Hasta La Gadget!

These slotted spoons live life on the edge

Here’s a Dremel project in the making: Muuto’s Hang Around kitchen utensils are a wooden spoon and spatula with a slot in the back side, which lets you kind of clip them to the side of any pot or pan you may be using.

Designed for Muuto by Kibisi, these tools are clearly more about form than function. Whilst the spoon, for example, will clearly let you spoon things up, its fat-backed shape makes it useless for stirring and beating. The spatula looks better, but not really any better than a dollar version from the dime store.

Of course, they need to be thick to accommodate the slot in the back, so I propose an improvement: Go grab your Dremel and find or buy a spoon and spatula. With the spoon, a slot cut just one third of the way through should do the trick without weakening it too much. With the spatula, which already has a wide handle, just go in from the side.

Or, as I do already, just put the blade or bowl on the pot’s edge and lay the handle onto the pan handle. No slots, stable, and free.

Hang Around is available in design and cookware stores around the world. If you really hate yourself, and love Flash sites that resize themselves to take up your entire monitor, then you could visit the Muuto site to find out the exact stores that carry them.

Hang Around product page [Muuto via Yanko]

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Bodum’s conical-shaped grill will attract a better class of people to your cook-outs

It is officially barbecue season or, for those to whom “barbecue” means burying a pig in a hole in the ground, “grill season.” And it is official because I had a barbecue up on the roof terrace this past weekend, and it was warm enough to stay up there for long enough to get properly drunk.

If only I’d had a Bodum Fyrkat grill, instead of the primitive homemade rig I usually use. It would have transformed my crude sausage-fest into a sophisticated soiree, full of beautiful people sipping cava instead of my dull friends chugging beer.

I could have marveled at the elegant conical shape of the kettle (and cleaned up easily thanks to the pointy ash-collecting base). I could have cooked the chickens evenly all around thanks to the hand-cranked rotisserie attachment (with an included but optional battery-powered motor). I could even have hung my tongs and other tools from the handy hooks on the side instead of just dropping them onto the filthy floor.

And even when not in use, the Fyrkat would keep a stylish presence on the rooftop, coming as it does in any of three candy colors or plain old black.

As it is, I cooked up lunch on a grill made from an old asbestos water tank, a satellite dish and a split and splayed metal basket. Don’t believe me? Here it is in action:

The ugliest damn grill in the whole world sits on my roof. Photo Charlie Sorrel

In truth, this is the best grill I have ever used, assembled from parts found on the roof some years ago. But for those of you who prefer to spend €200 ($284) on a metal bucket instead of on wine and food, the Fyrkat is available now.

Bodum – Fyrkat cone-charcoal grill [Connox via the Giz]

See Also:

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The Synergy beer-making kit is a world away from the plastic buckets of student home brew

If Doc Brown ever made home-brew beer, he’d make it in something that looked like this, the Synergy Home Beer Brewing System. The all stainless steel setup will let you mash your own hops and barley, sparge the wort and then let it ferment. There are gas burners built in, and the high mash-tun lets you siphon the wort by gravity, meaning no pump is needed. Finally, all tubes are silicone, which won’t taint flavors, and won’t dry and crack with age or heat.

If the above paragraph leaves you confused, then don’t worry. You mightn’t be ready for this $1,900 setup, but you can do everything with stuff you likely have in your own kitchen (you’ll probably need to buy a big plastic bucket for the fermentation, though). The Synergy kit certainly makes things easier, though, and you’ll look like a real pro.

Is it worth making your own beer? Well, the hassle outweighs the cost savings, but it can be a lot of fun. As a student, I bottled a brew which I called Venusian Death Cell. Some guy on my fine art course had combined the pictures from porn playing cards with horror-themed Top Trumps cards. The last one remaining from his no doubt highbrow project was the Venusian Death Cell, which I photocopied 50 times over and glued to the bottles.

Like I said, a hassle, but lots of fun. The Synergy Home Beer Brewing System is available now, and can be further customized by the fine folks at Synergy Brewing Systems.

Home beer brewing system 15 Gallon [Etsy via Uncrate]

Synergy Brewing Systems [Synergy Brew]

See Also:

• How It Works: Beer Dispenser Fills Glass From Bottom
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The redundant silicone screw stopper saves ‘leftover’ wine

Sometimes — not often but sometimes — I am invited to real people’s homes. In these homes we sometimes eat, and often drink. Then, when we’re “done”, the host will grab the half-full bottle of wine and slip in a cap. It may be a simple rubber stopper, or a more complex Vacu-Vin-style closure with a pump to evacuate the oxidizing air from the bottle.

When I see this, I usually laugh to myself as I leave, passing by the liquor store to pick up a bottle of whisky on my way home to bed.

For me, an opened bottle is a started bottle, and I was always taught to finish what I started, however difficult it might be. You might guess, then, that I do not, not have I ever, owned a special stopper for wine. Besides, every bottle comes with its own cork, which can be flipped and jammed back in if you have an emergency — say you have to leave the house before the bottle is done and must take it with you.

For those amateurs out there, those weak-minded fools who never finish what they begin, then may I recommend you check out these novelty silicone bottle screws. They resemble exaggerated cartoon-like Philips-head screws, but need only to be pushed into the bottle’s neck to seal it. Inexplicably, they come in sets of three, meaning that somebody, somewhere thinks you’ll need to seal three bottles at once.

A set of screws costs $13, which is $13 that could have been spent on alcohol.

Set of Three Bottle Screws [Pop Deluxe via Book of Joe]

See Also:

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• How to Pop a Cork With a Sword

The Coava Disk replaces paper Aeropress filters with a perforated steel plate

Anyone serious about their coffee has likely tried — or at least heard of — the Aeropress. It’s like a giant espresso-making syringe. You load it with coffee and hot water, plunge the plunger and mainline the coffee, not into a vein but into a waiting cup.

In short, it’s a great way to make cheap, quick espresso-ish coffee, with one possible problem — paper filters. The Aeropress needs a disposable paper disk every time you make a cup. And the Coava Disk coffee filter replaces this with a stainless steel reusable filter. If you make a lot of coffee, this may save you some money, but it also changes the coffee itself.

The holes in the Coava Disk are sized to let through a little “mud”, sludging your coffee up slightly, thickening the body and possibly — depending on who you ask — strengthening the flavor. I use a stove-top mocha espresso jug, which has its own built-in aluminum filter basket, but if I was an Aeropress kind of guy, I’d try the Disk. Not for taste reasons, but because I get European liberal guilt every time I toss disposable stuff in the trash.

The Disk is cheap enough just to try, and begins at $15.

DISK coffee filter [Coava]

See Also:

• Aerobie AeroPress – Wired.com
• DomePod Serves a Stiff Shot of Java on the Road
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• What's Inside a Cup of Coffee?
• Why Dark Coffee Is Easier on Your Stomach