PicoBrew Zymatic with Keg

A very good system, but paid over three hundred dollars more than if I went through Morebeer.com.

I held off writing this review for a couple of months, so I would have some basis for writing a review in the first place. I have been a long time home brewer, though never graduated beyond extract brewing because of the amount of gear and the time investment, but I understand the processes and have always wanted to get into it. (Moving around every few years is hard on a set up like that...)At any rate, first of all, this is not a "Kuereg" for brewing. If you don't already know what you are doing, or have the understanding that there is going to be a steep learning as you gain knowledge on full grain brewing, then this machine will knock your socks off. I will tell you though, that my first experience was very frustrating as I learned the hardware and the software side of things, but hey, that's part of homebrewing. Remember that even your mistakes most likely end up very drinkable.All of the normal things that apply to traditional home brewing apply here; sanitation, temperature control during fermentation, patience as you allow your beer to ferment and once again, sanitation. What this machine does, and does oh so well, is to simplify the mashing process of the grains and automates the boil and additions to the boil. That's not to say that you don't need to understand what it is doing, but once you perform your setup; i.e. put your crushed, mixed grains into the step filter, put your pellet hops into the appropriate adjunct baskets, and prepared your clarifier for addition near the end of the boil; you tell machine to proceed with the selected recipe, which contains all of the parameters for the mashing process and the boil of the specific beer you are making. At that point you can walk away for 2-4 hours depending on all of those variables. No monitoring your strike temps, manual "mashing in", once again monitoring temps for the lengthy mashing process and then "mashing out" and the painful yet necessary step of pulling your spent grains out of your mash tun, or draining off the wort into you boil kettle. All of that happens automatically. Then it will bring your wort up to the boil temperature and proceed with the boil and the appropriate hopping as prescribed by your recipe. All while you are running errands, watching TV, spending time with your kids... or what ever else you having going on in your life.Once all of that is done, you still have to chill the wort to your yeast pitching temperature. That can either happen over night or you can use an ice bath or an immersion chiller connected to the fluid loop of the machine. You control that. You pitch the yeast and put the fermentation vessel someplace relatively cool and let it ferment.The fermentation vessel will typically be the Cornelius keg that you use as the water reservoir for your brewing process (unless you choose otherwise) with the addition of a great rubber keg stopper.The one downside of this system is the limitation of of batch size being 2.5 gal. It's easy enough to run two batches in one day and ferment in your 6 gal carboy, but I have found out that 2.5 gal of beer goes pretty fast. LOLI have taken a video of the prep of one of my brew days.https://youtu.be/LECtRV0llGgCleanup is still cleanup, it's just a lot more contained and goes a lot faster.Have a home brew and smile!J. Perry

My previous brewing experience has been in extract brewing and with borrowed equipment. I also have made wine. When I started growing my own hops I knew I wanted to buy my own setup and after reading a bit more about what was available I knew I wanted to move to all grain. This is my first amazon rating, but I was annoyed by the guy who gave this a one star without having actually tried it or knowing how it worked, so I felt compelled to share my very positive experience.I ended up deciding to purchase the zymatic rather than a full all grain setup because I added up everything I thought I would need for all grain brewing and it didn't seem too crazy far off of the cost of the zymatic, plus I was enchanted by the connectivity and community aspect of the unit, particularly the globe that lets you see what people are brewing right now and in a previous time window. I was also interested in using it for sous vide and frankly I wanted to save time and still get to learn more about beer making!My first experiences were a little frustrating as some of the instructions are hard for the uninitiated to follow. However, when I checked in the online forums I found every single question I had was answered in the beginner section...so a word of advice: don't be too hasty (like me) when your unit arrives, check that beginner section of the forum out BEFORE you start (unlike me). Also, if picobrew folks are reading this, it would be really awesome if we could get our unit ID and create the account when the product ships so we can get all psyched reading the forums and be ready when it arrives :)Brewing with this has been awesome and I've already gotten so addicted that I bought a second keg so I can brew again while one batch is fermenting. I realize I could just use a carboy but I like that the keg is self sanitizing since it is used in the boil. I've been reading tons of recipes and information about the science behind the timing and temperature of mashing and am looking forward to playing with different settings.I just want to caution anyone who is considering this because they think they'll save money on beer and/or thinks it'll be super easy like a bread machine. It is certainly not cheap to buy the ingredients, even in bulk, and given the tiny margins you'll get it would take a long time to "pay off" the machine and all of the other items you'll need for bottling/kegging, taking measurements, controlling fermentation temp, and sanitizing. While it is less time consuming than any beer making I've done before, especially when it comes to cleaning time, it still does take a good amount of time to get everything going, the large pieces are a bit awkward to clean, there tends to be a medium to heavy amount of foam that gets in and around the machine, and the cages and screens tend to trap ingredients inside them pretty well. Once your brewing session is done the process is roughly what it would be for any beer to ferment and bottle or keg.