PicoBrew Pico has arrived!!!

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Warthogrugby

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I wanted to post and talk about the how cool the Pico is. Mine just arrive today and I put it through it's first brew session.

I am really excited about the Pico. My main reason for wanting it was getting access to beer that would otherwise not be distributed to me.

The packaging for the Pico was first class. It came with the Pico Unit, a 1.75 gal keg, the 5 liter serving vessel, a couple of ball lock adaptors for the rinse cycle, a ball lock siphon hose for after fermentation, the force carbonation gauge, as well as a fast fermenting spunding valve.

The Pico Pack is really cleverly done. The grain and the hops are all preloaded into their respective bio degradable containers. There is a lable for the beer that gets packaged with the pack that you can stick on to the fermentor and then serving keg (it has a light adhesive so you can transfer no problem) as well as a unique stick on thermometer that is tailored for the style being brewed. It also came with the CO2 container which has just the right volume of CO2 for the particular style.

Set up was a breeze. Really fast and easy. Plug in, turn on, find and log into Wi-Fi, and then register the device on your PicoBrew account. That's it.

As for brew day, it's just about as simple. 1) Fill up the water reservoir and the keg to the defined water level 2) Hook the keg up to the device 3)You pull out the step filter, load in the grain box and hop box, and load the step filter back in. 4) The Pico automatically recongnizes the Pico Pack and loads the recipe into the machine. 5) Hit go (after giving a prompt if you want more or less hoppy and more or less ABV). This took less than two minutes.

Clean up was pretty spectacularly easy too. 1) unhook the keg 2) pull out the step filter and dump the grain and hop box into the composte 3) rinse the step filter, this is really easy as there is no residue from grain or hops 4) attached the ball lock adaptors to the line in and line out ball locks 5) have a pitcher of clean water to draw from and an empty pitcher to deposit to. The clean cycle took all of 3 minutes.

All in all, from start to finish, 2 hours and 20 minutes, only 5 minutes that needed a human.

Don't get me wrong, I love my brew days when I can do my traditional all grain batches, but I love beer more. I thought the Zymatic was a godsend to being able to brew more again (which it was/is) but the Pico is even more so.

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Awesome, can't wait to get mine. Can you tell me what the height of the keg is? I am creating a Kegerator for a upright freezer and it already has some shelving. From the pictures it looks like it may fit without modification. Thanks, and looks awesome. Did it have the clear back?
 
Is there an online UI as well? I'd be very interested of seeing screenshots of the setup process and the brewing interface. Do they give you the breakdown of the ingredients? I would think not, for the brewery licensed PicoPaks.

The Zymatic is in sore need of some updates, which have "been coming soon" for the past year and a half - a good number of the users are starting to get fairly ticked about it, including yours truly.
 
Hey dangardner2, it's a 1.75gal Corny that is just over 11" high without the ball valves attached. I can't take a height with the ball valves on until after fermentation, as I'm pressurized right now. I will once I transfer into the 5L serving vessel.

I think loading up on more of the kegs is the more versatile choice here. The serving kegs are cool, but the corny kegs give you a lot of flexibility.
 
Hey dangardner2, it's a 1.75gal Corny that is just over 11" high without the ball valves attached. I can't take a height with the ball valves on until after fermentation, as I'm pressurized right now. I will once I transfer into the 5L serving vessel.

I think loading up on more of the kegs is the more versatile choice here. The serving kegs are cool, but the corny kegs give you a lot of flexibility.


Great, I have about 14inches clearance so I should be set; thanks for the info. I agree on the versatility, I plan to pre-order 2 more kegs. They look like great quality kegs with the NSF rating.
 
WoW thats cool now I can set my coffee maker,beer maker,and bread maker at the same time. and have time to plan a party at the same time :ban:

Cool idea! though
 
not really, actually. pico will allow a small degree of customization of existing picopaks, which they call freestyle paks. but you will not be able to buy blank or reusable paks to fill up at home. the kickstarter thread has a lengthy explanation why not. their original product, the zymatic is geared towards those meaning to create their own.
 
I questioned about selling empty grain/hop packs that would allow us to add our own grain/hop bills but they shot it down insisting that the zymatic is the only option for brewing your own creations.
 
I think they do something to the grains and the hops to make this work in the time frames provided ( isn't food chemistry awesome) . I expect that dumping your own grains and hops in will not work well. The freedom packs concept where you can tell them exactly what you want is cool.
 
When available $18-$30. The Pico Brewmarketplace is not selling the Brewery Picopaks yet. Hopefully soon!

Wait, what? Isn't that 80% of the appeal of the Pico- that you get to brew a commercial craft beer at home? Didn't this thing launch ~6 months ago?
 
Yeah, it looks like nothing is available in their marketplace. There is just a bunch of registered "breweries" that are 90%+ homebrew.

It's going for 700USD and there are a number of packs, of which you will get one randomly when your unit ships.

So, not quite ready for the market they're targeting.
 
When available $18-$30. The Pico Brewmarketplace is not selling the Brewery Picopaks yet. Hopefully soon!





Wait, what? Isn't that 80% of the appeal of the Pico- that you get to brew a commercial craft beer at home? Didn't this thing launch ~6 months ago?




Yeah, it looks like nothing is available in their marketplace. There is just a bunch of registered "breweries" that are 90%+ homebrew.

It's going for 700USD and there are a number of packs, of which you will get one randomly when your unit ships.

So, not quite ready for the market they're targeting.

Well if that "soon" is anything like the software update for the Zymatic "soon", don't hold your breath.

Then again, there is $$ to be made from Picopaks, whereas the Z users already paid...
 
Are they re-designing the Pico or am I missing something? I was hoping to order one for my husband for his birthday, but on the website it says it's for "pre-order" only, and on the FB page, it looks like they're only shipping to the Kickstarter participants (and even then not all of them are anywhere near getting them). I see threads here for it going back a little over a year, so am I just a dolt (entirely possible) and looking in the wrong place?

Thanks!
 
Not redesigning. They are continuing to ramp up production of both the units and the "refill" PicoPaks. I've brewed a Tallgrass Buffalo Sweat and a Belgian Blonde already. The PicoPaks are tested multiple times and validated by the brewery as Quality Control prior to them posting them for sale, so it is slowly expanding availability.
 
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