Hasta La Ideas

Homebrewing is a test. The reward: Beer whenever you want and your own unique recipe (plus beaucoup indie cred points). And this is no half-hearted attempt. Unlike pickling or infusions (other gastronomical pursuits du jour), homebrewing requires an investment of weeks, sometimes months, with a learning curve for each batch and style. But let’s be real—no one wants to wait 4–6 weeks dreaming about how their beer is going to taste while it goes through some scientific fermentation process. Well, maybe you do. And that’s ok, too.

But for those of you who would rather have your brew quicker, Kickstarter has an option for you. Microsoft developer Bill Mitchell teamed up with his brother Jim and friend Avi Geiger to launch an PicoBrew Zymatic.

At a glance, it seems like the contraption has basically cut out any risk of user error… but don’t hold us to that.

At press time, PicoBrew’s is nearing three times their funding goal of $150,000. Co-founder Avi Geiger gave us some insight into the creativity and process behind the project:

Co-founder Avi Geiger

Core77: How did you come up with the technology behind this and why do you think it hasn’t been done before?

Avi Geiger: It comes down to having the right mix of people and the right mix of frustrations with the world. Usually when people try to automate brewing, they build complicated systems with multiple tanks, valves, little cranes and robotic arms to add hops. There are literally hundreds of homebuilt “automated” brewing systems—each one is different, most of them are very expensive. If one of these was the right answer for more people, then you would be able to buy it somewhere by now. Bill and Jim came at it from the product development and process side and developed a new system that allows for preloaded ingredients and automated fluid distribution without any valves. I came at it from the engineering side and collectively we worked together to get this into a compact and reliable package that takes this method and lets us brew beers to the quality standards of a professional brewer with the ease of use of a kitchen appliance.

Another reason it hasn’t been done before is that it’s just a ton of work to get all the details right and bring it to market. We’ve been working on this full time for over two years now. And there was a year of concept work before that. We’ve done hundreds of test batches to optimize the process. There are an incredible number of variables in beer production and picking the right set to work across was a pretty big step in itself.

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