Acaia Introduces Upgrades to Pearl and Lunar Scales

The Acaia Lunar 2021. All images courtesy of Acaia.

Coffee scale and accessory maker Acaia has introduced significant upgrades to two of its core products, the Pearl and Lunar scales.

Rolled out in Spring and Fall of last year, respectively, the Acaia Pearl 2021 and Lunar 2021 include a number of improvements, including new flow-rate indicators. Through a system of dots that illuminate and flicker along the top of the LED displays during brewing and extraction, the indicators allow baristas to monitor the flow rate of pourovers and espresso in real time.

“In the Lunar 2021, knowing the flow rate and watching the indicator helps you spot channeling and choking while you’re pulling the shot,” Jenn Chen, Acaia digital marketing manager, told Daily Coffee News. “The indicator provides instant feedback for recipe development and control for those who use an espresso machine with a flow-profiling feature. In the Pearl 2021, the Flow-Rate Indicator helps you maintain a steady pour. Consistency is important in brewing, and seeing the Flow-Rate Indicator react in real-time assists with that.”

Black and white Acaia Pearl 2021 scales.

On the smaller-footprint, espresso-oriented Lunar 2021, the average flow rate is also flashed on the screen when the shot is done, with precision down to 0.01 grams.

Acaia introduced its debut product, the manual-brewing-centric Pearl scale, via a Kickstarter campaign in November 2013. The original Lunar scale followed in 2015. The new versions of both maintain the same waterproof construction, display technologies and automatic start, stop and tare features as their predecessors, plus additional auto-tare and tare-save options for preparations of different beverages and workflows.

Both also offer variable display brightness levels, with a brighter maximum level for better visibility in direct sunlight.

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“Since the launch of our first product, we’ve received plenty of user feedback on our scales’ features and capabilities,” said Chen. “While we can’t implement everything suggested, there are always popular requests that we take into consideration.”

Though no longer in production, older models of the Pearl and Lunar will continue to be supported by Acaia with firmware updates that include new features such as the Tare Save function in the Lunar’s case. Hardware-based features such as USB-C ports and the increased number of digits on the Pearl LED are only available on the 2021 models.

Acaia Lunar

The retail price of the Lunar 2021 and Pearl 2021 are $250 and $150, respectively.

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