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I just started home brewing and I'm not sure I understand this product. "Hit brew and walk away" says USA Today. Why, that's almost as easy as simply buying b

I just started home brewing and I'm not sure I understand this product. "Hit brew and walk away" says USA Today. Why, that's almost as easy as simply buying beer! This kind of defeats the point of home brewing as a hobby :) It's not like there's a shortage of excellent commercial beer and we need a special machine to fill a gap in the market.

CalRobert 12y ago
For some people a lot of the appeal is saving money (beer can be ridiculously expensive where I live; just a bottle is often more than €3), and beer often tastes its best when fresh. Also, not everyone has access to excellent craft beers.
- watty 12y ago
  I doubt people purchasing an $1,800 brew machine are doing so to save money.
  - mattmaroon 12y ago
    I doubt it too, but if you can save $1 a bottle I know a lot of people who'd recoup it in a year or two. My experience with homebrewing though is that it's not cheaper unless you drink much, much more than I do and don't value your time highly. This at least takes half of that out of the equation.
    - hyperbovine 12y ago
      > it's not cheaper unless you drink much, much more than I do and don't value your time highly. Well that explains its popularity in Portland then.
    - CalRobert 12y ago
      The time part of the equation is fuzzy. I happen to enjoy the act of homebrewing, so I slot it under "pleasant Sunday afternoon activities", which makes me not perceive the opportunity cost so much. I have friends who are unemployed and getting in to the hobby, and again, this is a country where a 6 pack of any halfway decent beer can easily be €15-€20, so brewing 25 litres of beer for about 5 hours of time and maybe €20 in grain, hops, yeast, and electricity is a pretty appealing notion.
    - CalRobert 12y ago
      But again - there's the variety. I moved to Ireland a couple years ago and discovered to my horror that while the microbrew scene here is good, there were no pumpkin beers and no double IPA's to be found. I dearly missed Arrogant Bastard as well. A boiler, a couple buckets, and a few crappy batches later, I finally had a decent AB-inspired recipe. (Kind of terrifying that the initials for Arrogant Bastard match Anheuser Busch). In many regards I prefer it; at 6.2% it's a little mellower and better as an after work beer, and I don't bottle it in bombers so opening one isn't such a commitment. Everyone's biased, but when I have friends over the stuff goes quickly so I figure that's reasonably indicative of quality.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
fishtoaster 12y ago
I think the idea is that you can customize the recipe. Based on the video, it looks like you can set everything about the mash temps, grain bill, hop schedule- everything you can do on a normal homebrewing setup, but with less time spent futzing with a burner trying to get your mash temp exactly right.
- gt565k 12y ago
  arduino, $20 heating element, $10 relay switch and some PID programming and you can control the temperature too :)
craigching 12y ago
As someone who used to homebrew but had to quit when I had kids (due to time) this looks like something I could totally get into. I would miss the process, but the idea of getting a good beer without the time sink is very intriguing!
- michael_h 12y ago
  I was in the same boat and a friend recommended that I scale down the operation to a single gallon at a time. The equipment is a little less unwieldy, so sanitizing time is reduced. The water gets to the right temperature much faster. Less grain == less sparging time. The boil volume is a bit over a gallon, which is easily contained in a modest sized pot, so boil-overs are almost a non-concern. I let the grains steep and then start the bath routine and read books. After that, sparge and start the boil. I can get an all grain batch made on a Tuesday evening. Plus, the smaller batch sizes let you experiment and you won't be saddled with the 5 gallons of terrible oktoberfest in my basement.
  - fishtoaster 12y ago
    I just made this switch myself. My new tiny SF apartment makes 5-gallon batches impractical, so I brewed my first 1-gallon batch yesterday. I'll see how the results are in a month, but right now I can say that the process is way easier: - Equipment mostly fits in my dishwasher - Moving/pouring 1 gallon of liquid is faster, easier, and results in less spillage than 5 gallons - No need for a wort chiller, since an ice bath is more than effective enough for a 1-gallon batch - Fermentation control will be a lot cheaper, since a small dorm fridge will fit the fermenter - As you pointed out: more experimentation because the cost of failure is much lower
    - craigching 12y ago
      Do you do all-grain? Or extracts? If all-grain, how are you mashing?
  - craigching 12y ago
    How are you doing your mashes? EDIT: Just for clarification, just before my first daughter was born I was doing 15 gallon boils with a converted cooler for a mash tun. It was so much fun! But the time to do all that and cleanup (as you know, cleaning is THE most important part of course and a significant slice of the time) was pretty much a whole Saturday morning and afternoon, prime kid time.
pkulak 12y ago
I dunno. I have a bread machine and I love it. Even though there are plenty of great bakeries in my city.
- Kalium 12y ago
  Exactly. I have a grocery store in my town. It's still fun to make my own bread. I have a friend who roasts his own coffee for similar reasons.
- radiorental 12y ago
  As someone who does both, there is a world of difference between the two processes. The argument being made against the picobrew is that it takes away exactly the thing a significant portion of the home brewing community enjoys: 1)The skill required to differentiate between a good and great, reproducible, beer 2)Sharing said beer and knowing it was something you created, as opposed you just 'made'. There's a depth and risk of failure to brewing that is simply not there with baking bread.
  - grayclhn 12y ago
    Yes, but bread-machine bread is f-ing horrible compared to the real stuff. I assume that picobrew at least produces good beer.
  - leoedin 12y ago
    I think perhaps you're viewing this from the wrong direction. This device isn't aimed at people who love the home-brew process. They aren't going to buy a device which reduces their enjoyment. Likewise there's many people who love baking, and wouldn't dream of using a bread maker. The device is aimed at people who maybe enjoy the idea of brewing beer, but not the practical (and complicated) steps required. Something like this device isn't so much aimed at the existing homebrew market, but designed to create a new market. I think the bread maker analogy is a really good one. I'd consider buying a bread maker precisely because I don't particularly enjoy the drawn out process of baking bread, but I do enjoy both having freshly baked bread and being able to make bread with the stuff I like in it.
- 12y ago
scottlocklin 12y ago
I guess it's like a first generation breadmaker. Home brewed beer can be awful, but when it comes out right, it's worlds apart from anything you can buy in a grocery store.
- dpark 12y ago
  Your grocery store must have a terrible selection of beer. I home brew because I enjoy it. I'm under no delusions that my beers will ever be significantly better than the best I can buy in a store. The idea that the hobbyist will in general produce a far better product than an industry of passionate experts is kind of ridiculous.
  - scottlocklin 12y ago
    Hey, now; either my grocery store sucks, or I am/was a dang good home brewer. Seriously; when it came out well (2/3 batches), the only thing that could compete with it was straight from the microbrewery tap. Never could make a decent lager, but for any kind of ale, it was great. I blame freshness, which is an under appreciated beer quality. Also, lack of the now popular practice of overhopping; almost everything in the store these days seems to be an IPA or overhopped porter.
    - sitkack 12y ago
      The best part of home brewing is making the beer you want. Years ago I perfected a honey chamomile kolsch. That beer was for me, no one else.
      - scottlocklin 12y ago
        My favorite quasi-invention: beer with a small serrano pepper added to each bottle. It didn't age well (it eventually turned into beery hot sauce), but it was delicious for the first few weeks.
        sitkack 12y ago
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
Ive been home brewing for about 8 years now and have wanted this thing for a while. No big mess, no overboiling, clean-up is easy, kegging immediately. Awesome I didn't get into homebrewing so I could spend all my time cleaning, and this would cut down on that significantly.
- mattmaroon 12y ago
  Are you doing full grain or malt extract? I bet this thing requires cleaning on the order of brewing from extract. Also if you're doing full grain and want to reduce headache and clean up and equipment costs, check out brew in a bag. (Not the cheesy thing they sell at Wal-Mart around Christmas.) I haven't done it yet but from the reviews I've read and videos I've watched it seems like a greatly simplified method.
  - winslow 12y ago
    Brew in a bag (BIAB) is a great way to start testing the all grain method with very little money investment. Grab a paint strainer bag from home depot pack of two for $5 and away you go.
  - AndrewKemendo 12y ago
    I have always done full grain. The bags don't get good conversion yields in my opinion cause the grain really only gets good exposure around the outside. I have seen/had a few of my friends' extract brews and I agree they are much simpler, in some cases the beers were about on par too.
    - CalRobert 12y ago
      BIAB does have lower efficiency, but having less stuff around the apartment makes it worthwhile. Using some extra grain is a bummer, but not a terrible tradeoff.
  - lukencode 12y ago
    Lots of Australian home brewers (me included) will do brew in a bag then no chill. Saves time, equipment and water and still makes a cracking beer.
teach 12y ago
"It was very clear to me that while there were a bunch of hardware hobbyists that could assemble their own computers, or at least take our board and add the transformers for the power supply and the case the keyboard and go get, you know, et cetera, go get the rest of the stuff. For every one of those there were a thousand people that couldn't do that, but wanted to mess around with programming - software hobbyists." -- Steve Jobs on the Apple II
- sitkack 12y ago
  Doesn't compare. The LoE for brewing beer and this machine are on the same order of magnitude.
  - teach 12y ago
    I strongly disagree. I've been homebrewing all-grain batches for about six years. My typical brewday takes about nine hours and involves four distinct vessels. There's a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of cleaning. This machine would make better beer, more consistently, and with a lot less effort.
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
I don't think anyone plans to use it to brew more Bud Light with.
debaserab2 12y ago
Not at all. It allows you to concentrate more on the recipe and less on the technique. I've homebrewed for years and my biggest complaint has always been it's damn near impossible for me to make the same beer twice. There are so many variables in the brewing process itself that are hard to control (probably the biggest being temperature). Even with a very tight process it's likely that you're going to get some variance that will affect fermentation. This appliance removes a lot of variance.
- gt565k 12y ago
  Use a microcontroller to manage the heating element and couple that with a PID to hit your target temperature. I can give you some tips on how to do it, although tuning PIDs can be somewhat time consuming...

CalRobert 12y ago

For some people a lot of the appeal is saving money (beer can be ridiculously expensive where I live; just a bottle is often more than €3), and beer often tastes its best when fresh. Also, not everyone has access to excellent craft beers.

watty 12y ago
I doubt people purchasing an $1,800 brew machine are doing so to save money.
- mattmaroon 12y ago
  I doubt it too, but if you can save $1 a bottle I know a lot of people who'd recoup it in a year or two. My experience with homebrewing though is that it's not cheaper unless you drink much, much more than I do and don't value your time highly. This at least takes half of that out of the equation.
  - hyperbovine 12y ago
    > it's not cheaper unless you drink much, much more than I do and don't value your time highly. Well that explains its popularity in Portland then.
  - CalRobert 12y ago
    The time part of the equation is fuzzy. I happen to enjoy the act of homebrewing, so I slot it under "pleasant Sunday afternoon activities", which makes me not perceive the opportunity cost so much. I have friends who are unemployed and getting in to the hobby, and again, this is a country where a 6 pack of any halfway decent beer can easily be €15-€20, so brewing 25 litres of beer for about 5 hours of time and maybe €20 in grain, hops, yeast, and electricity is a pretty appealing notion.
  - CalRobert 12y ago
    But again - there's the variety. I moved to Ireland a couple years ago and discovered to my horror that while the microbrew scene here is good, there were no pumpkin beers and no double IPA's to be found. I dearly missed Arrogant Bastard as well. A boiler, a couple buckets, and a few crappy batches later, I finally had a decent AB-inspired recipe. (Kind of terrifying that the initials for Arrogant Bastard match Anheuser Busch). In many regards I prefer it; at 6.2% it's a little mellower and better as an after work beer, and I don't bottle it in bombers so opening one isn't such a commitment. Everyone's biased, but when I have friends over the stuff goes quickly so I figure that's reasonably indicative of quality.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

fishtoaster 12y ago

I think the idea is that you can customize the recipe. Based on the video, it looks like you can set everything about the mash temps, grain bill, hop schedule- everything you can do on a normal homebrewing setup, but with less time spent futzing with a burner trying to get your mash temp exactly right.

gt565k 12y ago
arduino, $20 heating element, $10 relay switch and some PID programming and you can control the temperature too :)

craigching 12y ago

As someone who used to homebrew but had to quit when I had kids (due to time) this looks like something I could totally get into. I would miss the process, but the idea of getting a good beer without the time sink is very intriguing!

michael_h 12y ago
I was in the same boat and a friend recommended that I scale down the operation to a single gallon at a time. The equipment is a little less unwieldy, so sanitizing time is reduced. The water gets to the right temperature much faster. Less grain == less sparging time. The boil volume is a bit over a gallon, which is easily contained in a modest sized pot, so boil-overs are almost a non-concern. I let the grains steep and then start the bath routine and read books. After that, sparge and start the boil. I can get an all grain batch made on a Tuesday evening. Plus, the smaller batch sizes let you experiment and you won't be saddled with the 5 gallons of terrible oktoberfest in my basement.
- fishtoaster 12y ago
  I just made this switch myself. My new tiny SF apartment makes 5-gallon batches impractical, so I brewed my first 1-gallon batch yesterday. I'll see how the results are in a month, but right now I can say that the process is way easier: - Equipment mostly fits in my dishwasher - Moving/pouring 1 gallon of liquid is faster, easier, and results in less spillage than 5 gallons - No need for a wort chiller, since an ice bath is more than effective enough for a 1-gallon batch - Fermentation control will be a lot cheaper, since a small dorm fridge will fit the fermenter - As you pointed out: more experimentation because the cost of failure is much lower
  - craigching 12y ago
    Do you do all-grain? Or extracts? If all-grain, how are you mashing?
- craigching 12y ago
  How are you doing your mashes? EDIT: Just for clarification, just before my first daughter was born I was doing 15 gallon boils with a converted cooler for a mash tun. It was so much fun! But the time to do all that and cleanup (as you know, cleaning is THE most important part of course and a significant slice of the time) was pretty much a whole Saturday morning and afternoon, prime kid time.

pkulak 12y ago

I dunno. I have a bread machine and I love it. Even though there are plenty of great bakeries in my city.

Kalium 12y ago
Exactly. I have a grocery store in my town. It's still fun to make my own bread. I have a friend who roasts his own coffee for similar reasons.
radiorental 12y ago
As someone who does both, there is a world of difference between the two processes. The argument being made against the picobrew is that it takes away exactly the thing a significant portion of the home brewing community enjoys: 1)The skill required to differentiate between a good and great, reproducible, beer 2)Sharing said beer and knowing it was something you created, as opposed you just 'made'. There's a depth and risk of failure to brewing that is simply not there with baking bread.
- grayclhn 12y ago
  Yes, but bread-machine bread is f-ing horrible compared to the real stuff. I assume that picobrew at least produces good beer.
- leoedin 12y ago
  I think perhaps you're viewing this from the wrong direction. This device isn't aimed at people who love the home-brew process. They aren't going to buy a device which reduces their enjoyment. Likewise there's many people who love baking, and wouldn't dream of using a bread maker. The device is aimed at people who maybe enjoy the idea of brewing beer, but not the practical (and complicated) steps required. Something like this device isn't so much aimed at the existing homebrew market, but designed to create a new market. I think the bread maker analogy is a really good one. I'd consider buying a bread maker precisely because I don't particularly enjoy the drawn out process of baking bread, but I do enjoy both having freshly baked bread and being able to make bread with the stuff I like in it.
12y ago

scottlocklin 12y ago

I guess it's like a first generation breadmaker. Home brewed beer can be awful, but when it comes out right, it's worlds apart from anything you can buy in a grocery store.

dpark 12y ago
Your grocery store must have a terrible selection of beer. I home brew because I enjoy it. I'm under no delusions that my beers will ever be significantly better than the best I can buy in a store. The idea that the hobbyist will in general produce a far better product than an industry of passionate experts is kind of ridiculous.
- scottlocklin 12y ago
  Hey, now; either my grocery store sucks, or I am/was a dang good home brewer. Seriously; when it came out well (2/3 batches), the only thing that could compete with it was straight from the microbrewery tap. Never could make a decent lager, but for any kind of ale, it was great. I blame freshness, which is an under appreciated beer quality. Also, lack of the now popular practice of overhopping; almost everything in the store these days seems to be an IPA or overhopped porter.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    The best part of home brewing is making the beer you want. Years ago I perfected a honey chamomile kolsch. That beer was for me, no one else.
    - scottlocklin 12y ago
      My favorite quasi-invention: beer with a small serrano pepper added to each bottle. It didn't age well (it eventually turned into beery hot sauce), but it was delicious for the first few weeks.
      - sitkack 12y ago

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

Ive been home brewing for about 8 years now and have wanted this thing for a while. No big mess, no overboiling, clean-up is easy, kegging immediately. Awesome I didn't get into homebrewing so I could spend all my time cleaning, and this would cut down on that significantly.

mattmaroon 12y ago
Are you doing full grain or malt extract? I bet this thing requires cleaning on the order of brewing from extract. Also if you're doing full grain and want to reduce headache and clean up and equipment costs, check out brew in a bag. (Not the cheesy thing they sell at Wal-Mart around Christmas.) I haven't done it yet but from the reviews I've read and videos I've watched it seems like a greatly simplified method.
- winslow 12y ago
  Brew in a bag (BIAB) is a great way to start testing the all grain method with very little money investment. Grab a paint strainer bag from home depot pack of two for $5 and away you go.
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  I have always done full grain. The bags don't get good conversion yields in my opinion cause the grain really only gets good exposure around the outside. I have seen/had a few of my friends' extract brews and I agree they are much simpler, in some cases the beers were about on par too.
  - CalRobert 12y ago
    BIAB does have lower efficiency, but having less stuff around the apartment makes it worthwhile. Using some extra grain is a bummer, but not a terrible tradeoff.
- lukencode 12y ago
  Lots of Australian home brewers (me included) will do brew in a bag then no chill. Saves time, equipment and water and still makes a cracking beer.

teach 12y ago

"It was very clear to me that while there were a bunch of hardware hobbyists that could assemble their own computers, or at least take our board and add the transformers for the power supply and the case the keyboard and go get, you know, et cetera, go get the rest of the stuff. For every one of those there were a thousand people that couldn't do that, but wanted to mess around with programming - software hobbyists." -- Steve Jobs on the Apple II

sitkack 12y ago
Doesn't compare. The LoE for brewing beer and this machine are on the same order of magnitude.
- teach 12y ago
  I strongly disagree. I've been homebrewing all-grain batches for about six years. My typical brewday takes about nine hours and involves four distinct vessels. There's a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of cleaning. This machine would make better beer, more consistently, and with a lot less effort.

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago

I don't think anyone plans to use it to brew more Bud Light with.

debaserab2 12y ago

Not at all. It allows you to concentrate more on the recipe and less on the technique. I've homebrewed for years and my biggest complaint has always been it's damn near impossible for me to make the same beer twice. There are so many variables in the brewing process itself that are hard to control (probably the biggest being temperature). Even with a very tight process it's likely that you're going to get some variance that will affect fermentation. This appliance removes a lot of variance.

gt565k 12y ago
Use a microcontroller to manage the heating element and couple that with a PID to hit your target temperature. I can give you some tips on how to do it, although tuning PIDs can be somewhat time consuming...