- Many are deterred from becoming home brewers at the thought of dealing with bulky equipment and not having the proper knowledge of the brewing process.
- PicoBrew focuses on simplifying brewing beer with its line of countertop home brewing machines. We take a look at their PicoBrew C.
- Find out more about the Pico C here. If you want to purchase using our link it won't cost you extra, but it will help support more videos like this one.
Following is a transcript of the video.
Owen Burke: I'm Owen Burke, I'm here with Insider Picks, and we are going to try PicoBrew's Pico C, their newest home-brewing machine. It is a beer-brewing appliance, a sort of pod machine for beer brewing, if you will, and it's supposed to be very easy to do.
These PicoPaks are filled with grain and hops from actual brewers. This one is from Behemoth Brewing Company it's their 6 Foot 5 IPA. It's supposed to be fresh and delicious, and we're here to see if that is so. Our goal at Insider Picks is to figure out whether this machine is actually all that easy to use. Can a fool such as I brew beer?
Setup
"Welcome to the easiest countertop brewing appliance, ever. Seriously. It's really that easy to use." Let's see about that. Must go on there somehow. Setup just generally took a lot of time. I'm sure we could cut that a few more times. There are things that took us longer, but just assembling these different parts, there were, like, 100 different pieces. I'm exaggerating, but there were a lot of different pieces to sort through.
The user manual itself, which you access online, which is pretty handy. We don't need a 165-page booklet. Yeah, it's 165 pages long. So...that was a lot to get through. There were also things like the surprise that we needed WiFi, which is actually a very interesting component of the PicoBrew. You connect to WiFi so that it knows exactly which PicoPak you're using. Different recipes and ingredients call for different temperatures, and then the other issue is the silicone gasket that goes around the top of the brew keg. That thing just would not stay on.
Step 1: Brew
This took a lot longer than we expected. I think we went in thinking we were gonna have beer in seven to 12 days or something like that. Here we are, 28 days later. Part of that was me, but not all of it.
In goes the PicoPak. I don't think it's draining. There it goes. So, the great thing about the PicoBrew C is that it's really great at troubleshooting and error-proofing the interface, which is very small, walks you through every detail of every step, tells you which button to press, which hose to connect where, it's really helpful.
We are on our first mash. That's something like brewing all the stuff inside the pod. Once this comes up to room temperature, we put the yeast in and we slap this fermentation label on it. This is going to sort of inform us how aggressively we're fermenting. The faster we ferment, the lower the alcohol content. We are going to remove the hoses. Fermentation seal is going on. I'm just going to move this over to the floor, where it will cool to 68 degrees. We'll check back in when we're adding the yeast.
Step 2: Add yeast
OK, so this has been sitting for 24 hours. It's reached room temperature. That looks kind of gross but kind of looks like beer, too. So let's see how we do. I'm going to put half a pack of this American West Coast ale yeast in here, and it said slowly pour it in. You don't have to stir it. Everything looks solid. We're gonna pop this back on.
Step 3: Ferment
OK. Last thing is our fermentation label. We're just gonna slap that on the keg.
We spent about six days fermenting because we were sort of stuck on the lower end. Basically because my apartment temperature is not stable, so it was kind of all over the place. We'll see what happens. We gave it a little longer because we thought the lower temperatures were gonna slow things down. So we're going to leave it in the fridge for one to three days, the instructions say, and we will see what happens.
Step 4: Cold crash
OK, so we are cold crashing the yeast in the refrigerator now. This takes one to three days, and we'll be carbonating it with sugar within about three days. Stay tuned for more.
Step 5: Dry hop
After about three days of fermentation, we added a dry-hop sachet. We didn't manage to get it on video, but it looked something like this.
Step 6: Rack & carbonate
We have our chilled non-carbonated beer here. We are going to rack and carbonate the beer now. Fits on like so. I don't see any trub. We're going to now add the carbonation sugar.
We've just finished racking and carbonating the beer. We pulled a little sample off of the side, and it's slightly carbonated, a little sweet. Definitely bitter. I can taste the hops. I'm gonna give it a little swirl to get the sugars mixed in. It's going to sit for the next eight days or so.
Step 7: Serve
OK. So we're back after 28 days from our start date with our home brew. It feels like it's pretty carbonated. OK. Here goes nothing. That's kind of flimsy. Kind of like a Gatorade cooler.
And what do we got? It's definitely carbonated. We let the foam settle a little bit. Let's see how this thing tastes and smells. Lemony, little piney, kind of sweet. Definitely sweet. OK. Pretty good. I think it's a little sweeter than it was when I first tried it. It's got kind of a, if you've ever tried one of those, like, Belgian, abbey tripel ales, it's got that kind of earthiness, sweetness, and I think alcohol content, it tastes pretty boozy to me.
What that's from? I would be willing to bet it had something to do with our fermentation process. We had, you know, wildly variable temperatures in the apartment. The heat was going on and off. But, all in all, definitely beer. Definitely drinkable. I would just be careful. I really think I overbrewed this and it's quite strong.
So, overall I think we did an all right job. I'd give this beer, personally, maybe an eight out of 10. It's a little too sweet for my liking, and, yeah, I wonder what's gonna happen to me by the time I finish this glass. I really think there's a little too much alcohol in it.
I think what I would do next time would be to really make sure I had a stable environment, regarding temperature. My best guess is we definitely screwed that up. I might've been off a day or two in letting it ferment, letting it carbonate.
So I think that PicoBrew is great for someone who's just getting their feet wet with brewing. It also takes up a lot less space. Totally manageable. Even in a moderately sized one-bedroom apartment in, say, New York City. If you're more of a liquor person, Pico also makes something called the PicoStill, which allows you to infuse and even distill liquors. That may or may not be legal where you are. So check with local laws and regulations, but that could be a lot of fun too. If you'd like to try brewing beer at home using the Pico C, check out the link below.
Disclosure: This post is brought to you by Business Insider's Insider Picks team. We aim to highlight products and services you might find interesting, and if you buy them, we get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners, including Amazon. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions. We frequently receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising sales team. We welcome your feedback.Have something you think we should know about? Email us at insiderpicks@businessinsider.com.