Pico Brew Means You Can Brew Beer Like You Brew Coffee, Sorta

Last Year Pico Brew announced their Pico brewer, but you may have missed it amid the Hatchimal craze around the holiday. To the chagrin of beer fans everywhere, the Hatchimal does not make beer.

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Now that you’ve accepted that reality, perhaps it’s time to buy something more fun to open? It’s a mostly self-guided brewing kit, which fits on your counter, giving you the freedom to enjoy a wide variety of beers much the same way you enjoy coffee from all over the world.

Beer is the cinderella story of alcohol. What started as a handful Rocky Mountain grocery store options until the ’80s spurned a cottage industry of micro-brewers in the ’90s, almost overnight. Since then, home brewing has been a hack, only for the dedicated. We should find little surprise in the advent of plug and play brewing.

Pico Brew wins the home brewing war by offering a lovely form factor you won’t mind on your counter, paired with a super easy user experience, but crushes the competition by giving you access to the wide world of brews.

Sexy Form-factor

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Like any of the single-brew coffee makers that everyone uses now, Pico Brew sits on the back half your typical counter. The footprint is a little bigger than your Keurig, so don’t get excited if you’re limited on counter space.

They’ve faced the brewer with polished metal and black plastic parts, and like the aforementioned coffee makers, there are only two buttons on the Pico Brew. We’ll come back to those, but from a design standpoint, it keeps the look of the brewer sexy.

When you are brewing you will have to also have room to accommodate a small keg, but that also carries the simple metal form-factor of the brewer, with a couple of hoses to facilitate the transfer of water and beer.

Easy User Experience

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Part of the experience of Pico Brew is combing through recipes in the BrewMarketplace. There, you’ll find some familiar brew recipes, but also many you’ve never tried.

The process is simple: you order a kit, they send it. Most kits are in the $15-25 ranges. Once your kit arrives, you follow the instructions, most of which come to you via the digital display on the brewer.

With zero experience, one could follow the directions like assembling flat pack furniture. The brewing process has few opportunities to tweak the recipe, but if you simply do as instructed you’ll get a beer that is very close to the original.

The Pico Brew does this via a chip sealed in the brewing pack. Once the brewer reads that chip, it knows exactly what to do, how to direct you. Most of the process will not require you to be present, not once you get it going past the rinsing and set-up.

It brews for up to five hours, then you let is sit for a few days before your beer is ready. Congratulations. You’re a brewer.

Access to The World of Beer

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For better or worse, our world is smaller today than yesterday. You can fly around the Eiffel Tower (and other iconic locations) in full virtual reality using the Google Daydream headset. Even small towns compete for foodie status, offering cuisines from all over.

Why shouldn’t beer be just as accessible? With Pico Brew, it is.

The options for beers, like your mentioned coffee varieties, hail from around the world. Master brewers assemble the grains and hops with a professional eye. They package the hops and grain in vacuum sealed filters for you to load into your brewer.

The scope of options for such a new product is broad. They range from well-branded micro-brews to respected individuals with killer recipes.

When your kit arrives, you’ll notice that they label the filters so you don’t lose track of which beer it is. Even the screen displays the branding of the beer.

The finished product is a mini keg, not enough to throw a party unless you prep a couple of kegs. In that case, you’ll need another fridge to hold your mini-kegs. Then you might consider running cold lines from that fridge to tap at your custom home bar. It’s easy to see how this could spin out of control fast.

Totally worth it.

Find stores or buy your Pico Brew online by visiting their site. You can also watch this video for a visual aid: