Madrid man offers foam-fixing funnel for home brewing

After brewing his own kombucha for nearly half a year, Marlin Unruh was fed up with foam issues and invented his own funnel, specifically for brewing beverages.

Unruh, an employee at Sunco Systems in Madrid for the past 30 years, first got into brewing kombucha around two years ago. His son had mentioned it to him, and he tried store-bought kombucha. He didn’t quite like the flavor, so he decided to make his own.

Kombucha is a fermented, sweetened, lightly carbonated green or black tea. According to Unruh, the drink is full of probiotics, vitamins and amino acid.

When bottling kombucha and other effervescent beverages such as soda and beer, foam buildup can be quite an inconvenience.

“It fills them up and then you have to wait for that foam to dissipate,” Unruh said. “Then you fill some more and then wait for that to dissipate. It was a pain.”

He searched online to find a product that would help solve this issue, but after Google and Amazon offered no solutions, he decided to design one himself.

Unruh already owned a 3D printer and had experience with development, computer-aided design (CAD) and solid modeling, thanks to his work at Sunco Systems. Around six months into his brewing venture, the Fizz Less Funnel’s creation began.

There was a lot of trial and error involved in creating the design for the funnel. He said he tried design after design, trying things he thought would work.

“After a number of designs, I realized the way I was going at it, I wouldn’t have been able to take the designs I was working on and have them injection molded to start mass producing them,” Unruh said.

Once he figured out how to make the design compatible with injection molding, he was able to begin creating and selling his new, handy product.

With a regular funnel, the beverage drops straight down into the bottle, which creates foam. Unruh’s Fizz Less Funnel has a curve at the narrow end, which directs the drink onto the sides of the bottle where it runs down without filling the bottle with foam.

The funnel also has four supports at the base of the wide part, which holds it steady on the bottle, rather than relying on the slim part.

Before creating his funnel, Unruh said he would hold the regular funnel crooked to achieve the desired outcome, but it was a pain to do.

A year ago, Unruh took his products to the United States’ Amazon market, and he is currently working on adding his product to Amazon Japan. His product on Amazon currently has a four and a half star rating out of five stars, with reviewers stating the funnel does exactly what it was created to do, and it does it well.

He is also working on another funnel at the moment, one made to fit inside of quart jars for thicker liquids like ketchup, rather than beverages.

Unruh does not sell the kombucha he brews at home, but he now enjoys an easier, foam-free experience when brewing the drink for his family, and other home-brewers around the country are able to do the same.