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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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‘It’s Algorithmic’: Surreal Brewing’s Founder Says Process for Non-Alchohol Beer Based on Science, Not Gimmicks

Nearly a decade ago, Tammer Zein-El-Abedein and his wife, Donna Hockey, had reason to celebrate. Donna had just successfully overcome a breast cancer diagnosis, and so the couple hoped to commemorate the good news in a healthy way.

“We wanted a nonalcoholic beer,” said Zein-El-Abedei in an interview at Smart Kitchen Summit earlier this month. But, according to the former Google executive, they couldn’t find any non-alcoholic beer “outside of the stuff that’s been out for the last 30 or 40 years, which just wasn’t very interesting.”

So they decided to brew their own. Nine months later, in June 2018, the couple’s first beer (and their company Surreal Brewing) was born. It didn’t take long before the plaudits started rolling in, first in the form of a gold medal at the World Beer Awards and, in 2019, the award for the world’s best non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beer.

Since then, the pair have grown their non-alcoholic craft beer lineup, including four different types of IPAs, a Kolsch, and a couple of Porters. They’ve also expanded across the country, getting distribution into states like Virginia, and became the first non-alcoholic beer poured on tap at Disney World.

Experts generally agree there are four ways to make non-alcoholic beer, including “arrested fermentation,” extracting alcohol from brewed beer, watering down beer (um, gross), and simulated fermentation (which skips the fermentation altogether and adds ingredients and enzymes to simulate a similar result). Zein-El-Abedein doesn’t go into the specifics of the company’s brewing techniques but says its patent-pending brewing process is based on chemistry and not special gimmicks.

“The way we approached making our product is based on science,” he said. “We don’t have a special hoodaddy that you pour in, which comes out non-alcoholic. We don’t do any of that stuff. We actually engineered a process from the ground up that is algorithmic.”

If you’d like to listen to our full interview with Zein-El-Abedein, just click below.

Surreal Brewing Company and the Future of Non-Alcoholic Beer

Thirsty For a Beer? Let’s Print You Up a Frothy Cold One

Say it’s Friday night, and you’re having friends over to have a beer and watch the game. You ask your buddy what type of beer she likes, and when she tells you she wants a hoppy IPA, you say no problem.

While you don’t have one in the fridge, within a few minutes you return from your kitchen and hand your friend a pint of freshly-made American-style IPA.

That’s the vision for a new startup out of Belgium called Bar.on, which claims to have created the world’s first molecular beer printer. The machine, which the company calls One Tap, can produce a variety of beer styles such as blond, brown, IPA, and tripel, as well as make high, low, or even no-alcohol beer.

Beer printing “cartridges” from Bar.on

The One Tap uses what the company calls “beer cartridges,” small vials of flavor compounds that can dial up or down a beer’s hoppiness, sweetness, fruitiness, and aroma. The machine, which can fit on a kitchen countertop, allows the user to adjust the parameters and have a beer ready to drink within a couple of minutes.

If the idea sounds similar to the Cana, it is, only unlike the Cana, the Bar.on system just makes beer. And unlike the long list of startups that have come (and mostly gone) focused on building home brewing appliances, the One Tap makes beer instantly, without the bother of going through the days (or even weeks) long process of brewing and fermenting up the sudsy stuff.

A big part of the Bar.on pitch is also similar to Cana’s in that it plays up the sustainability angle of avoiding shipping vast amounts of liquid and the elimination of beverage containers. It’s a smart pitch, though one that will likely resonate more with Europeans, who tend to be more mindful of the environmental impact of their consumption habits than Americans.

Of course, the big test is how the beer tastes. While I have my doubts about the machine making anything resembling a Pliny the Elder or Bodhizafa quality brew, Bar.on claims that their molecular beer recipes have performed well in blind taste tests.

And then there’s the slight weirdness around the idea of ‘printing’ a beer. Still, one strong argument in its favor is that the concept overcomes the most significant deterrent for home beer crafting, which is that it’s a messy process that takes a long time to make a consumable beverage. In this sense, the One Tap takes home beer making out of the realm of a dedicated hobby and brings it something closer to the convenience of a Sodastream or Keurig coffee maker.

The Bar.on team, which raised €.1.8 million last fall, has developed its home machine prototype and is also working on a professional machine for bars called the One Tap Pro, which it plans to put into field test later this year. The company says it is raising a Series A to scale up operations and the production of its system.

Beer Brewing Startup iGulu is Back from the Dead, Plans to Split Brewing Machine Into Two

Like something out of a horror movie, beer brewing automation startup iGulu has come back from the dead, reanimating into something resembling a startup trying to bring a product to market.

The company, whose demise was well-documented here on The Spoon, apparently never gave up on its dream of delivering a beer-brewing appliance. Over the last year, the company’s CEO,  Shu Zhang, has been posting updates on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo (they raised funds on both platforms) about the company’s progress in paying down its debt and cobbling a new team together.

In an April update, Zhang said the company had paid down its debt and was hunting for new financing. Zhang also said the company had hired new product designers.

At present, our team of Home-machine Project includes professional, experienced and top-notch specialists in software, hardware, beer technology, structure, etc., constituting the strong R&D lineup of related products.

In a July update, Zhang said the team numbered ten and that they had decided to change the machine’s design from its original all-in-one brewing concept into two pieces of hardware.

There will be two products. One is the mashing machine for enthusiasts and deep players, from whole malt to wort; Another one is the beer capsule appliance, from wort to beer; The design capacity of the machine is about 1 gallon.

In an October update, Zhang gives a volume production date (end of 2023) and more details on the two-machine concept:

…the new machine will be implemented in two products. The first product will Mash making wort from grain. This product is designed for traditional home brewing enthusiasts. It supports high efficiency and high quality wort generation with your own recipes. The other machine is a fermentor and dispensing machine, this will support fermentation of both wort, and malt extract. The dispensing tap will be a disposable pipe design. It will also be capable of holding some existing commercial beer capsules (like 5L Heineken Beer Keg) for instant drinking. We are currently mid way through the design process for the new product. 

Zhang’s explanation of the transition from one brewing appliance to two is a little confusing since he never clarifies if iGulu intends to send both machines to original backers. The original machine takes care of the entire brew process from grains to glass, but one needs both of iGulu’s new product family to create a drinkable glass of beer from scratch. It appears most backers are assuming they will get both, but strangely Zhang talks about the two machines as if they are targeting different audiences when he explains the wort-making appliance as being designed “for enthusiasts.”

With all the confusion, product pauses, restarts, and time passed (nearly seven years at this point), I expected most backers to dismiss Zhang’s reboot on the iGulu. Instead, while a good chunk is predictably skeptical, some encourage Zhang to keep plugging.

For my part, I’m doubtful iGulu ever makes it to market and would advise against any new or existing backer giving the company any money. With the likelihood of little to no new crowdfund money coming in, the company has a tough road ahead in raising additional capital to help get it over the finish line. The success rate of home brewing appliances has not been encouraging, and investors are taking an ever-more-skeptical eye toward every investment nowadays.

All that said, the company has survived longer than anyone could have predicted and still has a pulse, so we’ll be keeping an eye on how things shake out next year.

Beer Made With a Beer Brewing Robot Wins Gold Medal

In July, a homebrewer using a BEERMKR home beer brewing appliance won gold at the National HomeBrew Competition.

According to a release from BEERMKR, a beer brewed by Christian Chandler of Phoenix, AZ, won the gold medal in the Porters & Stouts category, beating out 164 entries in the contest put on by the American HomeBrewers Association.

The win was an important milestone in that it’s the first time that a homebrewer used an automated beer brewing countertop appliance to help develop an award-winning recipe at the HomeBrew Competition.

So how did Chandler use the BEERMKR to develop his beer? From the release:

Chandler says that BEERMKR’s small batches and ease of use let him make multiple iterations of a recipe and “really tweak things on the fly.” Chandler was able to fine-tune his recipe into a national gold medal winner.  The repeatability of BEERMKRs process also helped him make consistently good beer as he advanced from the first to second rounds of the competition.

Chandler used the BEERMKR to do quick batches, which he later scaled up using a higher capacity brewing system called the Grainfather to increase batch size. While The Grainfather automates some parts of the brewing process, it still requires the user to monitor readings manually and transfer the wort to a separate container for fermentation after the brew. The BEERMKR, on the other hand, automates much more of the process of beer brewing. The brewer chooses the ingredients and builds a recipe, but from there the sensors and software of the BEERMKR monitor much of the process, from brewing through fermentation to carbonation.

In short, Chandler, an experienced brewer, integrated the BEERMKR as part of his recipe development process. He iterated recipes and brewed quick small batches with smaller portions of ingredients on the BEERMKR, and used his bigger machine to brew larger quantities once the recipe was dialed in.

So will it soon become commonplace for homebrewers to use brewbots like the BEERMKR to develop recipes for brewing competitions? I imagine so, in part because the machines essentially act as a tool for serious homebrewers to develop recipes faster. While purists might resent any use of technology when it comes to brewing up a batch, technology like the BEERMKR helps them get better at their craft by automating the boring parts like temperature control and leaving the creative parts up to them.

You can watch a video of Chandler below talking about developing his award winning recipe with the BEERMKR.

BEERMKR beer wins gold at National Homebrew Competition

EBar Raises £670,000 for its Mobile, Automated Beer Vending System

EBar, the Aberdeen, U.K.-based beer vending machine company, announced today that it has raised a £670,000 (~$916,000 USD) equity round of funding. In an email to The Spoon, EBar Managing Director Sam Pettipher said that of the new money, £150,000 (~$205,000 USD) came via equity crowdfunding via the Seedrs platform, £300,000 (~$410,000 USD) came from an Irish events consortium, and the rest came from various investor groups. This brings the total amount raised by EBar to £1.4 million (~$1.9M USD).

Built for large events like soccer matches, festivals, concerts and more, EBar makes high-volume automated beer vending machines. EBar machines offer just two drink options, feature a touchscreen for ordering and can pour a beer in under 30 seconds. EBars are also mobile and meant to move around wherever there are events to create what the company calls beer as a service. Instead of leasing the machine, EBar charges each venue a commission on sales, so there is no upfront cost for set up or installation.

EBar launched its equity crowdfunding campaign earlier this year with the goal of raising £275,001 (~$387,827 USD). Pettipher said the company has closed the equity crowdfunding campaign and has moved on to the execution phase of its business, getting fleets of units out and growing the team.

EBar is part of a growing movement towards automating beer service, especially at large events. Macco Robotics, Revolmatic and Hop Robotics all make automated beer pouring machines that can dispense beers in seconds. This type of automation could potentially be huge for events and venues because a robot can churn out hundreds of drinks in an hour without stopping. Human bartenders could then shift their focus to selling more complex (and expensive) mixed cocktails, and would allow event attendees to spend less time in line for drinks.

The bigger question hanging over all of these services isn’t the functionality of the technology, it’s when large events will be able to come back in full force. With the COVID-19 Delta variant flaring up around the world, the pandemic is far from being over. Sporting events and concerts are making a comeback, but there is the constant threat of them being shut down again in the fight against the virus.

Hop Robotics’ Beer Robot is Ready for Events This Summer

The U.S., it seems, has lagged behind Europe when it comes to automated beer pouring action. There’s EBar in the UK, Revolmatic out of Poland, and Macco Robotics in Spain. But fear not, proud Americans! There’s a homebrewed, as it were, beer robot coming to market courtesy of Hop Robotics in South Carolina.

Dubbed Walter, Hop’s beer robot uses an articulating arm and bottom pouring cups to automate beer dispensing. The robotic arm is built on a kegerator with four dispensers. Walter can take an order, dispense and serve a drink in roughly 25 seconds, and do roughly 140 cups of beer an hour.

Pint 2 Pint Time Trial-Hop Robotics

As Grayson Dawson, Founder of Hop Robotics, explained to me by phone this week, his company is still pretty early on and is in the pre-revenue, commercial prototype phase. Hop Robotics has one robot available that Dawson shuttles to events at cities around the Carolinas and Georgia. Right now, Walter isn’t tied into a payment system, so Dawson manually takes cash or drink tickets and enters the order into the machine himself. Additionally, while Dawson has some age verification capabilities, he is instead relying on venues to do age and overconsumption checks.

With more people than ever vaccinated in the U.S., activities like sporting events, fairs and concerts are opening back up. Crushes of people with pent up demand for mass entertainment will probably want a frosty beverage during the summer heat, and having an automated system to churn out beer after beer could come in handy. The question is how Hop Robotics could handle any potential surge in demand.

The company has proven out the basics of its technology, but Dawson is currently seeking funding or strategic partnerships to scale the business up beyond just one machine and the one person operating it.

EBar Automates Beer Pouring at Events, Aims to Equity Crowdfund £275,001

As people return to sporting and live events, they won’t have to wait as long for a beer. Well, they won’t have to wait as long in Europe, because a number of robotic beer-pouring solutions are coming to market there.

The latest entrant to the robo-beer pouring space is EBar, a startup based in Aberdeen, United Kingdom, which makes what is essentially a beer dispensing vending machine. From the video description (see below), the EBar is more about volume than variety. There are just two kegs plugged into the back of the machine, so don’t expect an extensive menu of artisanal beer choices. Customers order via on-board touchscreen, take cups from the built-in dispenser and place them in the machine. The EBar then pours out what looks like a pretty perfect cup of a beer, complete with appropriately-sized foamy head, in under 30 seconds.

The EBar is built for large venues like stadiums and outdoor festivals, where people want their drinks quickly and don’t care as much about whether the beer they are getting is an IPA or a Stout. Additionally, since there is no server, the machine reduces the amount of human-to-human contact when getting a drink — an important factor in this emerging post-pandemic world.

EBar calls its business model Beer as a Service. Rather than installing and leasing machines in a single location, they move the machines around from venue to venue and charge a commission on all the sales. This is a smart play for the company because potential venues don’t have to spend money up front for the machine, and EBar can look at the data to determine which are the best events/times/locations to set up their machines to maximize revenue.

EBar is in the middle of an equity crowdfunding campaign and aiming to raise £275,001 (~$387,827 USD). The company says that despite the pandemic shutting most events down in 2020, its machines were still being used by thousands of customers. As venues re-open and people return to sporting events and concerts, it’s easy to see how having multiple EBars on-hand could come in handy. (This news post should not be considered investment advice.)

Europe appears to be a hotbed of automated beer pouring activity. In Poland, the Revolmatic is a smaller, counterop machine also built for large events that cranks out cups of beer. And over in Spain, Macco Robotics’ humanoid Kime robot pours beer, but isn’t really built as much for speed and volume.

Large events are actually good use cases for automation because attendees are at a venue to see a concert or a game, not stand in long lines for drink.

If you want to know more about the future of vending machines, then be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food robotics and automation summit on May 18. We’ll have speakers from smart vending companies like Yo-Kai Express, Rotender and Calvary Robotics. Get your ticket today!

BEERMKR Launches Equity Crowdfunding Campaign, Will Appear on “Shark Tank” Tonight

If I wasn’t such a professional, impartial journalist, I might shed a small tear of joy for BEERMKR. I’ve been writing about the company since 2018 when it launched on Kickstarter, and continued to follow them through trade shows, COVID-related production delays, and finally with a full product review last fall. And now the company has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign, but will also be pitching to the investors on Shark Tank tonight. Li’l BEERMKR is all grown up.

Unlike traditional home brewing, BEERMKR doesn’t require the mess and complications of buckets and bottles and hoses. Instead, it’s a connected, all-in-one countertop beer fermenting, brewing and dispensing system. The accompanying mobile app tells you when to add your ingredients, and the BEERMKR controls all the agitation, temperature control and resting. I had never brewed beer before in my life and was able to make a delicious stout on my very first try, which prompted me to add BEERMKR to our Spoon Holiday Gift Guide.

We obviously don’t know yet if the Sharks will bite upon hearing BEERMKR’s pitch, but the company is hoping everyday investors will. BEERMKR is looking to raise roughly $1 million through equity crowdfunding on the StartEngine platform, and as of this writing has already raised more than $122,000 in its first day. BEERMKR has a good track record when it comes to crowdfunding, having raised nearly $400,000 on Kickstarter to put the BEERMKR into production. (And unlike other beer-related crowdfunded hardware, it actually made it to market.)

Equity crowdfunding is becoming quite a trend in the food tech world. Companies like Piestro, Future Acres, Blendid and GoSun have all conducted equity crowdfunding campaigns. Raising capital from traditional VCs comes with the pressure to scale and deliver a return on the VC’s investment in a relatively timely manner. Startups that choose that equity crowdfunding route mitigate that scaling and time pressure. However, using equity crowdfunding also means companies don’t necessarily get access to the institutional knowledge and connections that could help them run their businesses more efficiently.

I reached out to BEERMKR CEO Aaron Walls this morning to ask him why they opted for equity crowdfunding, and this is what he emailed back:

We’ve done traditional financings and we’ve done kickstarters, but this is our first equity crowdfund. As we began investigating, it became evident that our company was uniquely positioned to execute an equity crowdfunding campaign. First, we have a large install base of happy customers, many of whom have reached out prior to this campaign and asked if they could invest in our company. Second, with as many kickstarters as we’ve done, we have the internal processes in place to work through the crowdfunding dynamics. Lastly, our category of alcoholic beverages does very well with crowdfunding. It’s a category that you don’t need an advanced degree to fully understand the full potential. From our standpoint we felt it was worth the effort to see how well it performs. The worst case scenario? We can always go back to raising capital the old fashioned way, but given the first day success, it looks like we won’t have to!

Walls also said that BEERMKR is only raising $1 million because that is a limit set by the SEC based on the makeup of the company.

I didn’t ask him whether Mark Cuban is now an investor, but I’ll be watching Shark Tank tonight and maybe there there will be one little happy tear for Walls and his team.

Third Aurora to Bring Augmented Reality to Beer Labels

I’m not ashamed to admit that sometimes I solely pick out a can of beer based on the label artwork. Sometimes there isn’t enough information listed on the can to make an educated decision, so I let bright and colorful artwork catch my eye. Third Aurora, a tech company focused on augmented reality (AR) and machine learning, is gearing up to launch its platform for augmented reality beer labels so beer cans do provide more information. The platform is in the form of a mobile app called Beerscans, which will be made available for users in the upcoming months.

Matt Hallberg, one of the cofounders of Third Aurora, said that many breweries have interesting stories and are doing things behind the scenes, like focusing on sustainability, but the consumer isn’t able to get the essence of the brewery from just one can. A beer can only has space for a few brief sentences and consumers typically have to go on the brewery’s website to learn more.

Augmented Reality Packaging - Beverage Packaging Demonstration - Third Aurora

The Beerscans mobile app uses the phone’s camera, augmented reality and computer vision to scan a beer can, and the app recognizes the circumference of the can and the label. An augmented reality label then pops up and hovers over the can. The augmented reality label will share the story behind the brewery and beer, tasting notes of the beer, and other information that a brewery may want to share. Breweries interested in being a part of the Beerscans app must sign up through the Beerscans website and upload desired information through the website’s portal.

Previously, Third Aurora launched Winerytale, an app that is the same concept as Beerscans, except for wine bottles. Living Labels is another company that has partnered with a handful of wineries to provide AR labels including the popular 19 Crimes winery. Drink AR launched in 2020, and provides AR labels for wineries, breweries, and distilleries.

Third Aurora aims on launching Beerscans in about three months, and it will be available for free on both iOS and Android. Third Aurora is in the process of signing up breweries and wants to have at least 100 breweries signed up prior to the launch.

Revolmatic and Nayax Bring Contactless Automated Beer Dispensing to Bars

Every Los Angeleno I know is predicting an explosion of going out in the coming weeks as vaccinations accelerate. Bars and restaurants will be packed once again as those who have been stuck at home for the past year feel empowered to venture amongst other people once more.

Finally being able to release all that pent-up demand will be great for bars, restaurants and the workers there — but it’s going to be busy. Perhaps they should consider enlisting a little robotic bartender help to keep the drinks flowing.

If they do, Revolmatic has just the device. The Polish startup makes an eponymous automated beer dispensing robot that can act as either a bartender’s assistant or a standalone vending machine.

The Revolmatic is a countertop device that connects to a keg to automatically pour beers. The machine will dispense disposable cups into a rotating tray that slides the cup under the beer dispenser for filling. (Reuseable cups can be used, but they need to be placed in the tray manually.) Revolmatic can pour up to 450 beers per hour, and the machine has special software and a touchscreen to adjust factors like temperature and foam to make sure pours come out correctly.

As noted, there are two versions of the Revolmatic. A bartender assistant is just as it sounds: it’s a machine that cranks out beers so busy bartenders can focus on other, more complicated drinks. There is also a standalone version that integrates Nayax’s payment system (among others) to create an unattended beer vending machine.

In its vending machine form, the Nayax integration allows customers to pay for their beers through a number of payment options like credit card or by mobile phone via an app like the Monyx Wallet (which is popular in Europe). Machines are typically set up in areas that conduct age verification upon entry (like a bar), and the Nayax system can decline payments from people underage.

We are starting to see robo-bartenders pop up in more places. Macco Robotics in Spain uses a humanoid-looking robot to pour beers. GlacierFire in Iceland uses multiple articulating arms to mix cocktails. In California, Rotender makes a full-on standalone cocktail vending machine. And Cecilia.ai adds a dash of chatbot with its robot.

There are a few reasons we’re seeing so much activity in the space right now. First, robots are still a novelty and might attract a few extra lookee-loos who are curious enough to buy a robo-drink. Second, if a robot can take over the simple work of pouring beer after beer after beer (think: at festival or stadium), then humans are freed up to better interact with customers or perform higher-skilled tasks. Finally, post-pandemic, bars and restaurants are looking to reduce the amount of human contact, something contactless vending machines do.

Right now, the Revolmatic is available in European countries such Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic and has a base price of €6,000 Euros (~$7,000 USD).

If you wan to see more drink robot action, then be sure to attend Articulate, our upcoming food robotics and automation virtual conference on May 18. It’ll be packed full of great speakers from across the robot landscape talking about the most pressing issues facing the industry. Get your ticket today!

Food Tech News: Electrolyte Beer and Food Waste Jet Fuel

Welcome to the weekend, and your weekly Food Tech News round-up. If you indulged in too many Irish stouts this past Wednesday for St. Patrick’s Day, you might want to try some electrolyte-infused beer over the weekend. In addition to health-conscious beer, we also have news on food waste being considered for jet fuel and a plant-based egg company in Singapore.

Breweries are infusing beer with electrolytes and healthy ingredients

Do you like your beer with a twist of lime? Or how about with an infusion of electrolytes? A few breweries in the U.S are offering low-ABV beers infused with electrolytes and other nutritious ingredients. Zelus Beer Company (Massachusetts) was founded by a triathlete, and the brewery produces low-alcohol beer made with calcium, potassium, and different salts. Harpoon Brewery (Massachusetts) makes a beer with Mediterannean sea salt, chia seeds, and buckwheat. Mispillion River Brewing (Delaware) has a Berliner Weisse on tap that is infused with berries and a variety of undisclosed electrolytes. These beers are geared towards those who follow an active and healthy lifestyle but still want to enjoy a beer without feeling the negative side effects of alcohol. We’re not sure if they will actually rehydrate lost electrolytes, but an ice-cold beer after a hard workout is delicious regardless.

Photo from Unsplash

Commercial aviation industry considers using food waste for fuel

Taking a trip by plane adds a lot to your carbon footprint, especially if that trip is international. To combat the unsustainable nature of traveling by plane, the commercial aviation industry is looking into alternative options for jet fuel. One that has been presented in a study conducted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the use of volatile fatty acids derived from “wet waste.” Food waste, animal manure, and wastewater are the components of wet waste, and researchers extracted volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from this mix. This possible alternative can reduce food waste going to the landfill, carbon dioxide emissions, and soot released into the air by 34 percent.

Photo from Float Foods’ Instagram

Plant-based egg start-up Float Foods receives Temasek grant

Float Foods is a Singapore-based start-up that has developed a whole plant-based egg product, and this week the company received a grant from the Temasek Foundation. The amount of the grant was undisclosed, and it came from Temasek’s Ecosperity Innovations Grant, which aims to assist start-ups with an emphasis on sustainability in Singapore. The company’s proprietary product is made from legumes and called OnlyEg. Float Foods says it is the first to create a whole plant-based egg product in Asia; other plant-based eggs typically come in a powder or liquid form. Float Foods aims to bring its product on shelves in Singapore in 2022.

Review: BEERMKR Makes it Easy to Make Beer

The fact that I hate beer either makes me the worst person to do a review of the BEERMKR countertop home brewing system or the best person to do such a review.

On the one hand, I can’t tell the difference between “good” beer and “bad” beer because IPAs, stouts, lagers, and what have you all taste gross. So I’m not the best judge of BEERMKR’s end product.

On the other hand, my particular dislike for beer means I know nothing about hops or grains. It also means I have never tried to make my own beer. So if a device promises to render that process idiot-proof, well, then I’m probably the right idiot.

Avid Spoon readers will know that I included the BEERMKR on my 2020 holiday gift guide. So you already know I like it. For the TL;DR set, despite some of its quirks, I actually had fun making beer with this, and that’s probably because I got all the benefits (beer) with hardly any work.

All the ingredients you need.

And brewing beer at home the old fashioned way takes lots of work. The traditional process involves buckets, hoses, bottles, bottles potentially exploding, babysitting, sterilizing… All that is to say that it’s complicated! And all those complications have turned a lot of people away from making their own beer.

BEERMKR solves this by putting everything in two pieces of hardware: a (big) countertop brewing/fermenting system and a slightly less big BEERTAP, which sits in your fridge and dispenses beer.

BEERMKR’s grain hopper. Just throw everything/anything in there.

One of the keys to BEERMKR’s ease is the fact that it replaces buckets and bottles with a one-gallon plastic bag/bladder (equivalent to 12, 12-oz bottles). Snap it into the brewer/fermenter to make the beer. Then once that’s done, transfer the bag to the dispenser.

We’ve actually written about how BEERMKR works (and shot videos of it) a few times over the years, so I don’t want to get too bogged down with the mechanics of the system. Like the machine itself suggests, let’s get to the fun part!

BEERMKR sent me a test unit along with the ingredients for two different beer recipes: A stout and an IPA. All of the ingredients are separated out in pre-portioned packets. In the accompanying BEERMKR app, you select either a BEERMKR’s recipe or you can DIY it if you’re a pro. Because I’m a n00b, I used the BEERMKR recipe for the Chubby Stout.

BEERMKR app

With my recipe selected, the BEERMKR app used a series of videos to guide me through the set up of the machine: how to install the bag, how much water to add, where to put the grains, what to expect in the first phase, etc.

After you do all that, you push the single, solitary button on the machine, and congratulations! You’re well on your way to making your own beer. From there BEERMKR takes over, keeping your beer at the right temperature, agitating it, and literally doing all the work. When it came time to pitch my yeast, BEERMKR sent me an alert and showed me some more videos on how to do that. Easy peasy.

The app fills you in at each step along the way, telling you what temperature the beer is at, the different stages of fermentation, and the resting (FWIW, I never knew beer had to rest). Once I pitched my yeast, I just sat back and watched on my app over the following nine days or so as the beer came together.

When it was done, the app sent me an alert. I removed the plastic bladder holding the beer, placed it into the BEERTAP, screwed in the CO2 cartridge and waited a day for the liquid to carbonate. Which… didn’t exactly happen the first go-round.

BEERMKR app

BEERMKR is still very much a new product. As such, there are several kinks the company is working out. My beer didn’t actually fizz up all that much because there were leaks in the CO2 lines. But the BEERMKR customer service team is super attentive, identified the problem quickly and sent me some clamps to tighten up the hoses. (A service rep even Zoomed with me to make sure I installed them correctly.)

Once the clamps were in, I waited another 24 hours, then I was able to enjoy a frosty, chocolatey stout. Or, at least my neighbors did (you know, because I hate beer).

One downside to the BEERMKR’s bag system is that it removes the need for bottling. That means that in order to share my beer, people had to come to me. This might be a bummer for hardcore brewers who like gifting their beer, but it was fine for me.

The biggest complaints I have are that during the fermentation phase, the machine gets loud twice a day as it does some kind of vibration something. I couldn’t control the timing of this vibrating, so it wound up waking me up in the middle of the night because it is loud. This is an issue the company said it is fixing in the app, so by the time you get yours, it might not be a problem. I fixed the issue by moving the machine into the garage.

Big BEERTAP

The app also had some other quirks about updates on different stages of my beer, but those didn’t impact the end product and they too are being addressed in updates.

But look. The point is, I had fun making beer! And I hate beer! If I loved beer and knew what I was doing, I would probably have had even more fun because BEERMKR lets you add whatever kind of flair you want to your beer. Want to throw in some raspberries or dandelions or cinnamon? Go crazy! Toss it in the grain bin and let that new/crazy flavor soak in.

At $499, the BEERMKR isn’t cheap, but what’s good is that unlike the now-defunct PicoBrew, it doesn’t rely on some proprietary pod system, so you’re free to go hog wild with your brews. But also homebrewers I know said that the price was good for what it does, given all the time and work it saves you.

BEERMKR didn’t make me love beer, but it made me love how easy it was to make beer.