drinks

It's an everyday irritation: Your coffee's too hot to sip, so you dump in some milk and set it aside for a minute while you answer just one email. Turn back to the coffee, and now it's tepid and unappetizing.

The geniuses at the Fraunhofer Institute, just like us regular folks, are fed up with such nonsense. Unlike us, though, they're German engineers, so they've created the Perfect Coffee Mug to extirpate imperfect coffee once and for all.

If you never thought that soda machines would adapt to the high-tech world, think again. Coca-Cola's Freestyle fountain comes equipped with a touchscreen that is able to mix flavors on the spot, using precise machinery originally developed for dialysis and cancer treatments.

There are over 100 flavors available, across an array of drink brands, including Coke, Fanta, energy drinks, flavored waters, and more. When you select a drink, you're able to select from a variety of flavors, some of which are unfamiliar (Raspberry Coke?! Peach Fanta?!).

Robot Sommelier

Is your $30,000 bottle of Chateau Petrus Bordeaux truly a rare vintage, or is it just $30 merlot? Counterfeits plague rare-wine auctions, but researchers in Spain have built a handheld "electronic tongue" that detects them instantly. It measures the signature chemicals, acidity and sugar content in a drop of wine (typically one bottle from a case) and runs those against a database of certified vintage wines to catch fakes that might fool human tasters.