How “air up” really works

Image used to market air up’s product [Source]

Germany-based startup “air up” has recently been bombing YouTube with adverts for their “revolutionary drinking system” — which is just fancy marketing for a water bottle which infuses sips you drink with flavour-packed air.

In early August their adverts peaked my interest and I purchased their “Starter pack” which comes with a black “air up water bottle” and two pods, I also purchased a pouch of elderflour pods for additional testing. When they arrived I immediately tried them out, and the moment I took my first sip I was extremely surprised that it worked as well as it did, I was expecting some faint scent of elderflour, but it really does trick your brain into thinking your tasting flavour. From then, I couldn’t help but think “What is this pod *actually* doing”, and that’s what I set out to find, and the answer really couldn’t be more simple.

I started by cracking open one of the flavour pods which I had finished, this is what it looks like.

Inside an air up pod I sawed in half, seriously.

So, no tech in here, it seems to be a ring of cotton infused with what I expect is a highly-concentrated scented solution. The scent from the liquid infused into the cotton is extremely strong.

The cotton rings once extracted from the pod. As you can see, even though I had fully used this pod, there seems to still be some residue left on it.

Okay great, so I’ve opened a pod, the real question is now, how does the scent of the cotton ring get from inside the pod to inside your mouth while drinking. I decide to do some digging around the design of the bottle, and especially that of the cap where the pod is attached.

The air up cap which attaches to the bottle

This is the air up cap. It attaches to the bottle and holds the pod within it. The straw goes to the bottle, and the ridge holds the air up pod.

The bottom of a “pod” — I apologise for my dirty finger nail

Now, if we have a closer look at an air up pod — from what I can see, there are two air holes, one inlet and one outlet. The inlet sucks air from the an air gap in the cap as shown below, and the outlet sucks air into the nozzle’s outlet also shown below.

The side of the air up nozzle.

At the side of the air up nozzle, there is a hole which connects to the outlet of the air up pod previously shown, and the air gap where the pod can suck air through. This “outlet” on the nozzle goes directly into the straw within the nozzle, meaning that when you suck on the nozzle to get water — obviously — it also sucks air through the pod. The pod can either be in “activated” mode, where an air gap is given to suck air through, or “deactivated” mode where the pod is air tight sealed (so the cotton rings don’t dry out I imagine).

My crude diagram of what happens when you drink from an air up bottle.

So this means that, as you suck on the nozzle to drink, water comes through the straw, while your suction is also being used to pull through the air input at the bottom of the pod (from the air gap you’ve made by activating the pod), the air is pulled through the infused cotton via suction and then outputted through the small hole in the nozzle and into the flow of water. When the air is being sucked through the scent infused cotton, the air is infused with flavour particles which is what makes its way into your mouth to give the impression of taste.

Thanks for reading! I hope this gave you a clearer picture of how “air up” works. I wrote this late at night so the structure may be a bit weird, but maybe I’ll come back at some point to improve (I doubt it).