Gadgetory

hi I'm rich brown for CNET we're here today to do sort of AB hands-on first look at the picot bruise I'm addict automated home beer-making machine this system will sell for about $2,000 when it hits retail it was 1800 if you got in on a Kickstarter the idea behind this is that it's supposed to make anybody be able to get a recipe online loaded on the cymatic and then automate the home brew making process the system is connected to the Internet and it will go up to your profile on the Pico brew website where you've assigned recipes that you want to make there's a whole library of recipes on Pico brew you can also make your own and the Machine will automate the whole process as far as heating up the grain boiling through the hops and then once you're the chill process it's pretty much the same as when you make beer at home you set the beer side that let it ferment for two weeks or so then you can kick or bottle it however you prefer so today we're making a Chipotle Porter at least that's what we're hoping to do so we have six different kinds of grains mixed up in this pot right here we're gonna take those grains and dump them here in the main chamber and we're gonna add the hops so to start with that we're gonna measure it out real quick put one set in one chamber another set in the other chamber and then load those in in the back of the hopper now we're all set with our ingredients we're gonna load the whole hopper into the cymatic I already have water in the keg it'll go over to the menu I'll select the recipe for my profile hit brew and we'll see you in a couple weeks to see how this turns out now we have some other plans for how we're gonna test out the system we have one of the local Brewers here in Louisville Kentucky from against the grain they're gonna help us test this thing out for myself I have basically no experienced homebrew so I'm coming at this from as a total rook II and hopefully at the end of all this we'll have a pretty good idea of how well does I'm addict can meet the needs of any different level of home brewers all right so we're here with the very first beer from the Pico brews I'm addict it is ready to tap it's been carbonating here for about the last week so I'm gonna show off the co2 disconnect this hose got my tap hose here see how it goes that's gonna be pretty foaming so again this is the picot Pale Ale this is a very first beer I made with the cymatic definitely some user error involved along the way but overall it seems like a relatively respectable Pale Ale so last week we tried out our pale ale this week we've made a new beer this is a Chipotle Porter just about to take this one off the gas as well so we're this one who wanted to be kind of bitter yet happy the idea for this one is because it's a darker beer we wanted to be a little bit of a richer flavor and that's sort of the test for the Pico brew with this one all right here we go good beer definitely like this better than that one very full flavor all right so we've got one more beer to go and after that we'll have a full review all right so this is the last test for our picot bruise I'm at upper view or here at the against the grain brewery here in Louisville we've got a bottle of their Citra ass down beer right here they also have it on tap and here's the growler to the stuff we made back in our lab Adam Watson the brewer here did make this stuff onto ondas I'm addict so the whole idea is just to kind of see how well each of these translates and we're gonna do a blind taste test we've got four panelists and four drinkers behind us so I'm gonna set this up and we'll see what they think alright coming at you get everybody put on blindfolds wait everybody tastes one beer at the same time and they were able to tell with 100% accuracy what beer came from what brewing process all right which number was the stuff we brought this is a keg stuff we made of the Pico brew very different very different the big flavor difference is very very strong diacetyl presence which to be fair to the system is largely a product of fermentation rather than the actual work production process Adam uses a term buttery and that's a thing that would apply to this one yeah and I guess we're being accurate the the Pico brew thing isn't a beer making machine it's a work making machine then once you have word the yeast make beer so there's only some things we like about the Pico brews I'm addict quite a bit the fact that it gives you a running long at the temperature throughout your brew process gives you some good data in fact that you can share recipes and kind of like store your recipe online download it to the system all that is pretty useful and it does kind of simplify the process of dumping in grain putting in hops getting it in the right time and temperature overall though it is certainly not an automatic beer machine something at the fermentation process right you still have to cool your wort coming out of the brewer so there's certainly a lot of hands-on involved here still whether that makes the $2,000 I'm addict worth it if it's not gonna quite automate the whole process for you that's sort of between you and your passion for making beer in your wallet but overall this thing pretty much does what it says it's gonna do there's still a lot left for you to do though if you want to make beer with this thing at home so I'm rich Brown we're here at the against the grain production facility here in Louisville Kentucky like to thank the guys here at against the grain for helping us out with all this this has been our review of the picot brews I'm addict beer making machine you