CES 2017

Lest you think that CES is a mindless slog of endless hallways filled with IoT devices, over-the-top speaker systems, and massive new TVs, take a gander at PicoBrew, the ultimate way to get ultra-fresh craft brew into your mouth!

If you are like me, then you love craft beer, but don’t really want to get mired in the complex and messy process of shopping for ingredients or figuring out brew times and hop cycles and bottle sanitizing procedures. You just want to cut straight to the part where you enjoy pint after pint of the sticky-ickiest fresh-hopped beer around. For those of us, the new Pico brings simplified homebrewing to an entirely new level and price point at only $799.

PicoBrew has partnered with over 150 craft breweries letting you enjoy and experiment with beers that might not normally make it to your market. There are currently more than 100 recipes available from breweries like Rogue Ales, 21st Amendment Brewery, Coronado Brewing Company, Upslope Brewing Company, and more.

The company also demonstrated its Freestyle program at CES where users can go in and use the BrewCrafter application to customize a recipe. This guided program allows users to select a preferred style – stout, IPA, pale – and then selecting malt varieties and hop bills and brew cycles to suit their flavor profiles, letting you adjust ABV and IBU to your taste. Your personalized recipe arrives in a PicoPak ready to brew. Simply scan in the RFID that comes on each Pak and the Pico will know exactly the perfect brew cycle for that batch.

Each PicoPak costs between $25-30 and makes five liters of the freshest beers you can get your hands on. The entire brewing process takes about six days and brews into a Fermenting Keg which is then transferred to a service keg to be chilled and served. Since the Pico is Wi-Fi enabled, you can even keep track of your latest batch remotely, making sure you arrive home just in time for the freshest tapping possible. PicoBrew served up some samples at the show which were definitely tap-fresh delicious!