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PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

picobrew.com

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Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#41

Post by jimktrains2 »

winslow wrote: post #35
Dirlewanger wrote: post #31

Hmmm, $1800? I know not of all the apparatuses needed for homebrewing. I'm guessing it's substantially less than this? One would obviously be paying for the convenience of this machine and its ability to brew extremely small batches. Regardless, I just can't see this "catching on" to any degree with that price. Do they have plans to scale or something?

As a homebrewer $1800 can get you an amazing setup. It looks to me that the picobrew is for those who don't want to do the 'heavy lifting' of homebrewing and want to say that they homebrew. The automatic bread machine of this generation? For that price tag you aren't going to get people who want to test out homebrewing. My first homebrew setup was ~$150. This included two buckets (fermentor and bottling), kettle for…

> It looks to me that the picobrew is for those who don't want to do the 'heavy lifting' of homebrewing and want to say that they homebrew. The automatic bread machine of this generation?

I actually quite enjoy my bread machine. My wife and I both work and are active in our community. It's extremely wonderful to spend 5 minutes before bed and have bread in the morning. It's cheaper than buying bread at the store (ok, the 50¢ loaves give it a run for it's money), and we know exactly whats in it.

Once this comes down in price, which it or something like it will, to the point where it's a few hundred I can see it being used in much the same way by many folks: Good beer is expensive. OK beer is cheap. Home-machine-made beer is better than OK and cheaper.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#42

Post by craigching »

michael_h wrote: post #26
craigching wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#43

Post by bradleyjg »

VLM wrote: post #29
misuba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?) an…

That's a pretty good idea. The actual mechanics of brewing beer are exacting and tedious, but have little room for creativity. The most creative part of the endeavor is the recipe.

In fact, many commercial microbrews are partly or wholly made by contract brewers, so this already exists at a larger scale.

The downside is the legal red tape for anything involving alcohol, particularly anything interstate.

Edit: thank you darkstar999, that was a typo

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#44

Post by craigching »

fishtoaster wrote: post #39
michael_h wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Do you do all-grain? Or extracts? If all-grain, how are you mashing?

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#45

Post by craigching »

VLM wrote: post #28
craigching wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oper…

Not really into the Cider, thanks for the suggestion though. I brew beer because I like to drink beer :) I don't find brewing too complicated, just very time consuming, time I no longer have now that I have kids.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#46

Post by jbondeson »

rickr wrote: post #38
jbondeson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. For extract brewing you can easily do it for $100-150 if you bottle the beer(with your biggest expense being a large 5+ gallon kettle), adding another $100-150 if you keg. Full grain brewing is significantly more expensive (unless you do the "Brew in a Bag" style) simple setups easily put you into the $400+ range. Purpose-built full grain brewing systems setup with pumps, three burners and kettles will set y…

All grain isn't that much more expensive. All you need to step up to a full all grain setup is an igloo cooler and a false bottom - ~$100 USD worth of gear. If you're batch sparging you can use your boil kettle to heat strike, then sparge water. You just need an extra vessel for the first runnings.

Sure, if you really skimp you can do stuff fairly cheap, but if you don't want to go insane with all the juggling you're generally looking at two kettles, and an igloo. They do sell some setups with two igloo's, but then when you're sparging you are either doing batch sparging (which can be a bit tricky to keep the temps right) or you're doing a mash out with water from a separate smaller kettle.

Brewing can certainly be done on the cheap if money is more constrained than time and effort. And there are definitely no shortage of creative ways people have devised to save some money.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#47

Post by AndrewKemendo »

mattmaroon wrote: post #22
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#48

Post by inscrutablemike »

pyoung wrote: post #33
VLM wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oper…

I am curious as to why you recommend avoiding meads? I made a gallon batch (still fermenting though) and it was by far the easiest brew process I have come across. Basically just heat up some water and dump honey in, then transfer to the carboy and add yeast. I think it took all of 20-30 minutes. Scaling up to a 5 gallon batch would add a trivial amount of time. Was it the taste? I tasted it when I transferred to sec…

Meads are possibly the easiest thing you can brew yourself, second only to things that start fermenting when you don't want them to.

The problem is that straight honey mead is just not all that interesting to drink. It usually does have some of the residual honey character - but who wants to drink a pint of diluted honey?

By the time you get around to tweaking recipes that turn out a product most people would like you're either back at the same level of effort or time you'd have to spend making a regular grape wine.

I've made a handful of meads so far and I don't think I'm going to do another one unless I have a specific recipe in mind - maybe a metheglyn or a braggot.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#49

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

VLM wrote: post #28
craigching wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oper…

Agreed. I've made many wines, including some from grapes growing wild on my own property. But every time I think about trying to brew beer, I look at all the steps it requires and all the time and just buy a 6-pack of something good instead.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#50

Post by darkstar999 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #43
VLM wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?) an…

That's a pretty good idea. The actual mechanics of brewing beer are exacting and tedious, but have little room for creativity. The most creative part of the endeavor is the recipe. In fact, many commercial microbrews are partly or wholly made by contract brewers, so this already exists at a larger scale. The downside is the legal red tape for anything involving alcohol, particularly anything interstate. Edit: thank y…

You probably mean interstate.
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