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

71–80 of 90 posts

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#71

Post by pyoung »

craigching wrote: post #62
pyoung wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You can get a good amount of conversion just from steeping. A lot of the extract brew kits use unmilled grain, which is good for shelf life but bad for conversion (but still adds flavor), which is probably where you got the impression that steeping doesn't work. I think the primary reason for needing a mash tun is to handle the volume of grain needed for 5+ gallons of brew. If you are brewing less than that, you can get away with steeping in the brew pot, and equipment permitting, sparge using a colander or grain bag. Just add a little extra grain to account for conversion losses.

From my experience, you only loose a few degrees of temp over the hour of steeping in the boil kettle. I usually put a towel or two on top of the lid to help retain heat, and if needed, will pour some hot water in from the tea kettle to keep the temp up, but that is rarely needed.

For a quick, hipstery, overview of the gallon batch method go here, I use this method for my gallon brews, and the results have been really good: http://brooklynbrewshop.com/instructions

I haven't tried this, but here is the brew-in-a-bag method: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brewing/biab-brew-in-a-ba...

I have a buddy in a similar situation as yours (kids, no time to brew). He has a killer setup (15 gallon, all-grain), and his solution was to just cut back to brewing a few times a year, and invite some buddies over to help. I think one gallon brews are best left to people in small apartments or for experimentation. In your situation, I would keep in mind the yield-per-time metric. A 15 gallon brew might take a few hours longer than a gallon brew, but it yields 15x more beers. Gallon brews are a good way to keep your brewing instincts sharp, but it won't keep your fridge full.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#72

Post by gt565k »

Meh... As someone who worked on a counter-top beer brewing appliance for my senior design project, I can tell you this thing doesn't produce good beer.

The picobrew is spargeless and is also a single-vessel system which does not stay true to the traditional beer brewing process, meaning the quality of the beer is significantly lowered.

Not to mention half the fun of brewing beer is being involved in the process itself. Adding hops and other ingredients when necessary and being creative by introducing your own ingredients into the process.

When we worked on our senior design project, our market research told us exactly that. People want to be involved in the beer brewing process. Another issue we had was the volume of the yield. With a counter top appliance, you can only get so much power out of a single wall outlet/socket, so your heating element is limited as to the amount of volume of water it can actually heat.

Brewing beer generally takes about 3 hours, so people tend to brew more than 2-3 gallons. The picobrew's yield is 9.4 liters (2.5 gallons), and it is also spargeless and single-vessel so its target market isn't really people who like brewing beer. It's people who've never brewed beer, and are just going to buy a flashy toy which will rarely get used.

We build an interactive android application that communicated with a netduino microncontroller through a web server. This allowed us to query the microcontroller, which controlled the heating element, water pump, and temperature + float sensors.

All I'm saying is, if a few Georgia Tech undergrads can build a counter-top brewing appliance, someone who does this as a hobby and has some programming experience, could just as easily build a larger scale brewing device with a netduino/arduino microcontroller, a few relays and some sensors.

You can see an automated run of our prototype here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mttrd7mGvI

and a small splash page that gives a general overview of the components used here

http://brewmasters.herokuapp.com/brewery

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#73

Post by gt565k »

debaserab2 wrote: post #65
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 varian…

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...

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#74

Post by gt565k »

fishtoaster wrote: post #7
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.

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.

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

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#75

Post by CalRobert »

gt565k wrote: post #72

Meh... As someone who worked on a counter-top beer brewing appliance for my senior design project, I can tell you this thing doesn't produce good beer. The picobrew is spargeless and is also a single-vessel system which does not stay true to the traditional beer brewing process, meaning the quality of the beer is significantly lowered. Not to mention half the fun of brewing beer is being involved in the process itsel…

Everyone's taste is different, of course, but I've had non-sparge beers that I thought were great. My understanding was that a sparge increased efficiency; are you saying that the sparge results in a different chemical composition?

Of course, if you sparge with different temp water that would make a difference, but how is that different from a step mash with no sparge?

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#76

Post by CalRobert »

mattmaroon wrote: post #23
watty wrote: 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.

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#77

Post by leoedin »

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…

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.

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#78

Post by chickenboot »

CalRobert wrote: post #75
gt565k wrote: post #72

Meh... As someone who worked on a counter-top beer brewing appliance for my senior design project, I can tell you this thing doesn't produce good beer. The picobrew is spargeless and is also a single-vessel system which does not stay true to the traditional beer brewing process, meaning the quality of the beer is significantly lowered. Not to mention half the fun of brewing beer is being involved in the process itsel…

Everyone's taste is different, of course, but I've had non-sparge beers that I thought were great. My understanding was that a sparge increased efficiency; are you saying that the sparge results in a different chemical composition? Of course, if you sparge with different temp water that would make a difference, but how is that different from a step mash with no sparge?

I always thought that the key was to mash with an appropriate volume of liquor (or 'water' for those that don't enjoy the brewing jargon): if you chuck all the liquor in (full-volume mashing I think it's called), the thin mash means that there's less contact between the enzymes and the starches which I would expect to result in a different chemical composition.

Batch sparging on the other hand (following a mash with a regular ratio of liquor/grain - but rather than slowly rinsing the grains with sparge-temperature liquor, you fill your mash tun with your full volume of liquor at sparge temperature) may affect efficiency (positively or negatively), but shouldn't change the quality.

I've enjoyed some fine batch-sparged beers!

Oh and as for the OP's point about a beer taking three hours... I wish! For me it's more like 8 with all the cleaning and fiddling around in my tiny brewing space!

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#79

Post by chickenboot »

I'm surprised there isn't mention of the Spiedels Braumeister [1] - it seems to be a similar product (albeit with less tech, and possibly a bit more manual work).

I've heard lots of good things about them, but the price has always put me off, though it is comparable to the PicoBrew, at least here in the UK.

I think they require a bit more interaction if you want to sparge (from my cursory internet forum research performed just now [2]) but at least you can (batch) sparge, and create recipes that would scale up to your big rig if you desired (and had a big rig and space etc).

[1] http://www.speidels-braumeister.de/speidels-braumeister-en.h...

[2] http://forums.morebeer.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=39249

Re: PicoBrew – Counter-top home brewing machine

#80

Post by craigching »

pyoung wrote: post #71
craigching wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You can get a good amount of conversion just from steeping. A lot of the extract brew kits use unmilled grain, which is good for shelf life but bad for conversion (but still adds flavor), which is probably where you got the impression that steeping doesn't work. I think the primary reason for needing a mash tun is to handle the volume of grain needed for 5+ gallons of brew. If you are brewing less than that, you can…

Awesome, thanks for the information, I think I'm going to have to try that! :)

Before I sold off my brew equipment (that was a very hard thing to do!) I tried to set something up with my friends where they would store the equipment and I'd come over and brew with them. Amazingly no one wanted to at the time, but to this day they are kicking themselves for not taking advantage of it. I had nice quick-release hoses, a Therminator chiller (that is the one piece of equipment I almost kept, prior to that chilling times were killing me!), an nice 15 gallon polar ware brew pot and I was working on getting either a nice gravity setup or getting a stainless steel fermentor. The latter was in consideration because I'd once bounced a 6 gallon glass carboy off my floor accidentally and split my hands open. Not fun! Man, I miss brewing thinking about all that! :)

EDIT: I think once my kids are just a bit older I might be able to get back to a bigger brew. My kids are 6 and 3 so they still need a lot of attention. But I think once the 3 yo is maybe 6 I could probably do a big brew day again.

Post reply on HN