High-Tech Cocktails: Five Alcohol Enhancing Technologies That May Revolutionize Your Happy Hour

Let's face it, while we can always just grab a beer at the corner bar the old-fashioned way---out of a tap or bottle, poured straight into a glass and down the hatch---there will always be those technological innovators looking to transform the way you imbibe. Here are five advances in drinking technology that may find their way to a taproom near you---or even to your basement bar. 

Bartendro: The Robot Cocktail Mixer

This Kickstarter project has already funded its pledge limit by almost 500 thirsty backers. It's a robot that can automatically mix one of 200 cocktails in just seconds, selected through a WiFi connection from a drink menu on your smartphone. You have to set it up with the right kind of essential drinks by feeding some food-grade tubing down into the bottles; the full sized Bartendro can handle up to 15 different components. Peristaltic pumps feed the machine with your chosen base booze and other ingredients, while a programmed Raspberry Pi meters out just the right amount of everything. If it could handle a martini shaker, it'd probably already be in a tavern near you.

High-Tech Cocktails

Mixologists shouldn't worry about Bartendro stealing their jobs because high-tech cocktails are on the way and are so complicated they can only be mixed, by hand, by a human being - with a degree in chemistry and years of lab experience. This video by Bloomberg TV features barkeep-from-the-future Dave Arnold of New York City's Booker & Dax showing how he uses, among other things, lab centrifuges and liquid nitrogen to mix the perfect drink.

FusionTower

If beer is more your thing, you'll be happy to know that there are ways for technology to enhance (and/or maybe complicate) your beer-drinking experience as well. FusionTower is one such way. It's an add-on to standard bar taps that dry-hops beer in seconds as it is poured, negating the slow, warm, flat qualities often associated with dry-hopped, cask beers. It looks relatively simple to use---just attach to a tap, add whatever spices, malts, fruits or hops that you want to infuse into your beer into the FusionTower chamber, and pour. The hypnotic video shows hops moving like a piston as beer enters and is flushed out of the infusion chamber.

Chillsner Bottle Cooler

Let's get back to basics - sometimes you just want a cold bottle of beer. But what if you just picked up a case from the grocery store and it's not cold? Technology comes to the rescue in the form of Chillsner. It's a drink-through beer chiller that you keep in the freezer and pop into your beer during emergencies such as this. It's pretty new, and available for pre-orders. It starts shipping next month.

Breathometer: The Smartphone Breathalyzer

After having your futuristic tech-enhanced beer or cocktail, you may not be capable of getting yourself home - especially if you try all four of the technological advancements listed above. You should never mess around with drinking and driving, and the Breathometer can tell you that you've had enough. It plugs into your smartphone's headphone jack and its accompanying app gives you real-time breathalyzer readings each time you blow onto it. It comes as a keychain, so it can act as an automatic reminder anytime you think of acting stupidly.