You could have an extremely nice, _real_ brewing setup for less than $1800, including separate refrigeration for fermenting and serving. Not sure what demographic this serves.
People who have more money to trade than time.
PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
21–30 of 90 posts
Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#22I 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.
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.
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.
Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I doubt people purchasing an $1,800 brew machine are doing so to save money.
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.
Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#24Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt people purchasing an $1,800 brew machine are doing so to save money.
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.
> 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.
Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#26I 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.
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!
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.
Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#27My first (and only) home brew experience was with a "bag o beer". You put everything in a bag and let it sit for a few weeks. Well, the bag had a plastic cap on the end. I had it set on the floor of the garage, kinda out of the way. About a week in, I discovered that it was not REALLY out of the way because I clipped that cap with my shoe as I waked by. The cap broke off and beer proceeded to spray ALL OVER MY GARAGE…
[deleted]
Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#28I 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.
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!
Cider instead? WRT leftovers kids like apple juice and slices. Note that residential juicers are often not thermally sized for hour long juice runs so be careful and work in batches.
You can make this painful by growing your yeast from dry culture for days blah blah or just buy one of those smack bags where you break the inner container and let it boot up.
Once you're done, making applejack is just as illegal as operating a still, so just like fight club, don't talk about it.
I started off in the 90s making meads (my advice, avoid meads) and wines and the first time I made beer with some buddies I was somewhat stunned by how complicated it is. So I'm just saying if you want a nice fermented drink that's simpler than beer, its hard to find anything more complicated than beer, so ...
Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#29You could have an extremely nice, _real_ brewing setup for less than $1800, including separate refrigeration for fermenting and serving. Not sure what demographic this serves.
People who have more money to trade than time.
BaaS Brew as a Service?
My local homebrewer store offers classes at $10/hr so figure for $50/hr you could trivially make an arrangement. Something "uber"-ish where you rent a non-store employee's time would be interesting. May as well have the rented brewer provide his own worm (do they still call them that? The giant copper cooling coil to bring the wort from steep to room temp in an instant using a garden hose?) and other bulky expensive one time only stuff.
I was "drafted" to help some friends on their first beer brew because they knew I was a wine maker, everything went well other than beer is more complicated than I like. Also some winemaker weirdness/hangups about oxidation falls on deaf ears when you drink the stuff mere weeks later, so that was a little weird. Someone who actually knows how to brew could probably make some money if there was only a way to organize the process of match making wanna be beer brewers with real experienced beer brewers.
It would be nice and difficult to background check the contractors and verify their skills (both brewing skills and some minimal level of customer service), and scheduling and billing and customer sat tracking... Sounds like a perfect startup opportunity! Of course, long term growth might be a bit limited compared to "disrupt taxis" or whatever.
Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine
#30I might buy one just for fun if it costs less than 500 bucks...