HomeBiogas – turn your waste into energy
2-12-2015
Turn your kitchen leftovers into 3 hours of cooking per day. HomeBiogas is a family-sized affordable biogas system. It converts any organic waste into clean cooking gas and a high quality liquid fertilizer for the garden.
How to use the system
On average, one kilogram of food waste produces about 200 litres of gas, which generates around one hour of cooking over a high flame. Therefore, one can generate 1 up to 3 hours of cooking gas each day with six kilogram of food waste – the perfect amount for three meals.
HomeBiogas is easy to use, doesn’t need any electricity and can be connected to your stove. You will need to place the system outdoors or in a barn, it works optimally in places with an average day/night temperature above 17 °C.
Successful crowdfunding
HomeBiogas is a crowdfunding project on the website Indiegogo. Their target was to fund at least $ 100,000.=. They already reached 130% of their target within 7 days and still have 24 days left. If you would like to support this project you can choose between several perks. One of the perks contributes to the HomeBioGas-Arava Institute to support peace-building, social justice, and environmental leadership and research in the Middle East. It is also possible to support the project and at the same time order the HomeBiogas system.
HomeBiogas within the hospitality?
For now the HomeBiogas is perfect for families. It’s not meant for industrial use such as hotels or big restaurants. The big amount waste they produce, can’t be handled at this stage, by the system. It can convert a maximum of six kilogram of food waste. For smaller restaurants and cafés the system could be an option to become more sustainable.
Global warming and carbon footprints are from major importance to the world’s future. Using HomeBiogas will certainly contribute to your sustainable image.
The system also fertilizes your herbs and vegetables. A lot of people already make their own compost at home and with this innovation we think that many more people will follow.
Process wine into…
1-12-2015
Bram Kosterink likes to drink or serve a fine wine! In this article he will give a few examples of how wine is used in an entirely different manner. He writes about Pinot Noir Sea Salt and Wine Ice Tea.
The fact that wine and the hospitality industry are friends is well known! Processing wine and using or selling it as an entirely different product is not well-known. In what ways can you use wine other than to support a dish or to use it in sauces? For inspiration he collected some examples:
Process wine into Pinot Noir Sea Salt
Prepare your own sea salt with the taste and colour of Pinot Noir. Creating your own Pinot Noir sea salt is easier than baking an egg. Use 5 till 10 ml Pinot Noir for every 50 grams of coarse sea salt. Let the Pinot Noir reduce to a syrup (will take about 15 to 20 minutes). Add the salt to the wine once it’s reduced, blend it well with a spatula and let it dry on a plate for at least 12 hours. The result: Your own Pinot Noir Salt! The salt tastes great on a sirloin or tenderloin! Read Brain Sullivan’s article in The Huffington Post for more details.
Tip: Prepare the sea salt with the same bottle of Pinot Noir you’ll serve during dinner.
Process wine into Wine Iced Tea
An iced tea made of wine grapes. The tealeaves are completely replaced by freshly harvested grape skins which gives the tea the sophisticated taste of wine. The Wine Iced Tea is available in the flavours Chardonnay, Cabernet or Pinot Noir. Each iced tea has its own ideal ‘wine’–food combination. For example, the Chardonnay goes great with salads and white meat. The Cabernet does taste great with hard cheeses, pâtés and stews and the Pinot Noir is perfect with baked salmon, lobster and paella’s. The iced tea doesn’t contain any alcohol, which makes it child friendly.
Tip: It would be nice to serve parents a real glass of wine, and their kids a Wine Iced Tea!
Other examples of products that relate to wine are The Real Wine Gum and Writing with wine.
Zorri Cress
30-11-2015
Koppert Cress introduces a new cress, the Zorri Cress. Healthy, tasteful and beautiful in compositions on the plate.
The Zorri Cress
On a regular basis Koppert Cress introduces a new cress, this time the Zorri Cress. Zorri Cress is the sprout of the Nasturtium. This is a spicy decorative plant which has been growing in our gardens for centuries. The plant originates from the Andes and arrived in Europe in the sixteenth century via Peru. The leaf is shaped like a shield, and the spicy taste of the product combines well with refreshing dishes both warm and cold. Zorri Cress is available year round. The optimum temperature at which the quality is the best maintained, is between 2 and 4 ° C.
Besides the cresses Koppert Cress regularly introduces flowers that can be used in the kitchen, such as the BlinQ Blossom® in 2013. With the introduction of the BlinQ Blossem® the focus was still on storytelling around the product. Nowadays the cresses of Koppert Cress are so popular with chefs that a single introduction of the cress is sufficient.
Meals That Get You Laid
27-11-2015
A cookbook as inspiration for restaurants. Not only because of the recipes, but due to the idea behind it. Meals That Get You Laid, in the Netherlands awarded with the title ‘best gift for men in 2015’. Unfortunately so far only available in Dutch.
Meals That Get You Laid
Writing about a cookbook isn’t something we often do, but the idea behind this cookbook could well inspire a number of hospitality entrepreneurs to offer dishes with a sexual, humorous touch. Meals That Get You Laid, a manual in the style of a cookbook, describing all the tricks to make a woman completely defenceless. Explaining the combination of the right ingredients, atmosphere, music, and beverage choices. One of the writers is working in the hospitality business, it is therefore most likely that this theme will get attention in the hospitality industry as well.
What can a man learn from it?
According to the writers, the man will learn how to seduce a woman with the use of astrology presented over 12 different chapters. They indicate that astrology is total nonsense, but they are convinced that women believe in astrology. Who are these writers/friends? The compilers of the book are a photographer, a graphic designer, an architect, an advertising executive and an hospitality entrepreneur who regularly come together to go through things in life. Of course also to eat and drink. The cookbook with beautiful pictures made by Jaap Vliegenthart, contains 12 chapters. One for each zodiac sign. Each chapter has a starter, main course and dessert and a wine suggestion for every dish, focusing on the characteristics of the star in question. The dishes are easy to make, but look amazing. The book is full of tips and tricks to make good use of the characteristics of the particular lady. Such as a playlist at the end of each chapter, for maximum impact. Of course there are shopping lists, anything to make it as easy as possible.
The first edition was funded by crowdfunding. The book is published by the friends themselves. Their website has been transformed to the webshop, to order the book. A book with a sexy trailer.
Brew your own beer with Brewie
23-11-2015
With the Brewie machine you can brew different types of beer at home or in your own bar.
Brewie the brewing machine
Brewie started as a crowdfunding project. In January 2015 the company raised more than twice their target amount, goal accomplished! The Brewie machine will now be taken into production. The machine is standardly delivered with the ingredients necessary. It’s also possible to make your own mix of ingredients, or use different proportions. In this way you can personalize your beer even more.
Brew your own beer
Brewie works together with your smartphone using an app specifically developed to make brewing your own beer with Brewie even easier. The app can be used to save your own recipes and discover new ones. Brewie also made a video in which you can see how beer is made by using the machine. Beginners should be able to easily do it on their own. The machine cleans itself with one push on a button and can be connected to your own water system.
Serving your home made beer
It’s already a trend to serve your own beer in your bar. It creates an unique selling point as a company and makes a good impression on your guests. Maybe it’s an idea to develop a new beer together with your guests!
Convenient, a wine cloth
20-11-2015
We also love red wine, but it often leaves a red stain on our teeth and lips. You can’t get rid of those with a simple napkin, but with this special wine cloth you can, in Dutch translated to ‘wijndoekje’. It’s convenient to offer this to guests who are drinking red wine.
A wine cloth?
Yes, a wine cloth. Most wine lovers recognize this problem and it’s tough to get rid of those stains with just a napkin and some water. That’s why ‘wijndoekje’ developed a cloth which you can use to easily get rid of the red stains, which red wine leaves on your teeth and lips. The cloth is wet and smells like mint and aloe vera, which gives you a fresh and clean feeling.
The cloth is such a relief for any wine lover and on top of that it’s also good for the environment. There are no preservatives used and it’s completely biodegradable.
BuzzBar developed alcoholic ice creams for adults
19-11-2015
BuzzBar has designed various ice cream bars specifically for adults. The ice contains liquor and only natural ingredients. They also produce ice cream bars that are suitable for vegetarians.
BuzzBar as an alternative for the cocktail
The average ice cream bar contains about 2 percent alcohol, so you won’t get really drunk, but it could be a great alternative for a cocktail in the summer. The ice cream bars and popsicles come in a lot of different flavours, some examples are: Mojito, raspberry and lemon sorbet with lemon vodka, whiskey and chocolate, strawberries with rum and vanilla combined with cognac.
Inspiration
The ice cream bars could be a fun idea for a cocktail bar, this way guests can taste their favourite cocktails ice cold. Maybe people will even toast with BuzzBars in the future?
The Tea Ceré or matcha brewing device
16-11-2015
Matcha is very healthy and popular, they even made a Tea Ceré – a matcha or tea home-brewing device. With this tea ‘brewing’ machine tea lovers can enjoy matcha drinks at home.
Matcha increasingly popular
Leonie van Spronsen already wrote about the ‘matcha latte’ she drank at Maison Kitsuné in Paris last February. In this article, more about the health effects of matcha. This Japanese tea has become a popular ingredient, even for cocktails. Partly because of the beautiful green colour of the tea.
The Tea Ceré will grind your tea to powder
This tea brewing device is produced by Sharp (Canada) and it kind of looks like a coffee machine. It’s designed to make a perfect cup of tea, of course only if you use high-quality tea leaves. The machine grinds the leaves into a fine powder. The water in the machine will be boiled to the right temperature and even whisks in the tea. You can even make matcha (or another tea) lemonade with the machine.
Buzzed – beer as a refill for your 3D printer?
16-11-2015
‘Buzzed’ is an invention made by 3Dom USA for your 3D printer. This refill for your 3D printer is completely produced with the waste and by-products derived from the beer process.
With Buzzed you can…
The latest product from 3Dom USA is ‘Buzzed’ an official refill suitable for the use in a 3D printer. The thread is 100% made from waste and by-products derived from the beer process. The produced wire (‘Buzzed’) is 1.75 mm thick and gives your homemade product a rich golden colour and a distinctive natural grain. The bio-based ‘Buzzed’ is already the second product in the line of ‘c2composites’ that 3Dom USA brings to the market. The first product, also a refill for 3D printers, is made entirely of waste and by-products of coffee called, ‘Wound Up’.
Drinking beer from a home-made beer mug
As an example 3Dom USA made a beer mug of ‘Buzzed’. So for the real beer lovers and owners of a 3D printer, from now on you can drink your beer from a home-made mug made from beer!
You can use the refills of 3Dom USA in almost all PLA (a type of plastic made from natural raw materials) 3D printers. The cost for a role ‘Buzzed’ is $ 49, =. Are you inspired and did you make a nice product with the ‘Buzzed’, please let us know!
The iSommelier by iFavine
13-11-2015
The iSommelier filters oxygen from the air and herewith the decanting process is being accelerated, reducing the time from a few hours to minutes. The iSommelier is a product of iFavine.
Glass carafes fit in the neatly designed device in which purified oxygen is added to the wine. In the corresponding mobile app the knowledge concerning thousands of wines from around the world is collected. The device is programmed in a way that the winemaker tells the user how the wine should be drunk.
The iSommelier by iFavine, a perfect balance between oxygen and wine.
That is the effect of the iSommelier, which excludes all the limitations of traditional decanting. Several natural elements in the air can affect the quality of a wine when it is traditionally decanted; pollution, odours, moist, differences in air pressure or temperature. This first ‘smart decanter’ uses new technology to provide solutions to these problems. Three filters purify the air and increase the oxygen content from the average of 21% to a maximum of 90%. Moreover, it removes pollutants and moist. The device isolates oxygen from nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. The iSommelier includes a patented glass carafe. This carafe is specially designed to distribute oxygen evenly throughout the wine. This results in a constant level of oxygen in the wine which makes tannins rounder and the wine tastes more elegant. As a result of this method all flavours will be enhanced and the full potential of the wine will be revealed.
According to the Dutch ambassador of the iSommelier by iFavine, Edwin Raben (famous Dutch sommelier) each restaurant should have a iSommelier. “Restaurants will be able to decant their (arrangement) wines by the glass. Moreover, also young wines can be consumed much earlier because of the softening effect at the tannins. The effect on white wines is also huge, think for example of young Riesling.”
There are already a couple of Dutch restaurants working with the iSommelier: for example FG restaurant and FG Food Lab by Francois Geurds (Rotterdam), restaurant Beluga (Maastricht), Restaurant Fred (Rotterdam), Wolf Atelier (Amsterdam) and the Sotto Wine Lounge (Ermelo).
Alain Rosier (sommelier restaurant FG & FG Food Labs) over the iSommelier
“We started working with the iSommelier last week and we are experimenting as we speak. This week we opened a great Château Mouton Rothschild 1985 (see photo) and we were able to serve the wine after 30 minutes with a great bouquet. With the iSommelier you can act quickly if a wine needs a little more oxygen to make the wine more tasteful. Heavy tannins as in wines with 100% Tannat grapes, break down easily with the iSommelier. Additionally, you can serve wine more quickly and you do not have to decant the wines for hours if they are ordered beforehand.”
The iSommelier by iFavine is sold from 24 November at the Makro and for consumers in the Netherlands at Oldenhof Kookwinkel.
