A German start-up has designed a way to trick your brain into thinking it’s drinking something grand, when it’s actually just tap water. The key is an aroma insert used with an airtight cap on a bottle.

With the air up pods that are around 7.6 g of plastic and a bottle made of Eastman’s “Tritan” copolyester, by its own calculation, air up says the pods allow up to 20-25x less use of plastic per litre compared to buying other drinks in disposable PET bottles. Tritan was chosen over glass by considering CO₂ emissions and weight during transport.

The first mind-tricking tastes are peach, lime, apple, orange passionfruit and, with the start-up being based in Munich, naturally a beer-inspired lemon hops flavour. Maybe a few calories can be saved at Oktoberfest this year – 1 litre of beer, the standard size served at the festival, is about 400 kilocalories. The start-up is aiming for sales of over EUR 5m in 2019 – so air (bottoms) up!