaving open the possibility for actual texture in one's meal—a light crispness to the green beans, say. Or the grill char and soft give of a medium-rare filet mignon. But in past years, those two selling points seemed to interfere with each other. Factor, noted my colleague Louryn Strampe in her 2024 assessment (6/10, WIRED Review), fell prey far too often to the porridgy and cauliflower-heavy 'mush-on-mush' school of carb-avoidant fare. The food failed on texture, she wrote, in somewhat more colorful terms. But ever since HelloFresh bought Factor, the menu has been slowly evolving to heartier fare with more chew and snap. Starches now veer to potato wedges, coconut lime rice, or al dente forbidden rice. The green beans, too often overdone even at restaurants, had a surprising and welcome tautness. (One can see this evolution by looking at old menus through the magic lens of Wayback Machine.) Over time, Factor has evolved into the best ready-to-heat meal delivery service I've so far tasted. Mitigating Factors Photograph: Matthew Korfhage But this isn't to say Factor has solved the issues inherent to ready-made delivery meals. There's the cost, of course, more than most could afford as a full substitute for cooking: A full week of lunch and dinner for one would run about $170, with shipping. And pre-cooked meals will never quite be as good as fresh-prepared meals: It will always be a balancing act to avoid the twin terrors of sogginess and rubberiness in reheated food. And for every crisp green bean or air-fryer charred broccoli, there's a limp zoodle.
WIRED
30-04-2025
- Business
- WIRED
What Are the Best Coffee Beans for Cold Brew?
Cold brew demands different beans than drip or espresso to come out right. Here's a guide to finding the right ones. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage; Getty Images All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Cold-brew coffee is the gentlest of coffee: pleasant and sweet, made for warm days and chill thoughts. And so the best coffee beans for cold brew are not necessarily the same ones that make the most interesting drip or pour-over or espresso. It's a different animal entirely from the volatile intensity of hot brew. Rather, it's extracted gently over 12 or 24 hours to release the bean's natural sweetness. I have my own thoughts, of course. I've tested more than a dozen cold-brew coffee makers in the past year for WIRED's guide to the best cold-brew coffee makers. But few have wrestled with this question more intensely than Maciej Kasperowicz, director of coffee at Trade Coffee, one of WIRED's favorite coffee subscription companies. With his team, Kasperowicz spent months putting together 90 coffees best suited for cold brew, to be included in Trade's new cold-brew coffee subscription. Meanwhile, Brent Wolczynski, director of product development and cold brew at Portland's Stumptown Coffee, has built one of the most distinguished café and packaged cold-brew programs in the country. We consulted Kasperowicz and Wolczynski to ask about which beans make for great cold-brew coffee, which ones don't, how you know, and the myths surrounding what makes for a good cold-brew cup. What Is Cold Brew, and What Isn't It? First off, when I'm referring to cold brew, I don't necessarily mean all cold coffee. Cold brew is a process: the act of gently extracting coffee at room temperature or lower, over the course of hours instead of minutes. Most 'instant' cold-brew makers are actually making something called iced coffee: hot coffee that's quickly chilled to avoid the bad flavors that come from letting coffee cool slowly. It's good but different, and it leads to different results: more aromatics but less smoothness and sweetness. On a traditional cold-brew maker, the process is remarkably simple: Grind beans coarsely, put them in water, leave the mixture out on the counter or in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours, and wait. To make cold-brew concentrate that can then be diluted with water or milk, roll with a ratio of 4 or 5 to 1 by weight. (Ideally, use a kitchen or coffee scale. But 4 ounces of coffee to each pint of water will do.) My favorite home cold-brew coffee maker, combining ease and convenience with excellent extraction and flavor, is the Oxo Compact cold-brew maker. For larger batches, use what restaurants and cafés use: a big ol' Toddy cold-brew maker ($49). For even more ease and ready-to-drink cold brew at lower concentration, you can try a basket-style brewer like the Hario Mizudashi ($18). Which Beans Make the Best Cold Brew? Cold brew is a process of extracting flavor over a long time, at low intensity, and so the results differ from hot brew. Gentle extraction means less volatility, less bitterness, and a focus on sweetness and fullness and big, round flavors. Here's the best advice from Kasperowicz and Wolczynski on the best coffee beans for the best cold-brew coffee. Medium-roast beans have the best balance: The Goldilocks roast level for cold brew is generally a medium-roast level, Kasperowicz says, and that's where you'll find the majority of the coffee bags among Trade's cold-brew collection. While light roasts offer bright flavors loved in craft coffee, they'll extract a little slower and less easily than a medium roast. 'Darker roasts are slightly more soluble, is the theory,' Kasperowicz says, 'and so it'll be a little easier for medium and darker roasts.' That said, lighter and medium roasts get more interesting aromatics, so it's a balancing game. 'A nicely developed medium roast is the sweet spot for cold brew,' Wolczynski agreed. Neither argues for very dark roasts in cold brew, with Wolczynski in particular saying dark roasts tend to 'fall flat.' Photograph: Matthew Korfhage But lighter roasts can surprise you: 'I've definitely had cold brew with high floral notes and fruit-forward acidity in African coffees that I've absolutely loved,' Wolczynski says. 'If you want floral notes and sparkling acidity, Ethiopia Mordecofe ($23) is an African coffee that I'd highly recommend for cold brew … It will be a quenching, juicy cup and best enjoyed black." One of the reasons I consulted Wolczynski about cold brew was, in fact, an occasional Stumptown Ethiopian Guji cold brew he first made long ago, which has topped many taste tests over the years. Medium or darker for milk drinkers. Light roast only if you like it black: This is just a rule of thumb, but light roasts will be pretty subtle in cold-brew form, and you'll lose them to a blast of milk. Fuller-flavored medium-roast cold brew will be able to hold up better. 'If you like a cup that stands up to milk, I'd go with a medium roast from Latin America,' Wolczynski says. 'If you drink it black and prefer a brighter, more fruit-forward cup, lighter-roasted African coffees are great.' Candy-bar flavors do really well in cold brews: 'I think the cold-brew method is particularly good at highlighting sweetness, and high-quality medium-roast coffees tend to lend themselves to tasting notes like chocolate, caramel, etc.,' according to Wolczynski. 'Those are also just super well-rounded profiles that can be enjoyed straight or with milk.' Kasperowicz says much the same. Cold brew doesn't always capture delicate aromatics, he says, but can really accentuate big and bold flavors like chocolate and caramel and nuts that are familiar from candy bars. 'Coffees that just inherently have those flavors of chocolate—big kind of round bodies, big smooth flavors, lots of sweetness—those kinds of coffees with more kinds of caramelized flavors tend to do better.' Look on the bag of beans, he says, or the description on the roaster's website, for the flavor descriptions of the coffee. Origins can also be a clue to finding these flavors. As a rule of thumb, Latin American coffees tend more toward chocolate, especially, so if you see 'Brazil' on the bag it's a good sign. Kasperowicz calls out in particular a Brazilian bag from Atlanta's Portrait called Toni ($38 for 2 pounds)—a great example of a big, full-bodied, nutty, sweet, chocolate roast that does well in cold-brew form. East African roasts tend more often toward fruit and berry notes. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage Balanced blends can offer the best of both worlds: Those big, fruity, bright flavors from single-origin Ethiopian coffees can come out strongly when roasted to medium or paired with chocolatey beans, Kasperowicz says. For Trade's cold-brew program, Kasperowicz selected a Cherry Picker blend ($38 for 2 pounds) of South American and East African beans from Colorado's Boxcar Roasting that tastes like chocolate-covered cherries. A PT's Coffee Roasting Cold Front blend ($38 for 2 pounds) likewise mixes Guatemalan and Ethiopian medium-roast beans to make coffee that tastes like rich, smooth blackberries and caramel. Stumptown offers a seasonal cold-brew blend, but the company's year-round Homestead ($15) offers a balanced brew as well. Look on coffee bags for the words 'full-bodied' or 'rich': This is a clue to full-flavored cold brew, Kasperowicz says. When coffee roasters describe their coffee as big, full-bodied, or round, this is a sign of a bean that's desperate to give up its secrets and so is more likely to extract fully and richly. Photograph: Matthew Korfhage Think twice before using your most expensive beans: This is more advice for self-preservation. Cold brew requires more coffee beans per cup than drip or pour-over or espresso. Quite simply, you need a lot of course-ground coffee to make a serving size. Depending on how strong you make your cold brew, it may take about 50 percent more than you use for drip coffee. But cold brew is less likely to bring out the delicacy and complexity of that high-altitude, single-origin roast, says Kasperowicz. The resulting cold brew won't be bad. It might be terrific! But you'll get less out of those expensive beans than if you brew them hot. So if you value your pocketbook, look toward blends that have the big flavors that'll come through on a megaphone. Fresh beans are still and always best: A weird myth going around is that old or stale beans are good for cold brew—perhaps because cold brew might be a little more forgiving of stale beans than hot brew. But fresh beans are best, Kasperowicz says without hesitation. Even though cold brew oxidizes more slowly, because it's cold, it does still take on those stale, cardboardy, sad flavors that come from exposure to oxygen. If you use stale beans, you'll get those flavors faster, and your cold brew will keep for less time in the fridge. How about high altitudes? Are high-altitude beans better for cold brew? Despite claims by some companies, neither Kasperowicz nor Wolczynski think beans grown at high altitude have much to say about what's good for cold brew. Altitude is a sign of quality in general, or of more subtle flavors. But subtlety is not what cold brew is best at accentuating. What about the best beans for iced coffee? Use whatever coffee you like for drip or espresso, pour it over ice, chill it fast, and you're there. No new considerations needed, Kasperowicz says. Wolczynski notes that iced coffee has a 'tannic' structure that will let it hold up well against milk and ice but finds cold brew more 'quenching when drunk black.'
