The Reason teplo Started Developing Personalized Extraction

One of the very unique features of the teplo teapot is the world’s first “Personalized Extraction.” With Personalized Extraction, before brewing your tea, you select your desired mood using a smartphone app, and then place your finger on the teapot’s sensor to measure metrics such as your pulse. Based on these results, the teapot adjusts the extraction temperature and time to brew tea that’s perfectly suited to your current state.

When teplo appeared on the show “Gacchiri Monday!!,” MC Koji Kato and guest Takeshi Honda conducted an interesting (and somewhat mischievous) experiment to see how the flavor of the same tea with the same goal settings could change depending on different people performing the sensing. Since the results of Personalized Extraction cannot be intentionally altered by teplo staff, we remember being quite nervous during the recording. Ultimately, tea with distinctly different flavors and aromas was brewed, which excited the studio and even led to the scene where Koji Kato drank teplo’s personalized tea ranking 5th in the program’s viewership ratings.

Although we’ve digressed a bit, this article explains why teplo began developing Personalized Extraction.

In fact, teplo’s development began somewhat independently of personalized extraction. In the winter of 2015, our CEO, a mechanical engineer from Japan, and our CTO, a software engineer from India, started developing machines and software based on the hypothesis that if they could precisely control the extraction temperature and time, they could produce better-tasting tea. This was the beginning of teplo, reflecting a very engineering-oriented perspective. The photo below shows the first prototype of teplo, which they hand-built using gathered components when the idea first came about.

Based on the hypothesis that precise numerical control could lead to better-tasting tea, the team began prototyping and exchanged ideas with tea professionals. One of the tea experts shared an interesting perspective: “While the temperature and time for brewing tea are important, the expression and body language of the person brewing, as well as factors like the day’s temperature and humidity, influence how the brewing conditions are subtly adjusted.”

This insight was a revelation for the two engineers, who realized that while numerical control is crucial, it alone is not sufficient.

The question then became, “How can we brew tea as deliciously as a tea professional would?”

After much discussion and experimentation, they developed the world’s first “personalized extraction” system, which adjusts brewing conditions by considering factors like pulse rate, fingertip temperature, room temperature, humidity, and noise.

The teplo project, which began with the goal of precisely controlling extraction parameters, evolved into a project dedicated to delivering the highest quality, personalized tea. Today, teplo’s personalized extraction continues to advance, driven by the feedback received daily from teplo owners.