The world of whiskey is a curious place. Anyone can, of course, walk into a liquor store and pick up a bottle of the golden liquid. But figuring out which bottle you’ll love and which will be a waste of money can be a challenge – even for people with a connoisseur’s taste for a dram.
Enter Distiller, a Web tool designed to take the guesswork out of whiskey.
As Business Insider reports, Distiller, which just pushed past its beta phase, was co-founded by Mikael Mossberg and Brent Stiefel, who are trying to make whiskey less daunting.
“There can be a really high barrier to entry for learning a lot about whiskey,” Mossberg told Business Insider. “The future to us is to create a one-stop shop, be all end all whiskey discovery hub.”
The Distiller team is well on its way. Completely free and effortlessly easy, Distiller starts with a simple prompt for you to “discover whiskey.” Click that, and you’re asked “What are you looking for?” A gift? Something new to try? Something for your collection? Or something to share? After you enter your whiskey “experience” level (dabbler, appreciator, connoisseur, etc), Distiller asks for the presumed drinking setting (bar, by the fireplace, my couch), how “adventurous” you are, and how much you want to spend.
At the end, you’re given a specific bottle recommendation. You can view more details about the selected bottle, which features a short review of the spirit, along with details like age, proof, and a full flavor profile. Distiller even provides recommendations of similar bottles that might be more to your liking.
Based on our tests of Distiller, the site really works – our favorite bottles came up, even when we tried to trick it into recommending something sub par. And more bottles are expected to be added to the Distiller database as time goes on. So if you’re looking for a new whiskey to try, or just want to pick up a quality bottle for your favorite whiskey drinker, Distiller is the way to go.
[Image via Suslik1983/Shutterstock]
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
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Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
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