(Bloomberg) -- The air we breathe for free is about 78% nitrogen. And yet, for all its ubiquity, to get a cup of coffee infused with the stuff, you need to pay a serious premium. At the Starbucks in my Brooklyn neighborhood, the smallest iced coffee costs $4.25. Make it a cold brew and it’s $4.75. But infuse that cold brew with nitrogen, to bring out its inherent sweetness, sans sugar, while giving it the creamy head and body of a Guinness, and you’re up to $5.75.
Customers regularly pay that price because the drink demands both time and serious equipment that most home baristas don’t have. Cold-brewing coffee typically takes upwards of 24 hours. Adding nitrogen to the finished product requires a piece of gear like the $290 uKeg Nitro Cold Brew Coffee Maker, which needs a new $3 capsule of the inert gas for every 50-ounce batch. The easy option for those who want their nitrogen fix at home is to just buy it canned. But even that comes at a cost: An eight-pack of Starbucks’ own (in 9.6-ounce cans) sells for $27, or $3.38 per can. A 12-pack of La Colombe nitro cold brew (in 9-ounce cans) sells for $34, or about $2.80 per can.
For those determined to bring their nitro fix home, a new product has hit the market: the $695 Cumulus cold coffee machine. Insert a proprietary aluminum capsule of cold brew concentrate (from about $2.50), press a button, and seconds later your glass is filling with ice cold coffee, cascading like a pint of plain at the best pub in Dublin (Grogan’s, if you’re asking).
The machine is the brainchild of Mesh Gelman, a Starbucks veteran whose last post there was senior vice president of Siren Ideas, the in-house innovation group. Behind Gelman is his old boss, Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ former chief executive officer, who had enough faith in the venture to participate in a $20.3 million seed funding round with Maveron, Starbucks-backed Valor Siren Ventures and Valor Equity Partners.
At a recent breakfast for Cumulus’ launch, Schultz explained what compelled him to back the project: “In the last five years or so, cold coffee, as a platform, has absolutely transformed the US coffee industry.” Indeed, 76% of Starbucks’ sales in the third quarter of 2024 were for cold drinks. While that number represents peak summer consumption, for a growing contingent of caffeine fiends, particularly young ones, cold coffee knows no season.
Stylus, a London-based global trends intelligence company, found that 26% of US consumers drink iced coffee throughout the year. And it’s not just an occasional indulgence: World Coffee Portal’s Project Café USA 2024 report found that 79% of respondents under the age of 35 typically purchased an iced beverage at least once a week, while 24% of consumers surveyed reported consuming iced coffee daily, up from 17% in 2022.
“Coffee brands and kitchen appliance manufacturers are making it easier to make these drinks at home, alongside traditional hot options,” says Laura Jeffery-Swain, food and beverage trends editor at Stylus. “Breville’s most recent launch, the Oracle Jet, has automated cold brew and cold espresso settings, whilst Keurig’s new K-Brew+Chill machine first brews with hot water and then flash-chills the liquid for cold coffee applications.”
While other makers are also “chasing cold,” as Gelman puts it, Schultz believes that consumers are still thirsty for cafe-quality cold coffee at home. “It was clear to me that there was a tremendous amount of white space in the market,” noted Schultz. Recently, he took a minority stake in ethical chocolate maker Tony’s Chocolonely, and has in the past backed breakthrough brands like Oatly, demonstrating an eye for paradigm-shifting products.
The Machine
The machine, available in “carbon” black and “cream” off-white, is clean-lined, tall and slender: 19 inches deep, 6 inches wide and 16 inches tall (2 inches taller when the top-loading capsule holder is open). The 40-ounce water tank is front-loading, so there’s no need for access to the back, though you shouldn’t completely jam it into a corner; it likes some space for airflow.
Interaction is completely analog. There’s no app and no screen, no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The capsule-loading crown has a dial with three settings: one for nitro cold brew (10 ounces is the only size), one for a double shot of cold espresso, and a third for cold brew coffee without the nitrogen. The simple design was inspired, in some ways, by Gelman’s experience driving a Tesla. “I love the sleekness, [but] I hate the fact that I can’t adjust certain settings without looking at my screen, just by touching,” he says. For a device that’s most often used first thing in the morning, the Cumulus had to be intuitive enough to operate with your eyes closed.
Making a nitro cold brew takes just under a minute from the time the capsule is inserted and the button is pressed. For the first 25 seconds or so, there’s just the whirr of a compressor, extracting and pressurizing nitrogen from the air. A strong stream of coffee then pours into your glass, transitioning from a concentrated, dark flow to clear water. (That serves the secondary purpose of cleaning out the head and the aluminum capsule, which can then be tossed in the recycling bin.) The coffee is properly cold, thanks to a 40-ounce refrigerated water tank, which holds its contents at a near-freezing 1-3C. It's a key differentiator from such machines as the Keurig and the Breville, which produce coffee in the range of room temperature to cool, and which need ice.
Also unique is the process by which Cumulus makes the 20ml of coffee that’s in each capsule. It’s steeped in a traditional cold brew method, then concentrated by a vacuum distillation. For lack of a more tasteful analogy, it’s a process similar to the one used to produce drinking water from sweat and urine aboard the International Space Station. Beyond its sci-fi bona fides, this method of concentration avoids introducing flavor-changing heat to the coffee. Cumulus offers eight coffees in its core line, including one decaf. It’s also introducing a “Gilded” range of single origin brews such as Ethiopian Wush Wush, which can cost upwards of $6 per capsule. All are shelf stable for about six months.
So, is it worth it? This is a first-generation, single-purpose machine employing some novel technology, and a closed capsule ecosystem—it will probably be a while before anyone else produces coffee for the Cumulus. But for committed consumers of cold brew coffee, the machine is a dream come true. Its brews are better than the canned competition, and more convenient and consistent than going to a coffee shop. And watching the cascade of tiny bubbles first thing in the morning? It’s a gas.
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