Live data from Hacker News

PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

picobrew.com

51–60 of 90 posts

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#51

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…

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.

You steep the grains in your brew pot for an hour and then sparge by using an additional pot and a large colander. Brooklyn Brew Shop sells one gallon brew kits, but if you already have brewing supplies, the only thing you would need to add is a one gallon carboy (I buy the gallon jugs of wine at the supermarket, and then just re-use the jugs).

I brew both 5 gallon batches and 1 gallon batches (mostly for experimentation). TO keep the costs down on the gallon batches, I use washed yeast and hops leftover from other recipes. The cool thing about the gallon batches is you can squeeze in an all-grain brew in an evening on a weekday, but the obvious downside is it only yields ~9 beers, which I find to be too small a yield for the amount of effort. Also, if you already have a wort chiller, you won't save that much time compared to a 5 gallon extract brew.

If you are dead set on all grain, others on this thread have mentioned the brew-in-the-bag method. It looks like you just steep the grains (using a really big mesh bag). It looks like this method gets you about 3 gallons, but if you already have a bunch of equipment, you could probably adapt this method to 5 gallons.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#52

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.

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#53
post #15

Earlier 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.

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#55
post #10

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.

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

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#56
post #10

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.

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

Which bread machine do you have?

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#57
Went in on one of these with some friends and we've done 3 brews so far with it (nothing is drinkable yet). Prior to getting the machine, we did a few brews the traditional way to better understand the process.

In terms of the amount of time to brew, the biggest difference with the PicoBrew and traditional methods is that during the process we don't have to constantly monitor and adjust, the machine does that for us.

Some of the cleaning is simpler since most of the PicoBrew parts are dishwasher safe, but the kegs still need to be cleaned, bottles prepped, etc...

The thing we're most excited about is that the high-degree of control and repeatability means that we can tweak small things and know that the rest of the process remains consistent.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#58

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.

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.

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#59

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.

"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

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#60

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.

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