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"During a time when we're all multitasking, it's nice to know that you can brew 4 cups of coffee in one minute out of a stainless steel faucet with just a few taps on your iPhone while you get ready for the day. Yes, as you've probably guessed by now, the TopBrewer isn't your standard coffee maker.\nThis beautiful coffeemaker \u2014 everything but the elegant swan neck tap is hidden under a counter \u2014 was developed by a 230-person, family-owned company in Denmark called Scanomat. Mashable spoke with Sebastian Vibe-Petersen, Scanomat's export manager, who says the company invented the first fully automatic cappuccino machine in the early 1980s \u2014 and that the TopBrewer is Scanomat's biggest success in its 50 year history.\nWhy Coffee Was Ready For Innovation\n\n\n\n\nThe design was borne out of the mind of CEO Kim Vibe-Petersen (Sebastian's father), with the goal of making the complicated simple \u2014 without compromising quality. Sebastian says his father \"has always been a driving force in development and has taken many crazy ideas into reality,\" so creating the world's most high-tech coffee brewer wasn't a farfetched idea. \nVibe-Petersen says the concept's mechanics had been brewing in his head for a while, doing what he calls \u201C3D rendering\u201D \u2014 until he woke up one morning with the idea for a the smallest milk foamer yet, which would be a necessary component of the compact TopBrewer. In two days, he says, the basic idea was prototyped and tested in Scanomat's R&amp;D department, where tools for such product development were readily available. It worked, and getting the product into production took two years, much of that consumed by the foamer, which is now patented as the world's smallest milk frother and is placed at the tip of the faucet. The TopBrewer's tap is made of 80% recycled stainless steel and can be built into any tabletop \u2014 you just need two small holes for the faucet and the drain. So Scanomat's mastered both the user experience and the user interface. The design's simplicity is uniquely Scandinavian, but it has global appeal \u2014 the first hundreds of TopBrewers will roll off the assembly lines in January to meet the demand.\nHigh-Tech Brewing\n\n\n\n\nBut as we mention above, this coffee brewer is not only a sexy piece of machinery \u2014 it can also be controlled by a few other sexy gadgets, namely the iPhone and iPad. The iOS application keeps the countertop free of clutter \u2014 there's just one tap, and the iDevice can be used to control the machines, keep track of the beverages made (perfect for retail customers) and even order more coffee beans. \n\"We didn\u2019t want to be aesthetically limited by a keyboard, so we said to ourselves \u2014 how do we solve this? The obvious idea was the full integration of an iDevice that completely replaces the need of a keyboard, while also adding value, convenience and a rich user experience,\" says Vibe-Petersen. The app development process was an arduous one, making use of iOS 5 and Bluetooth to enable the machine's low energy consumption. The app's not yet available in App Store, but the screenshots look pretty sharp, displaying the menu, the machine's temperature and brewing updates. And if you're anti-Apple, worry not \u2014 Scanomat has an LCD touch keyboard that can be installed flush with the counter to maintain the sleek lines.\nThe TopBrewer machine is primarily for businesses, so you're able to control multiple TopBrewer taps with one device, and the app lets you see what all the machines are brewing and what's on deck. If you have a picky customer who comes in religiously for a grande skim double vanilla latte, you don't have to worry about marking down the shorthand on the cup and making it right \u2014 you can save the order it to the favorites page and instead spend time asking the customer how he is instead of what we wants to drink. The machines are currently in testing in restaurants and coffee shops, but Vibe-Petersen can't disclose where or what the feedback has been. For those of you interested in a TopBrewer for the home or office, be patient \u2014 the company is working on these versions, which will have a smaller system under the hood, but will use the same swan neck.\nMore Than Coffee\nWhile an iOS-operated coffee brewer that extracts up to 10% more than other coffeemakers is pretty sweet, the TopBrewer doesn't end with coffee. It can make all the milk-based coffee drinks you'd want \u2014 cappuccino, latte, macchiato, espresso \u2014 steaming the milk to the perfect texture and reportedly making a killer crema, which coffee aficionados will appreciate. The machine can make more than a liter of hot water each minute to produce steam, and an add-on module enables cold beverages. And if you're in the mood for something sweeter, you can add concentrated juice and hot chocolate to the system, which also can be controlled from the same app. Between beverages, the system self-cleans, dousing all hoses with water after each drink. All of this happens very quickly, too \u2014 its super fast grinders and mechanics enable the machine to self-clean and recover before brewing another drink or standing by in a matter of seconds (read: there's no clean up involved). In fact, you can produce up to four cups of filter coffee per minute, and the machine takes only 45 seconds to go from standby to brew-ready, making it energy-efficient. That's one smart coffeemaker.\nThere's no word yet on what the price will be \u2014 what price would you pay? Let us know in the comments below.\nSeries supported by Lincoln\n\n\n\n\nThe Designer Tech Series is supported by the exquisitely crafted, new 2013 Lincoln MKS with Lincoln Drive Control. Now it gets interesting.\n \n \n \n  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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