Cool Coffee Machines, episode 972 or so

Discovered this one via Dear Coffee I Love You, one of my favorite non-ROASTe coffee blogs. This Steampunk coffee brewer will be featured at the  April 19th SCAA Event in Portland. The video is your standard slick marketing video, but the coffee machine is pretty neat.

So, the details:

The Alpha Dominche Steampunk is a PID-controlled 4-chamber brewing system that functions like a siphon -- kinda. It's designed for a production environment -- that is, a coffee shop setting, and allows the barista to brew four separate cups of coffee or tea at the same time, while controlling the temperature, agitation time and brew time separately and precisely for each one. The machine allows you to set specific brew profiles, and uses a touchpad screen where the barista can enter parameters for coffee, volume, temperature and time. Alpha Dominche claims that it maintains a stable brewing temperature that's customizable between 165 and 205 F, and uses steam to heat and agitate the water. The barista adds water, heats it with steam, then plunges coffee or tea leaves into the water at the right time. It all sound technical and beautiful at the same time.

Alpha Dominche is heralding this as the next step in coffee brewing technology. What I find interesting in the video is the slick marketing -- especially the pitch for a coffee machine that can brew quality tea in a coffee shop setting and its appeal to the expanding Asian market.

What do you think? Where does this machine rate on the scale of cool coffee machines in terms of looks and technology? Would you patronize a coffee shop because it had one of them?