Not really. The feedstock for this is just biomass, so any plant matter will do.

One of the vendors that caters our lunches uses PLA cups. Sometimes they stick them in the insulated box with the rest of the food and we wind up with cups that look like a modern art project gone awry.

Microwave your water in the cornstarch cup and watch that future melt. This technology opens the door to making a much wider range of plastics than just PLA.

PLA-based products are on the market—there are a number of plastic cups made from it, for instance. The problem with PLA and other biodegradable plastics is that they generally need oxygen and heat to degrade. Landfills are effectively anaerobic, which means that biodegradable products just sit there almost…

It's unclear at the moment what the energy needs of a biomass —> ethylene plant would be. The production of ethylene from conventional feedstocks is energy-intensive, but the waste heat of the process is able to supply the energy needs of the plant once it's up and running. Since the feedstock for this process is…

Link? Comments seem to be a little buggy with photos.

Did you get a chance to test the range of capacity? You talk about testing with 500mL batches, which is less than half the nominal capacity of the units. I'd be curious how they did with 8oz and 40oz batches as well.

Science backs you up:

This is about the closest I've seen: [luminairecoffee.com]/

True, if you're shaking for a particular texture, you could overshake. But for temperature and dilution, it doesn't matter.

Gawker didn't spring for Amazon Prime? ;-) It's in stock (up to $280 though): [www.amazon.com]

see

Here ya go. Bad-ass machine, come-hither eyes.

"And since then, the incidence of autism has still decreased."

True, which is what I'll end up doing when I have the counter space to devote to an electric kettle (and I'll let it do double duty as a sous vide controller).

You can do the conversion on Wolfram Alpha. I just went over there to check. The capacity of these machines is 40 fl oz.

Here, I'll bold it for you: Consider that everybody loved our control coffee—a cup manually brewed with a $15 Clever dripper—better than either of the machines by a sizeable margin.

Temperature *change* does not affect beer. It's the absolute temperature that affects it. The warmer a beer is, the faster it ages.

Bottles should keep about as well as kegs as long as you keep them away from light. Kegs usually aren't substantially cheaper than bottles until you get to the 1/2 bbl size (~15 gal), and no occasional drinker is going to make use of that quantity of beer. So I'd stick with bottles for now.

It depends on the type of beer. Most beer, as you've surmised, is better fresh, and is best stored in the fridge. This is particularly important for IPAs and other aromatic, hoppy beers. For the best hop character, you probably want to drink most of these within about 3 months of the brew date, though in some IPAs…