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I just saw this on Wired.com and wondered what the rest of you thought of it.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/the-personal-brewery-is-an-all-in-one-beer-factory/

Some interesting things - carbonation during fermentation?, closed design.

Seems like the closed design is smart for sanitary reasons, however, I've never heard of carbonating during fermentation. Sounds like something that's only possible in a closed system. Is it a practice used by the pros?

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I commented (with this username, if you're curious) on the wired article; in short: way too expensive for what you're getting, imho.

As for carbonating during fermentation, look into http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Spunding and spunding valves.

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I think I've heard of some German breweries sealing off the tanks and carbonating during the end of fermentation, due to restrictions from the Reinheitsgebot.

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  • I don't believe there's anything in the R'gebot that precludes other methods of carbonation. – Denny Conn Apr 14 '11 at 17:39
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    I thought it had to do with not being able to add non-malt sugars to the beer. Though I've also heard of harvesting CO2 from other fermentations and force carbonating with that, as well. "I have hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence." -- Lionel Hutz – baka Apr 14 '11 at 17:50
  • Correct, but you can use gyle to prime. I guess I was just getting at the fact that spunding isn't the only method allowed. – Denny Conn Apr 14 '11 at 18:36
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If Apple got into the brew equipment business, I'd imagine they would design something like this system... only it would have fewer knobs and buttons. A cool concept and a neat system, but $4.5k buys me a lot of brewing ingredients.

I looked at their homepage and wasn't sure how they filtered out the sediment after they started brewing. They'd have to have some filtering stage, or else you'd get off flavors from the trub sitting on the bottom.

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  • The system has a "trub holder" at the bottom. Before you serve the beer, you shut off a valve and then throw away the yeast - at least that's what they show in the video. – Ell Apr 18 '11 at 20:15

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