Foreword
I backed POURX OURA's Kickstarter project in June, 2020.
Due to pandemic, the delivery of OURA was delayed to January, 2021 from originally planned in October, 2020.
OURA is a pourover oriented smart scale. In 2020, most of my time was spent at home. I would like to delve deeper into the coffee world. Learning coffee and practicing brewing skills are direct way to delve me deeper. But they take longer time. Buying some prestigious coffee gears immediately satisfies my thirst for coffee. Moreover, I would like to support the coffee innovation by Taiwaneses. Thus, I backed POURX OURA on Kickstarter.
However, I found POURX OURA became obsolete before its formal arrival and it is not my essential coffee gear in December 2020. I bought Felicita Arc in the same month and Arc fulfils all my coffee brewing needs.
Yet, I do not regret backing OURA project.
OURA's functions
1st of all, OURA is not waterproof nor water resistant.
OURA has three modes:
- Simple weighing
- Normal pourover
- Light guided pourover
You can only do weighing in 1st mode.
Timing and weighing can be conducted simultaneously in 2nd mode. When OURA senses weight, the timing is started automatically in this mode. I bought Brewista Smart Scale II in 2017 and have had Brewista as my only coffee scale since then. From 2017 to 2020, I only used Modes 1 and 6 on Brewista. And they are the same as OURA's 1st and 2nd modes. I personally like the automatic timing very much.
I think 1st and 2nd modes on OURA are the basic functions for a coffee scale.
Last but not least, 3rd mode is firstly introduced by POURX
OURA guides brewing by light signals.
In this mode, users can read weight, time and light signals on OURA. You may visit my youtube video to see the detailed demonstration on the light guided pourover mode.
As a smart coffee scale, OURA can connect smart phones via bluetooth. More settings and functions are available in POURX's app.
Three default light guiding recipes came with OURA, namely, SOUR, BALANCED and STRONG. User may still use the three recipes on OURA without any connections with the smartphones.
Users can download user-defined recipes via QR CODE. Recipes can be created by the user and shared with other users. POURX's app offers 2 ways for the users to create their own user-defined recipes, namely, real-time recording (which is demonstrated in my youtube video) and manual setup. For manual setup, users can design pour volume, pour time, waiting time or stirring by stages. However, I find the app's operation is not very intuitive for manual setup.
My User's Review
OURA's real-time recording functionality is kinda limited. OURA can sense stops of pours and time automatically the idling time between pours. But OURA cannot distinguish flow rate variations in any single continuous pour. OURA can only record the overall average flow rate for each continuous pour. Say, for James Hoffmann's Ultimate V60 methods, it is required to pour fast before reaching 60% of the total target volume and lower the flow rate in order to keep the water level between 60% and 100% of the total target volume. Real-time recording mode cannot record this flow rate variation. Therefore, users must create the recipe manually for such circumstances.
Yet, manual setup has its own problems. When you input the pour volume for each stage, the pouring time is a mandatory input. Hario and Brewista scales are commonly adopted in the current market. They do not offer readings for the real-time flow rates. General users or even the professional baristas do not have an idea on the actual numeric figures for the actual flow rates for their past pours. Target pour volume in each pour stage is the only figure that concerns most general users. As a result, most of users are unable to forecast the pour time for each pour. Furthermore, the grind sizes affect the actual flow rate for a water molecule to complete its passage through the coffee bed. Users commonly adjust their pour rate real-time depending on the water level at that moment. Things get even more complicated is that the permeability of the coffee bed also depends on the type of the coffee beans and their freshness. It is quite hard to provide one time to fit all situations.
Acaia's Pearl S offers barista's pour rate training mode. As OURA provides brewing guides, it should also be able to offer a similar function. However, you cannot find any specific training mode in the app. Although users can create a new recipe and practice against that recipe, this is not the perfect solution IMHO. OURA does not evaluate the real-time flow rates. From the figures above, you cannot find the said figures neither in the light guided pourover mode nor in the recipe creation mode. For comparison, I can do a real-time flow rate analysis on my Felicita Arc. Maybe, the general users are not bothered with the real-time flow rates. I think, for coffee enthusiasts and the professional baristas, such figures are valuable. Say, if one has two OURAs and a dripper stand, he/she can place one OURA below the stand and another on the stand. He/she can then measure the pour rate and actual flow rate through the coffee bed to the cup at the same time.
Moreover, OURA stops timing once the last pour in the recipe is completed. Users cannot tell how long does it take to complete the desired final water drawdown. This figure also reflects the clogging due to the grind size and baristas' pour techniques. As the coffee bed completes its settlement at a certain stage of pours after some water drawdown, it is the least permeable at that period of time. Hence, you can tell how seriously clogged is the coffee bed by looking at the time required for the final water drawdown.
The real-time flow rates and timing for the final water drawdown should be the figures of baristas' concerns. Yet they are not measured by OURA. Without looking at the real-time flow rates, users may still find it difficult to foresee how much time is required for the target pour volume even after a prolonged use of OURA.
Last but not least, OURA does not record the data in each light guided pour. OURA only offers similarity comparison graphically. Users cannot retrieve any numerical data for further comparison and analysis on Excel.
On weighing, I find a serious bug on OURA.
In my youtube video, I demonstrated the inaccurate trapezoidal measurement zone on OURA. Before I filmed the video, I have conducted the calibration with the same 100g reference mass filmed. Yes, in practice, the cups have larger surface area than the reference mass I used. The absolute errors between weighting position may be lesser than shown in the video. But, hey, OURA is introduced as the highest class coffee scale. This bug should not even exist.
The QR download interface seems to imply POURX has its own branded coffee bean for sale. Users seem to be able to buy the coffee beans and download the recommended recipe from POURX. Yet, no QR codes can be downloaded, and nothing can be bought (not even !OURA!) on the app and the official website. My 1st impression is that OURA has already been given up by POURX.
After syncing the user-defined recipe to OURA, the replaced default recipes simply disappear. You cannot find it in the app, in the box, in the printed user guide nor on the official website. The official support is really... at the moment. I deleted my user-defined recipe on OURA, and the default recipe was restored. Hey, is it intuitive to tell the user to "delete" the recipe in order to restore the default recipes? (For readers' info, the deleted recipe on OURA was not deleted in the app.)
OURA can act as a hardware and software platform. POURX can sell its branded coffee beans or resell the coffee beans roasted by other coffee brands on its official website. The coffee beans can come with at least one recommended recipe. It is a common problem that general users do not know how to brew the coffee beans so that they can enjoy the flavours that the coffee shops or the roasters want to present to them. Even worse, the general users simply give up pourover by themselves after a number of failed pours. OURA can bridge the consumers and the coffee brands and greatly enhance normal users' brewing experience. I originally thought that POURX will offer some coffee beans on the official website once OURA is deliverable to the backers. POURX can proactively kick off the platform snowball effects. However, nothings were offered on POURX's official website and app.
In fact, OURA has the potential to become a great assistant to professional baristas. Yet, it provides no timing for final water drawdown and the real-time flow rate measurements. If I were a coffee shop owner, I would have no incentive to buy OURA and use that as the tools for barista trainings.
In addition to the technical problems, the pricing of OURA is comparable with Acaia's scales. Before delivery costs and with Kickstarter's early bird discount, OURA's asking price is 158USD. This is not a price for general users. The positioning and pricing of OURA is at the professional and prestigious level. But it seems that OURA offers too little at the moment.
- no real-time data analysis, not capable for barista training
- expensive pricing raises the entry barrier for general users. The crowd size of OURA audience is presumably low. The low user level hinders OURA's capability to act as the hardware and software platform. Coffee brands are thus not willing to sell coffee beans with OURA in their minds.
Of course, the technical problems raised above can be easily solved by software updates and services provisions in the official website. Furthermore, if a certain size of production can be reached, the price of OURA may be able to be lowered to the similar level that Hario and some Chinese brands are asking for. If the price is lowered, OURA will be very competitive.
When I first have my fingers on my own OURA, I saw a point of diversion in front of OURA. One is leading to the heaven and another is leading to the hell. If POURX were not to act, OURA would be heading to the hell for certain. And I bought myself a very expensive coffee toy.
Fortunately, I sent an email regarding the recipe replacement issue in the app to POURX. Even though it takes a few days for POURX to reply my email, POURX provided the solution to restore the default recipe (same as mine in the youtube video), gave me the QR code to download the default recipes and guaranteed that they are working on OURA's product enhancement.
Personally, I wish Taiwaneses' coffee innovation to be successful and POURX's growth. Together with POURX's business growth, general users will have an easily accessible guide in their adventure in the pourover jungle.
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