UPDATE: While this article may be of interest to some people - PICOBREW has gone belly up and sold off all its assets. To date, no entity has shown any interest in continuing this imaginative and effective brew system. PICOBREW also had a much larger brewing system. Some of its customers still brew on this system, creating their own replacement parts and computer interfaces to keep on keeping on. In all, we brewed 27 5L batches on the system using the now defunct PicoPaks. The beers were good, but we decided to move on to a new all grain all-in-one system that makes three gallon batches.

 

ARCHIVE: We purchased a Pico C to see how this automated process actually works, the kinds of beer it can make, its ease of use, etc.

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Although we had some difficulty in getting the machine to work properly out of the box, the customer support people at PicoBrews worked with us to fix a couple of pump related issues and gifted us a couple of PicoPaks for the trouble.

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Our first successful brew was Pike Brewing's Monk's Uncle. Although somewhat darker in color than the actual bottle from Pike, the taste, aroma and ABV seemed pretty close to the parent brew. In fact, a couple of the people who tried it actually preferred it to Pike's actual creation. We used the priming sugar that came with the kit and put it in the 5L serving keg to carbonate.

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Next up was the North Jetty Red Scottish Ale. One of our group members visited North Jetty on a recent family road trip and brought home some of this lovely ale. When we searched through the list of PicoPaks we were excited to see this as one of their paks. So we bought it and brewed it. After cold crashing, we added the priming sugar, mixed thoroughly and bottled it in 12 12oz botles and let it bottle age for two weeks. Result was a delicious brew reminiscent of the growler he brought back (that we consumed immediately after its arrival). Another successful brew.

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Here is a You Tube video you might like to watch.

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Our third adventure featured Better Than Pants, an English bitter from Man Skirt Brewing in Hackettstown, NJ. This one fermented in the 5L serving keg and turned out really nice. In fact it is one of the better ESBs we've ever made.

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Up fourth was the Satchmo Oatmeal Stout from Geaux Brewing in Auburn, WA. Brewed easily with very active fermentation. So much so that it caused the bottom of the keg to swell out slightly. After 10 days we cold crashed it and bottled it in 120z bottles. It should be ready for Christmas Day drinking pleasures.

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Number five was the Misery Whip Scottish Ale from Old Rock Brewing in Duvall, WA (now defunct). We were able to get a growler of the latest brewing of this by the Old Rock brewer at Dreadnought Brewing up the road in Monroe. Long, complicated story about the closing of Old Rock. (Read here)

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All in all we are pretty happy with what we have been able to do so far. The 5L size was a little off-putting considering the paks cost about as much as what a 5 gallon grain bill would be. But then you aren't huddled over a kettle all day. Which is actually what makes brewing fun in the first place. This is definitely a destination, not the journey kind of homebrewing experience. On the upside, we will not have to drink up the whole five gallons before moving on to a new brew. 

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We have eight more PicoPaks in the wings of varying styles. Let the adventure begin.