Brewbot: The Smart Brewing Appliance

Piercemeear

I came across this project by a design company from Belfast. They are building and selling a kind of partially automated system for home brewing. Talks to your smartphone, etc.

Brewbot: The Smart Brewing Appliance

It's not cheap, at £1500, but the idea is at least technically interesting. Videos and diagrams on the accompanying page.

(I'm not affiliated in any way with the project or the designers.)

oblivious

Looks interesting and a well put together video :cool:

But 1,550 is a lot of cash

Mr Benevolent

I don't understand the point. A hobby is a hobby, why automate the fun bits? This reduces your involvement to cleaning and purchasing, the least fun of the steps that make up home brewing. It's for people who want to say 'Yeah, I brew' without actually doing anything. You might as well get someone else to brew it for you, it'd be much cheaper.

sharingan

I wonder how it stacks up against a spiedel braumeister?

These kind of products are always pretty interesting at the precision level - good temperature controlled mashes, stepped mashes etc. But I don't see how it is helping with temperature controlled fermentation or pitching, which is an element that effects your consistency.

Though you can do standard mashes and sparges, which mean that high gravity beers are possible (a key problem with the braumeister ).

I like the stackable fermenters too, that could work really well with a temperature controlled cabinet - very space efficient.

I think they might be over selling the remote element though.

sharingan

Mr Benevolent wrote: »

I don't understand the point. A hobby is a hobby, why automate the fun bits? This reduces your involvement to cleaning and purchasing, the least fun of the steps that make up home brewing. It's for people who want to say 'Yeah, I brew' without actually doing anything. You might as well get someone else to brew it for you, it'd be much cheaper.

I wouldn't go that far - you are still formulating recipes, grinding grain, kegging/bottling/maturing and monitoring/controlling/lagering your fermentation.

There is lots that this gear doesn't do.

Its possible that they see commercial applications, like the larger spiedel kit. A restaurant or pub could brew on site, and sell in store, and the gear is simple enough to train the staff on how to do it.

And TBH, my brew day is satisfying. but its a ton or work, and if causes no end of rows if I do it on a weeknight. The finished product is where it is at for me, consuming it, sharing it. The martyrdom of the brew day doesn't define my hobby for me. Many other brewers I know are the same, and many of their brewing innovations are usually about reducing the drudgery involved.

The fact that this unit takes most of the time consuming tasks out of the brew day, doesn't make the owner less of a brewer.

Murt10

Sorry to drag up an old thread but there's an article about this in yesterdays New York Times.

4th most emailed article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/business/brewing-your-own-beer-with-help-from-an-app.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article


What a Christmas present that would be,

Muahahaha

3 years on and the Brewbot idea has come close to liquidation over debts to the taxman. It looks strongly like people who paid 2k for one of these units on Kickstarter will never see anything for their money. Galway Bay are set to take over the pub in Belfast that Brewbot ran.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/food-drink-hospitality/galway-brewery-taking-over-belfast-brewbot-bar-on-ormeau-road-36212433.html

A pity really, I liked the idea of an automated way of brewing, even if the price was a bit off the charts it presumably would have got cheaper over time.

Anyone know of any similar automated brewing units in the market?

stecleary

https://www.brewie.org/
look up the beer healer, he uses one