Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

picobrew.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 90 posts

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#61

Post by craigching »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #49
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…

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.

In the U.S. it's impossible (at least where I live) to get a beer that is equivalent to something you get in England. What I'm talking about are the "real ales" of England. You get a beer that is 3% to 4%, fresh as hell, served from a hand drawn pump (a cask), kept, yes, a little warmer than you'd expect in the U.S.

In Minnesota there is nothing compared to that. Some places will try to have a cask, but it's not the same (they usually use some sort of swirler to fake the real cask ale head). Our beers are just too high alcohol and force carbonated, it just isn't the same. When I visit England, I can drink 4 to 6 of these real ales and just have a mild buzz. Try that with a 7% IPA that you get here, doesn't work.

So here's a short list of some of my favorite beers from England. If you get a chance, give them a try! You must have them from a good pub (ask around) and they have to be fresh (they will be at a good pub):

Hogsback Traditional English Ale (yes, T.E.A) -- https://www.hogsback.co.uk

Hopback Summer Lightning -- http://www.hopback.co.uk

West Berkshire Good Ol' Boy -- http://www.wbbrew.com

Adnams Southwold Bitter -- http://adnams.co.uk

When I get back into brewing, these are the beers I'm going for ... unless it is indeed possible to "buy a 6-pack of something good instead" ;)

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#62

Post by craigching »

pyoung wrote: post #51
craigching wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 experimenta…

I've steeped grains before, but that's pretty significantly different from a real mash. Usually steeping grains was used to enhance a base extract which formed the base of the boil. So you're saying you can just steep grains without using any extract? How do you keep your temps stable to have a good mash? Do you have any links to this method? Or book references? I appreciate your response!

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#63

Post by grayclhn »

radiorental wrote: post #55
pkulak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Yes, but bread-machine bread is f-ing horrible compared to the real stuff. I assume that picobrew at least produces good beer.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#64

Post by scottlocklin »

dpark wrote: post #58
scottlocklin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#65

Post by debaserab2 »

RubberSoul wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#66

Post by amorphic »

For any home brewers who might be interested I maintain braubuddy, a temperature control framework written in Python:

http://braubuddy.org/

It was written to scratch my own itch - I use it to maintain fermentation temperature within a certain range. Especially useful for lagers or brewing ales in the fridge in the Summertime.

It'll also publish metrics to a variety of outputs, with the next release to support Twitter, Librato, and Hosted Graphite.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#67

Post by sitkack »

teach wrote: post #59
RubberSoul wrote: post #2

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."…

Doesn't compare. The LoE for brewing beer and this machine are on the same order of magnitude.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#68

Post by sitkack »

scottlocklin wrote: post #64
dpark wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 t…

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#69

Post by sitkack »

inscrutablemike wrote: post #48
pyoung wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

And that it takes 18 months to get good.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#70

Post by beala »

inscrutablemike wrote: post #48
pyoung wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

I disagree. I think there's a lot more to mead than "diluted honey." Varietal honey produces different flavors, not to mention all the variations you can produce by adding juices and spices.

It's also one of the few homebrews that can save you money. A good batch of homebrewed beer is often not much cheaper than a good store bought microbrew. Compare this to my local meadery which charges $22 for 750 ml of mead. I can brew 5 gallons (~19,000 ml) of good mead for around $60.

Post reply on HN