James Bond famously said, "I'll have my Vodka Martini shaken, not stirred." But what about the secret third option... made by a robot? How do you like your cocktails? I rarely drink them, but when I do, I might as well get those fancy ones with nonsense like mousse egg whites and flames. Why not?
But one thing I've never thought about is having my cocktails made completely by a machine. It's not a robot, but let's just say it is. I'm talking about the Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine, a $369 machine that can make over 60 varieties of cocktails in seconds. All you have to do is supply the liquor.
Hands-free bottoms-up drinks
Don't get me wrong, the Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine does everything it claims to be able to. That's why I gave it 4 stars in my review — it performs very, very well. I made cocktails for everyone in the office (eight people) in under ten minutes. It's beyond easy.
You can buy over sixty types of cocktail pod from Bartesian direct, or from Amazon. These pods are about $2.50-$4 a pop, which, yeah, is quite pricey. I'll get onto that in more detail below. If you couldn't already tell, this is an expensive machine, and it's expensive to run, too.
I tested the Bartesian Premium Cocktail Maker with a huge variety of cocktails: Cosmopolitans, Margaritas, Pineapple Margaritas, Amaretto Sours (delicious), Whiskey Sours, Lemon Drops, Uptown Rocks, Mojitos... the list goes on. If it's a decently well-known cocktail, we can safely assume you can get a pod for it.
These pods are recyclable, too. That's a major plus, and something I was really relieved to see. Obviously, you can recycle Nespresso and Keurig pods, so there's a precedent that Bartesian needed to meet.
Although I liked some cocktails more than I liked others, that doesn't mean it was the Bartesian's fault. That's just my tastebuds being devil's advocate. You can adjust the strength of each drink from 'Mocktail' all the way to 'Strong', so you'll be able to find a flavor to suit your preference. Personally, I found anything above 'Light' a bit gross.
After choosing your strength preference, the machine takes about ten seconds to mix and dispense the drink. It's literally blink-and-you-miss-it fast. I think this would be a fantastic machine to get for holiday parties — it'd definitely get your guests talking, that's for sure.
Cleanup is just as easy — you only need to run water through the machine between dormant periods and it'll sort itself out. You can store your spirits in the glass bottles between uses, which reduces the need for extra storage. It's an all-in-one cocktail machine for a reason.
As I've said many times, the Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine is a great little (big) gadget that'll impress anyone who visits your home. However, it's not perfect, and has one major flaw, which I'll discuss now.
But wait... there's a catch
I'm not going to make you wait: the Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine is, in every sense of the word, premium.
It's very expensive to buy, and then it's very expensive to run. Let's do some math here.
The Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine will set you back $369 in the U.S., or £299 in the U.K.. Each pod is around $2.50-$4, depending on the drink. Let's use a classic Margarita as the test drink.
A 16 pack of Margarita pods is $49 from Amazon U.S.. This works out at $3.12 per pod.
The liquor doesn't come with the Bartesian, so let's assume you have to buy a bottle of tequila. The first result on Walmart is a 26-ounce bottle of Jose Cuervo, so let's assume we buy that for $11.43.
A standard Margarita recipe calls for 2oz of tequila, so that's $0.88 of liquor. So in total, one Margarita made on the Bartesian will cost you pretty much exactly $4. According to FinanceBuzz, the average (nationwide) cost of a Margarita is $10.03.
So you save $6 per Margarita. You'd have to drink 61 1/2 Margaritas to make your money back on the Bartesian, which could be around 1-2 years of use.
Now let's do the math for a fully handmade Marg. Let's use the same Walmart tequila, which is $0.88 per 2-ounce serving.
The rest of the Margarita calls for 1 ounce of lime juice (one lime) and 1 ounce of triple sec. On Walmart's online shop, a single lime costs $0.18, and a 12-ounce bottle of Cointreau is $22.87. As a Margarita requires 1 ounce of triple sec, let's say this costs you $1.91.
If we add that all together, we get $2.97. This is $1.03 cheaper than buying the Bartesian pod and tequila separately. You also save $369 on the machine itself.
You do, however, have to make the drink yourself, so the Bartesian wins on convenience. As I mentioned in the section above, there's no doubt in my mind: the Bartesian is the easiest way to make cocktails. Ever. It's even easier than paying a bartender to do it for you — you don't have to leave your home.
Margaritas in sweats sounds like a fantastic Friday night, but it doesn't come cheap. I know people who take cocktails seriously will sneer at the Bartesian, but that's fine. It's not for them. It's like the difference between a superautomatic espresso machine and a manual espresso machine: different strokes for different folks.
Personally, I wouldn't ever buy the Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine. Not because it's a bad machine — quite the opposite, actually — but because I'm more of a DIY girlie. I would rather get down and dirty with shaking my own Margarita than waiting for a machine to do it for me.
But if you want a machine that'll quite literally awe your party guests, the Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine does that and more. It can make well over sixty different cocktails — you only have to supply the booze — in seconds. This is a sure-fire way to wow people over the holidays.
Do I recommend the Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine as an impressive appliance? Heck, yeah. It's awesome.
Would I ever buy it? No, but there's a lot of stuff I wouldn't buy. I love $3,000 espresso machines, but I'd never buy one. Doesn't mean it's not a good appliance, it's just not for me.
And if you want a robot mixologist on call 24/7? The Bartesian Premium Cocktail Machine is everything you dream of.
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